Professor Derek Hicks on communities making meaning through faith and food
Winston-Salem, N.C. — Wake Forest University School of Divinity Associate Professor of Religion and Culture Derek Hicks is featured in Emory News for his scholarship at the intersection of Black faith, food, and cultural meaning.
Drawing from lived experience, history, and theology, Hicks shows how meals—Sunday dinners, funeral repasts, fish fries, and family recipes—function as sacred practices that bind community, carry memory, and shape identity. His teaching invites students to see food not as background detail, but as a theological language through which Black communities make meaning, practice resilience, and sustain belonging across generations.
The recognition of this work affirms Wake Divinity’s leadership in forming scholars and practitioners who attend seriously to lived religion and cultural expression. Read the full article to see how Professor Hicks’s scholarship and teaching continue to nourish conversations about faith, culture, and community—here in our classrooms and beyond.
About the Wake Forest University School of Divinity
Founded in 1999, Wake Forest University School of Divinity is a graduate, professional school that is Christian by tradition, Baptist in heritage, and ecumenical in outlook. Guided by the University’s motto, Pro Humanitate, the School prepares leaders informed by a theological understanding of vocation and equipped to serve as agents of justice, reconciliation, and compassion in a complex world. The School offers masters and doctoral degree programs including dual degree programs in bioethics, counseling, education, law, management, and sustainability.
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