#  WSRP Announces 2022–23 Research Associates 

 





April 04, 2022

 

 

One returning scholar and five new Research Associates will join the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS to work on book-length projects during the 2022–23 academic year. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines and research areas, commonalities in religion and gender emerge.

While working on their projects, the WSRP Research Associates teach a one-semester course and deliver a lecture on their research.



 

 

 

Michigan State University

### Kinitra D. Brooks 

 

Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African-American Religions

**Project title: Divine Conjurers: Recovering Black Women’s Intellectual Histories of Spirit Work**

This project explores the origins of Black Southern women’s spirit work with an emphasis on the West African influences upon the spiritual and physical healing practices of the conjure woman.



 



      ![Kinitra Brooks WSRP RA 2022-23](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/hds_wsrp/files/kinitra_brooks_220.jpg?itok=LZ4wFl3l) 

 

 

  

 



Southern Methodist University

### Elyan Jeanine Hill 

 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and African Religions

**Project title: Spirited Choreographies: Women's Ritual, Identity, and History-Making in Ewe Performance**

Conceiving of spirit possession rituals as forms of critical social practice, the project engages with women’s associations that orchestrate festival and ritual events. These female ritual specialists propose solutions to perceptions of economic decline by transmitting moral and cultural knowledge to young women and generating narratives of enslavement, migration, and trade.



 



      ![Elyan Hill WSRP RA 2022-23](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/hds_wsrp/files/elyan_hill_wsrp_220px.jpg?itok=PKNLtKaT) 

 

 

  

 



University of Massachusetts Amherst

### Jordan R. Katz 

 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Judaism

**Project title: Delivering Knowledge: Midwives and the Making of Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe**

This project examines the dynamic role of the early modern European Jewish midwife, arguing that Jewish midwives played critical roles in early modern European Jewish communities, acting simultaneously as extensions of communal authority, as municipal employees, and as agents of burgeoning medical bureaucracies.



 



      ![Jordan Katz](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/hds_wsrp/files/jordan_katz_wsrp_220.jpg?itok=bygiZa7N) 

 

 

  

 



California State University, Fullerton

### Xhercis Méndez 

 

Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African American Religions

**Project title: Conjuring (An)Other Humanity: Decolonizing Feminist Methodologies from Within Afro-Latinx Ritual**

This project takes as its central case Afro-Cuban Santería to reevaluate the methods and frameworks through which gender researchers have been taught to observe, interpret, and analyze the lives and experiences of women and queer practitioners of color in non-western religious systems.



 



      ![Dr. Xhercis Méndez, 2022–23 Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African American Religions and WSRP Research Associate / Courtesy photo](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/hds_wsrp/files/xm.headshot-300x300.jpg?itok=wRicBKMA) 

 

 

  Dr. Xhercis Méndez, 2022–23 Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and African American Religions and WSRP Research Associate / Courtesy photo   

 



### Rahina Muazu 

 

Visiting Lecturer on Women’s Studies and Islam

**Project title: The Female Voice in the Qurʾan and Qurʾan Commentary: Rereading verse 33:32 from a Gender Perspective**

Is the voice of a Muslim woman part of her nudity (‘awra)? Using gender as an analytical category, this research plans an exegetical hermeneutical study of the Qur’anic verse 33:32 to find out the position of the female voice and how it is interpreted in the West African Hausa society. Drawing on extensive field work, the project makes a valuable and new contribution to women’s studies by both engaging the lived experiences of Black West African Muslims and by contributing to debates on women’s vocal nudity and women’s perception.



 



      ![Rahina Muazu](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-01/03142022-RahinaMuazu-002.jpg?itok=h1d6rdza) 

 

 

  

 



Emerson College

### Tulasi Srinivas 

 

Visiting Professor of Women's Studies and South Asian Religions  
Colorado Scholar

**Project title: The Runaway Goddess: Water, Gender and Caste in a Climate Apocalypse**

Highlighting the paradox between Hinduism’s view of water as female, sacred and sentient, and the endemic pollution of water resources and climate- driven drought in contemporary India, this ethnographic and archival project considers the significance of gender, caste and religion in emerging climate justice initiatives to interrogate the existential ethics at stake.



 



      ![Tulasi Srinivas headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-01/srinivas-220x220.jpg?itok=S6GUOk5U)