Luce cOHORTS
With our second round of funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, we are sponsoring 4 rounds of our three-month public scholarship training program online, for scholars focused on “race, justice, and religion” in public scholarship, funded by a grant from the Henry R. Luce Foundation. These public scholars are listed alphabetically by cohort below.
Spring 2023
Soumia Bardhan
University of Colorado Denver
Soumia Bardhan is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Operating at the transdisciplinary intersection of intercultural communication, global communication, and Islamic studies, she explores the complex ways diverse communication practices associated with Islam/Muslims shape MENA (Middle East and North Africa) culture and politics, challenge Islamophobia, facilitate the deliberative capacities of Muslim minority groups, and influence U.S. foreign policy. Her first monograph, on the digital rhetoric of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is under contract with the University of Alabama Press. This book nuances how we understand the rhetoric of Islamism and challenges U.S./Euro-centric narratives of the relationship between (and future of) religion and politics in the MENA region. Soumia was awarded the University of Notre Dame’s Global Religion and Research Initiative grant to develop an interdisciplinary course titled “Religion and Communication in the Middle East.” She teaches intercultural/critical intercultural communication; transnational rhetoric; religion, culture, and communication; gender, politics, and Islam; and directs Global Study courses focusing on Islam and intercultural dialogue in Spain, France, Morocco, and India.
Yolanda M. Santiago Correa
Southern Methodist university
Yolanda M. Santiago Correa was born and raised in the archipelago of Puerto Rico as the only child of Miguel and Yolanda. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Religion & Culture at Southern Methodist University. Her academic work and interests focus on Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad, music, and the relationship between racial and religious identity and imagination. Yolanda is a creator and co-host of Majestad Prieta: A Podcast on Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, y la Diáspora and is a team member of the AfroLatiné Theology Project.
Dr. D. Dennis
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Dr. D. Dennis holds a Ph.D. from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Africana Religions at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her research generally explores the history of sub-Saharan African Indigenous Religions, their encounters with Christianity and Islam, their expressions in the old and new diasporas (the Americas and Australia), and intersections with migration, health, race, justice, identity, gender, and the media. As an anthropologist of religion, Dr. Dennis engages both traditional and digital ethnographic tools in her research.
Armando Guerrero Estrada
Boston College
Armando Guerrero Estrada is a DACAmented theologian, whose scholarship examines the interlacing of theological education, theologies of migration, and immigrant literature. He is A.B.D at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and currently serves as the inaugural director of the PASOS Network at Dominican University, a network committed to the advancement of culturally sustaining practices in theological education. He received a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School, where he also earned graduate certificates in Latin American Studies and Religion and the Arts in Contemporary Culture, and was awarded the J.D. Owen Prize in Biblical Studies and the Academic Achievement Award. He holds a B.A. in Theology and Philosophical Studies from St. Joseph College and a B.A. in Spanish from Lamar University. His work can be found in Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Afro-Hispanic Review, Religious Education Journal, Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, Spanish and Portuguese Review, and the Lamar Journal of the Humanities.
Marcus Evans
McMaster University
Marcus Evans is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Religious Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in the department of Philosophy & Religion at Western Kentucky University. Marcus is currently interested in religion and spirituality in Afro-Asian encounters and arts (e.g., music, films, novels, graphic designs, performances, etc.). His dissertation explores Afro-Asian style and spirituality in the hip-hop productions of RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan. He has recently contributed an article titled “Buddhism and Afro-Asian Masculinities in RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists” to a forthcoming volume titled Buddhist Masculinities, edited by Megan Bryson and Kevin Buckelew (Columbia University Press).
Seth Emmanuel Gaiters
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Seth Emmanuel Gaiters (Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy, and Affiliate Faculty of the Africana Studies Program, at University of North Carolina Wilmington) is an interdisciplinary scholar who researches about religion, race, and politics. He works at the intersection of religious studies and African American studies, and carries particular interest in the exploration of religion in the history of Black communities and political organizing in the United States. He reflects deeply on how religious thought intersects with racial justice struggles and affects social transformation in the world.
