Answer:

I study the ways that religious beliefs address suffering and injustice. When preparing for a career in Christian ministry, I discovered the academic study of theology and fell in love with the different ways people have thought about God over time—even within one religion. I found this diversity very liberating and wanted to share it with others. As a womanist theologian, I write and speak about what happens when one places black women’s spirituality at the center of our discussions about faith. As a philosophical theologian, I study people’s religious beliefs within the framework of what we think about how the world works. I do this to offer an alternate vision for hope and healing.

Answer:

When I was in college, I took an elective in Harlem Renaissance literature in the African American studies depart- ment. I loved the class and changed my major to African American studies (what UD calls Africana studies). I had long been interested in black religions, African American literature and black history, but I didn’t know I could major in something I studied for fun.

As a second tipping point, when I was 18, other students from my college and I went to South Africa to help prepare voters for the first free democratic elections in that country—the elections that voted Nelson Mandela as president. That experience concretized my sense of the global African diaspora and ignited my passion for connecting academic knowledge with grassroots activism.

Answer:

Yes. My parents didn’t understand what I was doing. They thought “studying black people” wouldn’t get me “a real job.” Likewise, I wasn’t raised to be a religious leader. That wasn’t an option given to girls at the time and place where I grew up. So there was a lot of ageism, sexism and misunderstanding around my career choices. I kept telling them I would teach. When I received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship), the Ford Foundation (Ford Diversity Fellowship) and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, that helped me—and so many other people of color—to grow in my career and for my parents to see that it was a viable career option.

Answer:

I had a lot of excellent role models and mentors. I’m afraid to name one for fear of missing some: Henry Louis Gates Jr., Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Renita Weems, Marjorie Suchocki, Angela Y. Davis, J. Lorand Matory, Delores S. Williams. They all showed me a way to think critically as a scholar, how to genuinely care about my students’ intellectual and personal growth, and how to take our academic knowledge and share it with a wider public—through writing, preaching, public speaking, visual media. This was what I wanted to do and they showed me that it could be done and personally validated this approach to being an academic.

Answer:

I’m thinking about loss. Human finitude is a long-time philosophical problem, and I’m thinking about strategies for how we navigate myriads of small and significant losses in our daily lives, and the kinds of rituals and creative ways we can claim life in the midst of them. I’ve worked it out philosophically, and now I want to add a lived religion dimension to the way I write about it.

Answer:

It’s the only way my family knows me.

Answer:

I really love what I do. I feel a vocational calling to this work. I like thinking about the big questions of faith and offering various ways to think about it, and sharing that with a wider public. I believe rituals are not only endemic to human societies, but critical for our creative engagement with the world. When people tell me—even through DMs on Instagram—that something I’ve said or written makes a difference for them, then I have a lot of energy to keep going.