DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Dr. KB Dennis Meade (née Kijan Bloomfield) is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies with a courtesy appointment in the Department of African American Studies. Most recently, Dr. Dennis Meade was a postdoctoral fellow in Columbia University’s departments of African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies and Religion. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in the subfield of Religion, Ethics, and Politics, with a certificate in African American Studies. She earned her Masters of Arts from Teachers College Columbia University, and bachelor’s degree in religion from Bowdoin College.

Dr. Dennis Meade is scholar of Africana Religions and Caribbean Studies. Her research areas include the study of the modern African diaspora, religious cultures and politics in the Caribbean, ethnographic methods, and the digital humanities. Dr. Dennis Meade’s current book manuscript, Refuge and Deliverance: Religion, Faith, and Politics in Modern Jamaica, explores the role of religion in the history of social change in Jamaica from the late 19th century to the present. The project centers the voices and experiences of her interlocutors living within an inner-city community in Kingston, Jamaica. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, her study analyzes the salience of religion in shaping national politics and everyday life. Her findings prompt scholars in the fields of Religious Studies and Black Studies to attend to the impact of antiblackness, globalization, colonialism, and violence on African diasporic religious communities and practices.

Dr. Dennis Meade is a member of the Society for the Study of Black Religion, an affiliate of the Crossroads Project on Black Religious Histories, Communities, and Cultures, and a steering committee member of African Diasporic Religions Unit at the American Academy of Religion. She is the recipient of multiple grants and fellowships that have supported her research. Dr. Dennis Meade’s digital humanities projects have been supported by the Center on African American Religion,Sexuality Politics, and Social Justice (CARSS) at Columbia University and the Digital Stories Project at Saint Louis University. Her research on religion and migration have been supported by the Mellon Fellowship for Health Equity, Human Flourishing, and Well-Being. She was awarded the Dr. Laurence C. Morse African Studies Graduate Fellowship and was a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Regional Studies and the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. Dr. Dennis Meade has presented her research at conferences held by the Caribbean Studies Association, American Academy of Religion, and the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where she was also a visiting researcher. She has published in the Journal of Africana Religion and The Immanent Frame. You can learn more about Dr. Dennis Meade’s research, teaching, and current projects at https://kijanbloomfield.com.