Emilie Maureen Townes (born August 1, 1955, Durham, North Carolina) is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian, currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. She was the first African-American woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2013–2016.