Scholarship/Creative Work

Select Publications & Media

• “Conjuring Pasts and Ethnographic Presents in Zora Neale Hurston’s Modernity,” co-authored with James Manigault-Bryant. Journal of Africana Religions Vol. 4. No. 2, (Summer 2016): 225-235.

•  “African and African Diaspora Religions: Religious Syncretism, Erotic Encounter, Sacred Transformation” in Religion: Embodied Religion, edited by Kent L. Brintnall. 1^st ed., Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Macmillan Reference, USA. (2016)

•  “Religion and Fat=Protestant Christianity and Weight Loss? On the Intersections of Fat Studies and Religious Studies,” co-authored with Lynne Gerber and Susan H. Hill. Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society. Vol. 4, Issue 2 (Spring 2015): 82-91.

• “‘Don’t Make Me Hop After You…:’ Black Womanhood and the Dangerous Body in Popular Film” in Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues, by Adria Goldman, VaNatta Ford, Alexa Harris, and Natasha Howard, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).

• Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women (Duke University Press, 2014)

• Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions, co-edited with Tamura A. Lomax and Carol B. Duncan (Palgrave Macmillan, Summer 2014)

• Article: “Fat Spirit: Obesity, Religion, and Sapphmammibel in Contemporary Black Film,” Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society. Volume 2.1 (Spring 2013): 56-69.

Online, Media, & Op-Ed

• “Do Not Look for Me at the Women’s March on the Women’s March on Washington.” Room for Debate, The New York Times, January 9, 2017.

• “An Open Letter to White Liberal Feminists” November 19, 2016, Black Perspectives, A Blog of the African American Intellectual Historical Society.

• Blogger and Contributor (monthly), African American Intellectual History Society. http://aaihs.org

• “#dangerousbodies #blackwomen #scifi” Williams College TEDx Conference (January 2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxGZMm4nBQ

Select Presentations

• Keynote Address, “Singing the Soul Free: Gullah/Geechee Religion and Practice,” Department of Religion, College of Charleston (April 2016)

• Keynote Address, “Honor, Honor: The Black Body as Sacred Text,” Duke University Divinity School (March 2016)

• “‘Jesus Just Saved Your Life:’ Black Women’s Navigation of Popular Spiritual Terrians,” Center for Blck Diaspora Annual Lecture Series, DePaul University (November 2014)

• “The ‘Church of Oprah’ and the Rise of Sapphmammibel: Race-ing Fatness in Contemporary Culture” PCA/ACA annual meeting, Boston, MA (April 2012)