What was your background before you came to Queen’s/ took on your new role?
Prior to coming to Queen’s I served as the Director of the Masters of Social Justice and Ethics and Assistant Professor of Religion and Social Justice at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado in the United States. I served as the Pastor of Campbell Chapel AME Church in Denver as well.
What are your current research interests and goals for the upcoming year?
I am especially interested in a closer study of the ways quare and radical political discourse manifest in and impact Black religious communities. Over the year and years to come it is my goal to develop programming at Queen’s that will help elucidate and build community around this subject.
What excites you most about your new role at Queen’s?
I am most excited about a engaging in a fresh trans-disciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives with faculty, students, and the broader community – especially around significance and actionable possibilities (including and) beyond ontological Blackness.
Tell us more about your upcoming courses and what excites you most about each?
I will be teaching “Black Religion: A Literary & Historical Approach” and “The Physics of Womanism” in Winter 2022. “Black Religion” explores the theories, theologies, rituals, and praxes that characterize Black religion with an emphasis on Afrodiasporic experience in the Americas; I am most excited about intentionally applying a diversely informed methodology and pedagogical approach to this subject, among other things beginning to clarify how quare perspective transforms studies of Black religion beyond adding quare content. “The Physics of Womanism” provides an introduction to the theoethics of womanism through an inquiry into the physics and science, more broadly, of womanism; this class excites me most because so much of it is based on syncretizing fields of thoughts that have not been put in conversation with one another much, but have so much to offer one another.
Did you pick up any new hobbies during 2020?
I developed a deeper affinity for audiobooks in 2020.