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.
SUMMER 2023
DARIUS BENTON
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-DOWNTOWN
Darius M. Benton, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown, teaching courses in Organizational Communication and Religious Communication. He also serves as the inaugural program director for the MA in Strategic Communication degree. Dr. Benton earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organizational Leadership from Regent University, his Master of Divinity degree with a certificate in Religious Education from Emory University, and Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication from Norfolk State University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and professional educator with varied experiences from Pre-K through collegiate levels, an ordained minister, executive leader, and social scientist. Dr. Benton’s research and publications focus on organizational culture; specifically examining issues of race and gender, religious leadership, and youth serving organizations.
Maxwell Greenberg
Goucher College
Maxwell Greenberg (he/they) | (Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Cultural Studies at Goucher College) is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator who researches and teaches about race, religion, gender, and place. He earned his PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from UCLA (2021), before serving as the Friedman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Washington University in St. Louis (2021-23). He works at the intersection of Jewish, Religious and Indigenous Studies, and is particularly interested in how Judaism and Jewish memory function as unstable tools of statecraft in the US. Greenberg is passionate about building community with a network of scholars, artists and organizers who engage with religion as a connective tool for coalition building with movements to end racism and transmisogyny.
Lauren Horn Griffin
Louisiana State University
Lauren Horn Griffin (PhD, University of California Santa Barbara) is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. Her first book, Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (Brill 2023), showed how confessional debates played a critical role in the development of national identities. Her current project investigates contemporary negotiations of national, religious, and racial identities in Catholic communities online. Adding Catholicism to current conversations about what many are calling white Christian nationalism in the U.S., she shows that while Catholics have long imagined the nation in terms of religious identity, many currently mobilize ideas of Catholic tradition to construct images of a munti-national white Western Civilization.
Alina Jabbari
American University of Iraq-Sulaimani
Alina Jabbari is an interdisciplinary scholar, researcher and educator. She works as a lecturer in social sciences at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, a trainer and consultant for Restorative Justice Netherlands, and is currently a Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellow. She is passionate about creating decolonial inclusive communities and envisioning practical ways to manifest transformative justice.
Elizabeth L. Jemison
Clemson University
Elizabeth Jemison is Associate Professor of Religion at Clemson University where she teaches courses on American religion. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South, published by UNC Press in 2020. Her next book project, tentatively titled, Christian Motherhood: Race and Southern Churchwomen’s Organizing during Segregation, examines how women’s religious groups across racial lines mobilized to defend Christian motherhood with conflicting results. She has written for Patheos and Religion & Politics. At Clemson, Jemison received the Provost’s Outstanding Junior Teacher Award in 2022 and the College of AAH Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020. She was a Young Scholar in American Religion in the 2015-2017 cohort.
Darnise Martin
Darnise C. Martin, PhD is a Professor, Author and Life Transformation Coach with 15 years of training and experiences in helping people create Whole Life Abundance. Dr. Darnise has a life- long passion for helping people tap into their spiritual connections for authentic transformation in the areas of Relationships, Spirituality, Life Purpose and Career, Self-Worth, and Well-Being. Dr. Darnise is a scholar, professor, published author and speaker, with a doctorate in Religious Studies. Dr. Darnise was also featured on Tavis Smiley’s radio program on National Public Radio (NPR), and has appeared on KJLH radio in Los Angeles. She has consulted on feature length documentaries such as Dark Girls and Light Girls for the Oprah Winfrey Network. She continues to speak throughout the community offering empowerment and relationship workshops. Dr. Darnise is the author of Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (New York University Press, 2005), coeditor of Women and New and Africana Religions, and the personal development book, 40 Something: 10 Radical Lessons for Women on How To Live and Love Without Losing Themselves. Visit Dr. Darnise at www.drdarnise.com
Phoebe Farag Mikhail
Phoebe Farag Mikhail is a Coptic Orthodox Christian and the author of Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church (Paraclete Press). She holds an M.A. in International Education and is a lifelong learner of theology, currently taking courses at Pope Shenouda III Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Plough, Christianity Today, and other publications.
Nora K. Nonterah
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
Nora Kofognotera NONTERAH obtained her Doctorate in Theology (PhD and STD) from the Catholic University of Leuven in 2016. She is a lecturer at the Religious Studies Department, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her focus is on how the study of religions has an impact on the day-to-day lives of people positively and its relevance for holistic education in contemporary societies. Her research interest includes Peacebuilding, Social Justice, Women’s Development, Religious Education, Social Ethics, Interreligious Dialogue, Human rights, and the Safeguarding of Minors. A teacher by profession, Dr Nonterah is interested in public speaking and has a passion for mentoring young people in educational institutions, faith and local communities.
Christina Sheikh
Metropolitan State University-DenveR
Dr. Christine Sheikh is a sociologist of religion, race/ethnicity, and gender whose research focuses on American Islam. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Sheikh is currently a Student Academic Services Specialist and Affiliate Faculty in Sociology at Metropolitan State University-Denver. Her book, The American Ummah: Identity and Adaptation Among Second-Generation Muslim Americans, is under contract with Rutgers University Press. The American Ummah is based on interviews with 45 second-generation Muslim Americans and 20 community leaders, ethnographic observation, and content analysis. Dr. Sheikh has co-produced two documentaries, distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences, on how American Muslims manage the pressures of Islamophobia: “Being Muslim in America: Acts of Courage and Healing” and “Being Muslim in America: An Afghan American Family Story.”
Matthew J. Smith
Alma College
Matthew J. Smith (he/him/his) holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Alma College in mid-central Michigan. He is a transdisciplinary scholar of race, religion, and U.S. empire whose research and teaching also center on gender/sexuality, science & technology, and the environmental humanities. His first book project explores the biopolitics of conversion in U.S. Protestant Missions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, interrogating the missionary discourse of plasticity as a central grammar in the modern scientific production of race. Smith also serves as the Director of the Religious Studies Program at Alma College, teaching a wide range of course offerings on the study of religion as it is lived in people’s everyday lives.
Hannah Stoltenberg
Hannah Stoltenberg (she/her/hers) is currently a middle and high school history teacher in Arvada, CO, and simultaneously acting as an independent researcher continuing her studies of the intersection of performance arts and religion in South Asia, specifically Hindustani classical dance and music. Hannah studied Biblical Studies and dance performance and choreography at Belhaven University and received an M.A. in Asian Religions from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her academic interests focus on the North Indian classical dance tradition of Kathak, its shared Hindu and Muslim history, current modes of practice, and its growing presence in diaspora communities, tracing the change and continuity of the tradition throughout time and space.
Naomi Washington-Leapheart
Villanova University
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black queer preacher, teacher, public administrator, and justice advocate. She is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and the Government Fellow for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. In 2021, Rev. Naomi founded Salt | Yeast | Light, an organization that develops spaces of spiritual education, disruption, reflection, transformation, and public action.