Regina Shands Stoltzfus, professor of peace, justice and conflict studies at Goshen College has released her third book, “Resistance, Resilience and Radical Love: Reflections on Blackness and Teaching Peace.” The book is a result of the work Shands Stoltzfus did during her sabbatical from teaching in 2023.

In a press release about the book, GC said, “[Shands Stoltzfus] reflects on the constant struggle of teaching peace, especially as a Black woman.” 

The idea for this book came from Shands Stoltzfus’ experiences as an educator. “I started thinking about the way I teach peace studies when there’s terrible things happening right now,” she said.

Shands Stoltzfus first arrived at GC in 2002 as an associate campus pastor, a role she served in for three years. It wasn’t until 2008 that she returned to campus to teach peace, justice and conflict studies.

Shands Stoltzfus believes that the book was an opportunity to reflect and learn new ways to approach tough topics in the classroom. “This is my job. I do this all the time and I’m used to it, but I still need to step away from it. I needed to build practices to help me read 15 papers about genocide.” She said that she wanted to highlight the importance of the topics, but to be more humane in her teaching. 

During her 2023 sabbatical, she studied trauma and secondary trauma. She took a class at Eastern Mennonite University about trauma in the university’s strategy for trauma awareness and resilience program and an online class led by author Joy DeGruy, who wrote a book entitled, “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring and Healing.” This was less personal than an in-person class but still provided a learning experience for Shands Stoltzfus, who said, “[It] was very helpful to have that time and space to be thinking about those things, to extend my own knowledge on what generational trauma is, what it does, how it shows up and how different practitioners think about it and work with it.”

Shands Stoltzfus wrote the book during a transitional period in U.S. politics — the 2024 presidential election. This made her reflect on her work: “Because there was so much happening, I wanted to go back and read it and see, ‘Is there anything that I can add? Is there anything that I

want to say differently now that this is happening?’” Shands Stoltzfus said. “It turns out that wasn’t the case.”

Initially, she didn’t know what the book was going to be about. “I have all these notes from my classes and notes from my books everywhere. It’s a big mess but it’s a process that works for me because I’m like a little squirrel — just going around grabbing

things and then I put them all together,” Shands Stoltzfus said.

She believes that the book has bettered her as an educator by exploring her vulnerabilities as a writer. “It’s also helpful for me to be working on a project when I have students that are working on big projects, just to say ‘Here are the things that helped me,’” Shands Stoltzfus said. 

While she has just released the book, Shands Stoltzfus has already started her next project. The project will focus on people in her field and what their work looks like in different stages of life. 

“I’m at an age where I’ve been through a lot of stages of life,” she said, “The things that are possible for

me to do now weren’t possible for me then. But what was possible for me then? What do I see in my students and in my parents and all of that?” 

“What is the wisdom we can gain from thinking about doing peace and justice work over a lifetime if we think about it in that way? What is possible for people at various stages of life and various conditions of life?”

President Rebecca Stoltzfus believes that GC is lucky to have Shands Stoltzfus. Stoltzfus said that Shands Stoltzfus, “[Is] that rare individual who is a living synthesis of teaching, scholarship, practice and activism in her arenas of peace, justice and anti-racism.”  Stoltzfus also said, “It is our good fortune that she is also a prolific writer.”

“Resistance, Resilience and Radical Love: Reflections on Blackness and Teaching Peace” can be bought from Fables on Main Street. It can also be bought on Amazon and directly from the publisher, Tehom Center Publishing.