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Discover how storytelling shapes history, strengthens identity, and drives advocacy. In this interactive workshop, you’ll engage with experts to explore the impact of narratives, participate in small-group discussions to share perspectives, and develop plan for storytelling in your own context. Whether you’re preserving history, defining your identity, or championing a cause, this session will inform your work to craft and share powerful stories that inspire action.
This workshop is part of a day-long celebration of noted Princeton Seminary alumna, Prathia Hall, an American leader and activist in the Civil Rights Movement, a womanist theologian, and ethicist. The workshop will be preceded by a beautiful lunch to honor local legend, Shirley Satterfield.
The evening event, the Prathia Hall Lecture, will be delivered by Dr. Danielle McGuire, an award-winning historian, public speaker and author.
Event Schedule
12:30–2 pm: Luncheon honoring Shirley Satterfield, catered by Chef Margo Carner of Fridge2Table
2:30–4 pm: “The Power of Storytelling in History, Identity, and Advocacy,” featuring documentarian Purcell Carson and historian Mélena Laudig.
5 –6:30 pm: Prathia Hall Lecture, presented by Dr. Danielle McGuire, with a response from Professor Keri L. Day, the Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Seminary.
While the Prathia Hall Lecture is free and open to the public, the luncheon and workshop require an advance registration fee.
>>Register to Attend
About our Featured Guests
Purcell Carson, documentary filmmaker and editor. She’s served as a lead creative partner editing character-driven, observational documentaries, including the Oscar-winning Smile Pinki. Also short-listed for the Oscar were Semper Fi: Always Faithful, which won best-editing from the Tribeca Film Festival for its look at toxic water contamination on US military bases, and Simple as Water, an IDA best-editing nominee for its portrait of Syrian refugees. Purcell is currently editing an essay film, Death and Taxes, about… death and taxes.Purcell’s directorial work is connected to Trenton, New Jersey and Princeton University, where she has taught a seminar in urban studies and film and directed a community-engaged documentary program, The Trenton Project, for the past ten years.
Mélena Laudig, historian and the incoming Assistant Professor of African American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. Laudig will join the faculty in fall 2025 after completing the doctoral program in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. Before beginning her position at Princeton Seminary, she will be conducting research during the 2024-2025 academic year through the support of the Richard S. Dunn Fellowship at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and the Lake Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship at the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving.
Danielle McGuire, PhD, award-winning Civil Rights historian, public speaker and the author of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance-a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (Knopf). She is the editor of Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement; wrote the forward for John Hersey’s Algiers Motel Incident; and has contributed chapters to many other books related to the Black Freedom Struggle. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and has appeared on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Headline News, National Public Radio, and BookTV. Her popular essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Detroit Free Press, Bridge Magazine, Washington Post, Huffington Post and CNN.com. She serves as a consultant on documentary films such as The Rape of Recy Taylor and You Belong to Me: The Ruby McCollum Story. She also helps curate historical tours and civil rights-related curricula for secondary schools and serves on the advisory board of History Studio. She is currently at work on a book about police violence in Detroit in 1967, to be published by Knopf.
