The Art of Transformation: Black Spirituality, Self-Expression, and Identity

Rebeca L. Hey-Colón is Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University, where she specializes in Afro-Latinx, Latinx, and Caribbean studies. Her first book, Channeling Knowledges: Water and Afro-Diasporic Spirits in Latinx and Caribbean Worlds (University of Texas Press, 2023) centers the multi-directional flows of water in contemporary Latinx and Caribbean cultural production through the lens of Afro-diasporic religions. Focusing on the interrelation between borders, gender, migration, and race, Hey-Colón’s interdisciplinary study pushes at the boundaries of Latinidad by centering the generative role of Black epistemologies in the Americas. Channeling Knowledges was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2024 Isis Duarte Book Prize by the Haiti/DR Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).  Born and raised in Puerto Rico to parents of the Puerto Rican diaspora, Dr. Hey-Colón received her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature from Haverford College and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. Her research has appeared in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, Latino Studies, and Small Axe, among others. Her article, “Chronic Illness and Transformation in Gloria Anzaldúa’s ‘Puddles,’” was awarded the 2023 Adela Zamudio Prize from Feministas Unidas. Her most recent piece, “Ocean, Sky, Sugar, and Spirit: The Power of Pooling in Firelei Báez’s A Drexcyen Chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways)” is forthcoming in Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.
 

Fabiola Jean-Louis was born in Port Au Prince, Haiti on September 10th, 1978 and moved as a child to Brooklyn, NY, where she’s currently based. She studied at the School of Fashion Industries in New York and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh; she now works in a variety of media—including sculpture, photography, ceramic, and film. Her Afro Surrealist work frequently explores spirituality, history, and the expansive complexities of Blackness. 
 

Jean-Louis has been awarded residencies at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) inNew York City, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Her work has been exhibited at DuSable Museum of African American History, the Gardner Museum, and Andrew Freedman Home. In 2021, The Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned a paper sculpture for a two year exhibition, Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. It debuted on November 5th, 2021—making her the first Haitian, female artist to show in the prestigious institution, which also exhibited her remarkable paper dress sculpture Justice of Ezili through late 2024. Jean-Louis exhibited at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum most recently in fall 2023 with Fabiola Jean-Louis: Rewriting History.

Elena Herminia Guzman is an Afro-Boricua documentary filmmaker, educator, and anthropologist raised in the Bronx with deep roots in the Lower East Side. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and is now an Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her previous positions have included a postdoctoral fellowship at Haverford College and a Research Associate fellowship at Harvard University with the Women’s Studies and Religion Program in the Divinity School. She is currently writing her book manuscript tentatively titled “Chimera Geographies: Spiritual Borderlands of the Afro-Caribbean,” which focuses on the way Black women and non-binary people throughout the African diaspora use ritual performance in African diaspora religions to forge geographies that counter landscapes of oppression. As an educator, she teaches Black feminism, performance, feminist filmmaking, Black cinema, autoethnography, border/land studies, and visual anthropology. In addition to her work as a scholar, Elena is also a filmmaker whose work explores the transcendental and spiritual experiences of African diasporic religion and spirituality in addition to its intersections with race, gender, and mental health. Her work as a filmmaker has been supported by PBS, Black Public Media, the Independent Public Media Foundation, and the Scribe Foundation amongst others. She is the director and producer of the film Smile4Kime (2023), a short experimental hybrid documentary that uses animation and live-action footage to tell the stories of how two friends transcend time, space, and even death to find that their friendship lives on. Her new film project, Oríkì Oshun, is currently in post production and is an experimental visual praise poem to Orisha Oshun, the mother of the sweet waters.
 

Follow her @Zoras_Oyster_Knife

The Rev. Irene Monroe is a public theologian, ordained minister, syndicated columnist, and a nationally acclaimed activist. She is the Executive Producer and co-host of the podcast and Boston Public Radio segment ALL REV'D UP on GBH 89.7 FM. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail. Monroe graduated from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African American church in New Jersey before coming to Harvard Divinity School to do her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was instrumental in Union United Methodist Church, a predominately African American church in Boston's South End, becoming a Reconciling Congregation, first in New England. She was the children’s minister at Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge. Monroe has taught at Harvard, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Episcopal Divinity School, and UNH, to name a few. Monroe is a founder and member emeritus of several national LGBTQ+ Black and religious organizations, and as an activist Monroe has received numerous awards. Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s Research Library on the History of Women in America. 

Follow her podcast at revimonroe@icloud.com or her blog plosts - at www.irenemonroe.com @revimonroe. 
 

The Reverend Dr. Brandon Thomas Crowley is an African American pastor, preacher, author, and scholar in religion, theology, and queer theory. Since 2009, he has served as the Senior Pastor of the Historic Myrtle Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts, one of America's oldest Black congregations founded by formerly enslaved Africans at the end of Reconstruction and one of the few open and affirming historically Black churches in the United States of America. In addition to his pastoral role, Dr. Crowley is a Lecturer in Ministry Studies at Harvard University's Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the 2024-2026 Honorary Distinguished Fellow in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion, and Theology at the University of Exeter in England. Dr. Crowley has taught courses on Theology, Race, Ethical Leadership, Queer Theory, and African American Religions at Boston University, Emory University, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, and the Meadville Lombard Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Reverend Crowley earned a Ph.D. in Church and Society and a Master of Sacred Theology with a certificate in social justice from Boston University's School of Theology. He also earned a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Arts in Religion with a moral cosmopolitan pastoral leadership certificate from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Reverend Crowley’s first manuscript is Queering Black Churches: Dismantling Heteronormativity in African American Congregations with Oxford University Press. Dr. Crowley’s research and ministry have been featured in the Associated Press, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NBC, CBS, and The Griot. His work demonstrates a commitment to challenging societal norms within African American faith communities and forging innovative pathways for the future.
 

Beyond his pastoral and academic roles, Dr. Crowley also serves on various boards and is a leader in several communal organizations. He is an inaugural member of the Council of Religious Practitioners and Scholars for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., a member of The Greater Boston Salvation Army Advisory Board, a member of the Harvard Alumni Council and membership selection committee, a member of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Community Benefits and Needs Assessment committees, and the new Owner and Curator of the Board of the African American Lectionary Inc. Ordained in the Progressive National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., and licensed in the National Baptist Convention of America, Dr. Crowley brings a wealth of wisdom and dedication to his work.