Trina Jackson
Highlander Center/ Georgia State University
Trina (she/her/cuz), a Georgia native, is the Education Department Coordinator at the Highlander Research and Education Center where she manages program teams in Economics and Governance, Cultural Organizing, Library and Archives, and Intergenerational and Youth Organizing. Together they support and catalyze transformative justice via social solidarity economies, movement accompaniment and support, and further incubate radical work across the South, Appalachia, the U.S. and the globe. In addition, Trina is a doctoral student at Georgia State University, where she studies the Social Foundations of Educational Policy and its implications at the intersections of Critical Race Theory, Black Radical Traditions and Womanist Theologies. A former archaeologist and public high school science teacher, she serves as an Imam/ah for her local mosque, the Atlanta Unity Mosque, a founding member of the Atlanta Protest Chaplains Collective, and a co-host of the I’m Sorry Ms. Jackson Podcast: A Lyrical Analysis of Faith, Love, Apology Culture and the Movement.
Jennifer T. Kaalund
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Jennifer T. Kaalund (Ph.D., New Testament and Early Christianity, Drew University) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on Christian Scriptures, contextual Biblical hermeneutics, and African American history, culture, and religion. She is the author of Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration: Diaspora, Place, and Identity (Bloomsbury T&T Clark Press, 2018). She currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
Mihee Kim-Kort
Indiana university bloomington
Mihee Kim-Kort is a doctoral candidate in the department of Religious Studies at Indiana University with a concentration in Religion in the Americas and a minor in Critical Race and Postcolonial Studies. Her research interests broadly include race and religion, purity culture and American Protestantism, im/migration, and Asian American literature. She is currently working on a dissertation that explores koreanity as a site of racialized religion, transpacific entanglements, procedures of citizenship, and diasporic sentimentalism in various forms of cultural production ranging from H Mart to Dictee. She has degrees in English Literature and Religious Studies from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and an MDiv and ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Oluwatomisin "Tomi" Oredein
brite divinity school
Oluwatomisin "Tomi" Oredein is currently an Assistant Professor in Black Religious Traditions and Constructive Theology and Ethics and the Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX. Anchored in her American African identity, her scholastic and creative work engages theopoetics, womanist theology and ethics, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and Black theology from an African diasporic perspective. Tomi is most intrigued by how cultural, social, and religious liminalities can be sites of generative theological and ethical exploration. She has written academic, creative, and ecumenical pieces that foreground questions of care, modes of recognition, and cultural perception from her American African lens. She is the author of the forthcoming book with the University of Notre Dame Press (May 2023), The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice. Her future works include a solo-authored book on a theological ethics of care entitled Making a Human: A Theological Ethic of Care and co-editing a book on theopoetics exclusively featuring racially and ethnically minoritized scholars, entitled In Color: Embodied Approaches in Theopoetics.
Prea Persaud
University of Florida/ Swarthmore college
Prea Persaud is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida and a Visiting Instructor in the Religion Department at Swarthmore College, PA. Her research focuses on Hinduism in the Caribbean and the intersection between race and religion. In her dissertation, “God Must be a Trini: The Transformation of Hinduism into a Caribbean Religion,” she uses Hinduism in Trinidad to challenge studies on diasporic Hinduism that center India as the homeland, scholarship on the Caribbean that ignores the influence of Asian migration, and the rigidness of categories within the study of religion. She is on the steering committees for the North American Hindu Unit and the Religion in South Asia Unit at the American Academy of Religion and a member of the Intersectional Critical Hindu Studies Group. Her recently publications include several chapters in the edited volume Hinduism in the 5 Minutes edited by Steven Ramey, and “Creolization, Caribbeanness, and Other Categories in the Study of Caribbean Hinduism” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion edited by Michael Altman.
Eugenia Rainey
Dartmouth College
Eugenia Rainey (she/her/hers) is an anthropologist who specializes in the intersection of Lucumí religion (aka La Regla de Ocha/Santería) and biomedicine. Her interests are centered in African diaspora religions, lived religion, race, medical anthropology, and healing. Dr. Rainey is working on a book project about religion as “negotiated practice” examining the relationship between biomedicine and Lucumí in south Florida. Currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College, she holds a PhD in Anthropology from Tulane University, an MFA in creative writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a BA from the University of Chicago in Anthropology and South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her public scholarship is featured in Spirited Diasporas: New Frontiers and Futures of Afro-Atlantic Religions, edited by Martin Tsang and Cuba Counterpoints: Public Scholarship about a Changing Cuba.