RESEARCH

I have my Master in Theological Studies in Women, Gender, Sexuality in Religion from Harvard Divinity School. For my undergraduate studies, I received my BA in both English Literature and Studio Art from Trinity University.

There are three facets of this history that I examine. First, I investigate how 19th century, protestant, Northern white women used the burgeoning print culture to establish the white, submissive, pious, domestic Christian woman as the American cultural ideal. Secondly, I examine how protestant Northern Black women utilized this same print culture to assert their own distinct theological and narrative tradition counter to the aforementioned normative oppressive white ideal. Finally, I look at both these women's work in conversation, as they were not only contemporaries but geographically linked as well. While very few (historians included), talk about how this work was done contemporaneously, both white and Black women’s writing established narrative and storytelling as a vital tool for defining, negotiating, and circulating evangelical conceptions of race and gender in North America culture at large. My work hopes to close the gap, and have an understanding of how these women's work not only shaped each other, but American culture, religion, and politics at large.

As is the case for most academics, my scholarship is deeply informed by my lived experience. Born and raised in Austin, TX, conservative Christian women were not only around me. They were the women who raised me. The women I grew up with. The woman I was groomed to be. I attended a K-12 Classical Christian school as well as a fundamentalist charismatic Bible church, leaving me intimately familiar with evangelicalism. I broke away while I was still living in the community. I often joke that despite their best efforts to do the opposite, they accidentally made me a theologian and religious scholar. My senior year, I presented a thesis on complementarianism—a conservative Christian gender ideology—arguing its harmful repercussions on women. During this time in my life: Male pastors debate original greek translations with me, women accused me of trying to ruin marriages. Just as one teacher asked me to sign a purity contract, another would tell me no histories of women in religion existed. My high school even added a content warning to my thesis presentation. In the end, about 100+ people from the local community attended. By the time I was 17, I had experienced, observed, and ultimately rejected the world of conservative Christianity. However, my real academic work had just begun. What began as a very white-washed and "girl boss!" feminism, has evolved from its initially passionate, yet limited perspective. The past decade, I have developed this research into a rigorous, historically grounded, ideological study of the gendered and racialized identity of North American white, middle-class, conservative Christian women. (For more on how my research has evolved, see the Harvard section of my FAQ.) The need for scholarship on white evangelical women—a religious and cultural group whose influence in the US has reached new heights in recent years—becomes only more apparent in our current political reality. I hope to take my experience with and knowledge of this community, along with my now ten years of research and academic work, and be a bridge. Be a bridge to help with deradicalization, education, and make it better where I can. I can't do nothing. We can't do nothing.

Our understanding of North American evangelicalism, from both inside and outside of the academy, is currently incomplete and dangerously misinformed. The missing piece? I strongly believe the key to understanding the true nature of American evangelicalism lies in between the pages of the long-neglected religious and political texts authored by 18th and 19th century Black and white evangelical women. Early American popular culture wasn’t defined by Hawthorne, Twain, or Melville. It was shaped by evangelical women. It was their books, essays, and conduct manuals that Americans were actually reading. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), a sentimental novel, was the second best-selling book of the 19th century, behind only the Bible. Who was third? Why yes! Another sentimental novel! Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1850). The nineteenth century marked a unique time in American popular culture where print culture and literacy were expanding alongside the growth of American evangelicalism. This is why it is ultimately unsurprising that evangelical literature was the height of 19th century American popular culture, and that they dominated the media landscape (even if we don't talk about it). As a result, storytelling not only became a core part of evangelical culture (which you still see in its evolved form of #Christiantok, and their predecessors, televangelists). But American evangelicals' co-constituted relationship with media, narrative, and storytelling, has defined the workings of American culture itself. Now in the 18th and 19th century, Black women and white women were almost entirely excluded from institutional authority (the latter much less so than the former). This growing print and narrative culture were one of the few ways to exert real theological, cultural, and political influence. And as stated at the start of this entry, they were incredibly successful at it when it came to cultural influence even if institutional barriers took longer. However, in the year of our Lord 2026 (had to), this success has been intentionally suppressed. Both the success that was beneficial, and also the "success" that caused deep, irreparable harm. But we cannot deconstruct what we don't understand. I strongly believe the key to understanding the true nature of American evangelicalism lies in between the pages of the long-neglected religious and political texts authored by 18th and 19th century Black and white evangelical women. Through my writing, video essays, and artwork, I plan to show exactly that.

I developed and honed my research during my Master of Theological Studies (’23) in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Initially, I focused my coursework on depictions of gender and sexuality in Anglo-American Protestant religious literature. My inquiry became focused on nineteenth-century U.S. Sentimentalism, which politicized the home and consolidated the role of narrative in constructing the ideal white, submissive, “angelic” Christian woman. I continued to study white evangelical women, and initially came to Harvard to investigate the role of narrative in fashioning and cementing white conservative evangelical womanhood in American culture. In studying white evangelicalism and engaging with whiteness as a discursive framework centered around normativities and the creation of racialized others, my work evolved into a greater engagement with racial and religious formation with a particular focus on the early Black Church and contemporary Black evangelicalism. Both now lie at center of my scholarship, strengthening my research and expanding upon it.  As a result of this expansion of my scholarship, my paper titled "Redefining Bercovitch’s Jeremiad: Maria W. Stewart and the formation of the African and Female Jeremiad" was accepted by the Academy of American Religions Annual Meeting 2022. In November 2022, I presented at this conference on the “Religion and Nation Beyond Nationalism” panel where I presented my close structural analysis of Maria W. Stewart’s 1831 essay "Religion and The Pure Principles Of Morality." In this work, I showcase how Stewart creates a female and African jeremiad that not only recenter the agency of black women but critiques the very American exceptionalism that the jeremiad is meant to uphold. My work as a visual artist deeply informs my research as well. While at Harvard, I created a life-size art installation reflecting on the process of identity formation in evangelical women’s bible studies. This work then led to my artwork created in collaboration with Nadia Issa Milad for a library exhibit in the Harvard Divinity School library titled “Black Church Arson: Testimony and Witness” which was produced through Todne Thomas’ course “Black Church Burning.” For this exhibit, I crocheted a garment inspired by ten shards of stained glass recovered from the destroyed windows of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama after white supremacists bombed it in 1963. Through a conceptual and aesthetic focus on the shards of glass, the garment’s color palette, fragility, fractured patterning, and visible mending seek to visually represent the spatial violence and fragmentation that Black church arson inflicts. This garment was crafted for a performance choreographed and performed by Nadia Milad Issa on April 26th and for exhibit display in the Harvard Divinity School library. While my work at Harvard Divinity School expands beyond even this extensive writing, all of my experiences there (good and bad) created the foundation for the public scholarship I pursue now.

I am writing the other entries at this moment! Thank you for your patience, as I work to get this website fully up to date.