Western Illinois University will host Valerie Cooper, associate professor of Religion and Society and Black Church Studies from Duke Divinity School, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Sandburg Theater for the 37th annual Mary Olive Woods lecture.

Cooper’s lecture, “Segregated Sundays: How Racially Segregated Worship Feeds Political Divisions,” will focus on racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present.

Cooper received her doctorate from Harvard University and both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. She is the author of “Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans.”

The Mary Olive Woods Lecture is sponsored by the Department of Race, Religion, Gender and Multidisciplinary Studies, the Department of Mathematics and Philosophy and the Mary Olive Woods Foundation.

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Sean Leary is an author, director, artist, musician, producer and entrepreneur who has been writing professionally since debuting at age 11 in the pages of the Comics Buyers Guide. An honors graduate of the University of Southern California masters program, he has written over 50 books including the best-sellers The Arimathean, Every Number is Lucky to Someone and We Are All Characters.