Conduct outreach to local area agencies on aging and other key senior service providers in the DC Metro area to identify community needs and seek areas of collaboration. Cultivate relationships with local congregations. Co-create programming based on partners’ stated needs. Manage advocacy efforts. Promote Seabury through public speaking, community engagement, and communications.

Seabury taps my experience in education and dedication to social justice nearly every day. Elder justice is a social justice frontier and Seabury — a nonprofit that has provided aging services to older adults in Metro DC since 1924 — supports and advocates for elders so that they can age with dignity and independence. I conduct outreach to area congregations, and develop and implement older adult ministry programs, including The Path Ahead: Spirituality & Purpose in Later Life, a curriculum on the spirituality of aging, and Common Threads, an intergenerational worship series. I also coordinate our organization’s largest annual event (350+ attendees), the Seabury Celebration of Service held at Washington National Cathedral. Day to day, I promote Seabury resources through speaking engagements, liaising with congregational leadership, an eNewsletter, social media, and exhibits.

A research appointment in American Studies helped me complete my book on gender, race, and performance in the American South. Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual and Memory in the Modern South was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2022. It is based on oral history and ethnographic fieldwork, and contributes to discussions about race and commemoration in the U.S. An editorial I published in the Washington Post offers a gist of my argument:

My work at Teaching for Change was deeply gratifying. For someone who grew up in Mississippi in the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), the opportunity to take a deep dive into primary sources and write original, inquiry-based K-12 lesson plans about the CRM was extremely satisfying. (And, fun!) At TFC, I was responsible for content management of civilrightsteaching.org, a web site dedicated to sharing K-12 teaching resources about the Civil Rights Movement. For the “Ask Me About 1963” campaign, I collaborated on educational and public programming about the life and work of Medgar Wiley Evers, and on professional development workshops for teachers, including: "Civil Rights Studies: Teaching 1963" at BLACK HISTORY 360: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Summer Education Institute, 2013; and, “Writing for Freedom: Freedom Schools Now and Then,” McComb (MS) School District, 2013.

I was honored to be selected the visiting scholar for Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities' interdisciplinary research seminar on the topic “Beauty.” The fellowship allowed me to conduct a LOT of qualitative and archival research for my book manuscript, Southern Beauty. I also taught a history seminar ("Memory Matters") for a smart bunch of History majors who didn't flinch at my assignments to apply what we were discussing about cultural memory to real-life scenarios. As usual, they were the true teachers. I may always have a soft spot for Urbana.

Vanderbilt supported my commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry. I taught in three interdisciplinary programs: American and Southern Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and African American Studies. My courses focused on the cultural history of the American South, difference and inequality in U.S. society, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and methods of interdisciplinary inquiry. As part of an American Studies faculty team, I helped revise the major curriculum and add a minor; our number of majors subsequently tripled. As a Faculty Fellow with the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, I collaborated on "Music, Religion & the South," an interdisciplinary research seminar that produced a major conference, new courses, and a CD. Elected President, Vice-President, and Program Chair of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association, I collaborated across institutions to plan the annual program. Faculty service gave me a way to “pay it forward,” and I supervised senior honors theses, teaching assistants, and internship placements, and served as a reader on doctoral dissertations. When undergraduate students under my research supervision won the Susan Ford Wiltshire Essay Prize in Women’s and Gender Studies (a university-wide competition open to graduate students) for two years running, I was enormously proud. Fellowships and travel grants kept my own research going: thanks to Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities; University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies; Tulane University Deep South Regional Humanities Center; and Duke University Sallie Bingham Center for Research on Women's History and Culture.