Events

WSRP 25th Anniversary Conference Speakers

CONSTANCE BUCHANAN

Constance Buchanan is the senior program officer for Religion, Society, and Culture in the Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program of the Ford Foundation, with primary responsibility for developing the foundation's grant-making program in this new field. She chairs the foundation-wide Inter-Program Working Group on Religion, Society, and Culture and the Global Forum on Women and Social Change, which is charged with reviewing attention to diversity in the Ford Foundation's grant-making program.

From 1977 to 1997 she was a member of the faculty and associate dean of Harvard Divinity School. She was the founding director of Harvard's Women's Studies in Religion Program. She also bore responsibility for developing new initiatives on religion and public life with Harvard's other graduate and professional schools. For six years, she was also special assistant to President Derek Bok for his University-wide project on improving the quality of teaching and learning.

Buchanan has just completed a forthcoming book on morality and politics, Learning From Inequality: What Progressives Need to Know to Win the Real Culture War. She is also the author of Choosing to Lead: Women and the Crisis of American Values (Beacon Press, 1996). The book looks at the relationship between women, motherhood, and the welfare of American society, exploring the barriers—practical, historical, and especially moral—to women's public leadership. Her other publications include "The Anthropology of Vitality and Decline: The Episcopal Church in a Changing Society," in Episcopal Women: Spirituality and Commitment in an American Mainline Denomination (1992); and "The Fall of Icarus: Gender, Religion, and the Aging Society," in Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture (1987). She co-edited with Clarissa Atkinson and Margaret Miles Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture (1987) and Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (1985).