ISSN 2150-5128

University of Delaware Research Online Magazine

ONLINE MAGAZINE VOL 8 • NO 1

University of Delaware Research Online Magazine

ONLINE MAGAZINE

Disruptors

 

DISRUPTORS

MAKING OUR WAY

Society often remains silent about mental illness, sexual and domestic violence despite the millions affected—half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental disorder alone at some point, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In her work as an award-winning scholar, author and minister, Monica A. Coleman shares both her expertise and her own struggles, offering a powerful new vision for healing through faith.

Monica A. Coleman

Monica A. Coleman

Professor
Africana Studies

MEET MONICA

Professor of Africana studies at the University of Delaware and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Monica A. Coleman focuses on the role of faith in addressing critical social and philosophical issues. She believes spiritual activism leads to social activism and shares principles for growth and liberation to help change the world to be a more just place. She is a Harvard graduate and holds a master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt and master’s and doctoral degrees from Claremont Graduate University. Her books are required reading at leading theological schools across the U.S.

Professor Coleman wears sacred beads called elekes as a way to identify her faith. Each color represents a different force of nature or principle of the world.

Question:

What do you study, and what led you into this field?

 

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.

 

Question:

Can you recount the tipping point—the idea that produced your ‘aha!’ moment?

 

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.

 

Question:

Were there many naysayers and how did you navigate that?

 

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.

 

Question:

Did anyone in particular inspire you to think differently?

 

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.

 

Question:

What is your favorite problem at the moment?

 

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.

 

Question:

Does your disruptive side prove challenging at home?

 

Answer:

It’s the only way my family knows me.

 

Question:

Why do you want to keep doing this work?

 

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.

 

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CONTACT

Tracey Bryant
Senior Director, Research Communications
Email: tbryant@UDel.Edu

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