Dr. Fiona Black to be honoured during Convocation ceremonies

SACKVILLE, NB — A Mount Allison religious studies professor is being recognized with the University’s pre-eminent faculty award at this spring’s Convocation ceremonies on May 13. Dr. Fiona Black is the recipient of the 2019 Paul Paré Medal of Excellence.

The Paré Medal is presented annually to a faculty member who has exemplified outstanding teaching, research, scholarship, and/or creative activities, and who has an exemplary record of service.

“Dr. Black is an active and respected scholar who is consistently bringing new ideas and knowledge to her research and teaching. She demonstrates excellence in all of the areas the Paré Medal is designed to recognize,” says Dr. Jeff Ollerhead, Mount Allison University Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research. “On behalf of the entire University community I would like to congratulate her on this latest, well-deserved honour.”

Black’s areas of research span a broad range, from biblical reception history, to Caribbean hermeneutics, and gender and sexuality in Western religious traditions. Well-known and well regarded, she is an active scholar who has become one of the formative voices in new scholarly currents within her discipline.

“I was thrilled to learn that I had been awarded the Paré Medal this year,” says Black. “It’s a great honour to have my work recognized in this way and to be included in the company of the previous winners, whose work I really admire and respect.”

Black is currently working on a number of different research projects, including examining the way religion intersects with the cultural history of mental illness; the history of the Song of Songs (the Bible’s love poetry) in Western art, music, and politics; the role of the Bible in the Bahamas’ history as a colony of Great Britain; and the role of the Bible in Indigenous residential school education.

In the classroom, Black works to create hands-on, interdisciplinary learning experiences not only for students but also for faculty members. She was awarded Mount Allison’s Hebert and Leota Tucker Teaching Award in 2013, the University’s top teaching honour and is a founding member of Research Partnerships for Education and Community Engagement Centre (R-PEACE) — a centre for engaged learning on campus established in 2018.

Along with an active research program and teaching duties, Black has served as department head of religious studies for nine consecutive years, 11 years on the University Senate, and is has been a member of the University Planning, Research and Creative Activities, and Tenure and Promotion Committees, among others.