Amaryah Shaye Armstrong

Interdisciplinary Scholar of Race, Religion, and Sexuality

Education

2019	Vanderbilt University Ph.D. in Religion
2012	Emory University, Candler School of Theology M.T.S. in Systematic Theology
2010	Belmont University B.A. in English Literature

Academic Appointments

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

1. “Black Culture and the Apocalyptic Political Theology of W.E.B. Du Bois” | (Forthcoming, Black Theology: An International Journal)
2. “Surrogate Flesh: Race, Redemption, and the Cultural Production of Fetal Personhood” | Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Special Issue from the Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion (Forthcoming)
3. “Thinking Practice: Method, Pedagogy, Power and the Question of a Black Queer Theology” | Special Issue of Modern Believing, “Method, Pedagogy, and Power”on Black Queer Religious Thought (January 2019)
4. “Of Flesh and Spirit: Race, Reproduction, and Sexual Difference in the Turn to Paul” | Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 16, no.2 (Spring 2017): 126–141.
5. “The Spirit and the Subprime: Race, Risk, and Our Common Dispossession” | Anglican Theological Review 98, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 51–69.

Essays and Popular Writing

1. “Bound History: The Predicament of the Black Evangelical Imagination” | A Response to Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism | Syndicate Network (June 2020)
2. “Racial Order and Christian Order: What Cedric Robinson Has to Teach Us Today” | The Bias Magazine, Institute for Christian Socialism (June 2020)
3. “Unsovereign Love: Thoughts on Race, Sex, and Undoing an Evangelical Education of Feeling” | The Revealer (February 2020)
4. “Reading the Flesh: Otherwise Methodologies and the Possibility of Black Theology” | A Response to Ashon Crawley’s Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility | Syndicate Network (October 2017)
5. “James Cone and the Blackness of God” | The Other Journal (Summer 2016)
6. “It gets better: Gay identity as national progress” | Geez Magazine (Spring 2013)
7. “Must I be anarchist?” | Geez Magazine (Winter 2012)

Book Chapters

1. “James Hal Cone,” and “Black Theology,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by Andrew Louth. Oxford; Oxford University Press (forthcoming)

Book Reviews

1. “Reconceiving Infertility” by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden | Reading Religion, A Publication of the American Academy of Religion (February 2018)
2. “The Prince of This World” by Adam Kotsko | Anglican Theological Review, 99, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 619–622.
3. “Our Lives Matter: a Womanist Queer Theology” by Pamela Lightsey | Journal of Theology & Sexuality 22, no. 3 (2016): 181–82.
4. “A Queering of Black Theology: James Baldwin’s Blues Project and Gospel Prose.” by E.L. Kornegay | Journal of Theology & Sexuality 20, no. 3 (2014): 263–65.
5. “Ain’t I a Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought” edited by Monica Coleman | Journal of Theology & Sexuality 20, no. 2 (2014): 151–53.

Editorial Work

Guest Editor | Special Issue of Modern Believing, “Method, Pedagogy, and Power”on Black Queer Religious Thought (January 2019)

Editorial Advisor | The A-Line Journal | Edited by Hortense Spillers and Rich Blint

Editorial Review Board | Reframing Continental Philosophy of Religion | Book Series, Rowman & Littlefield International

Editorial Assistant | Break Every Yoke (Oxford UP), by Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd | Proofreading, Suggesting Revisions, and Completing Footnotes

Book Symposium Organizer | Black Natural Law by Vincent Lloyd, Syndicate Symposium | Syndicate Network (Spring 2017)

Composition Assistant | Scribe, Inc. Philadelphia, PA (April 2013–May 2014)

Awards & Honors

• Inaugural Juneteenth Scholar, Virginia Tech, 2020
• Faculty Summer Stipend, Virginia Tech Center for Humanities, 2020-2022
• Early Career Scholar, Society for the Study of Religion Ethnicity and Race, 2019
• Provost Fellow, Vanderbilt University, 2014-2019
• Doctoral Dissertation Workshop, Political Theology Network, AAR, 2018
• Dissertation Fellowship, American Studies Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University, 2018-2019
• Dissertation Fellowship, Louisville Institute, 2018-2019
• Dissertation Fellowship for Students of African Descent, Forum for Theological Exploration, 2018-2019 [Declined]
• AAR Doctoral Fellowship, Political Theology Mentoring Network, 2017
• Graduate Student Colloquium Participant, The Barth Center, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2017
• Doctoral Fellowship for Students of African Descent, Forum for Theological Exploration, 2017-2018
• Udo Keller Stiftung Forum Humanum Grant, Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference, 2017
• Doctoral Fellow, Louisville Institute, 2016-2018
• Trinity Institute, Creating Common Good Essay Competition, Runner-Up ($2,500 Award), 2015
• FTE Christian Leadership Forum Fellow, The Forum for Theological Exploration, 2015
• Myki Mobley Award for Academic Achievement and Demonstrated Social Concern, The Candler School of Theology, 2012
• Vernon Johns Award for Prophetic Scholarship and Leadership, The Candler School of Theology, 2012
• Nurturing the Next Generation of Scholars, The Fund for Theological Education, AAR Workshop, 2010
• Alfred Leland Crabb University Writing Award, Belmont University, 2010
• Corinne Dale Award for Achievement in Writing About Gender, Belmont University, 2010
• Dean’s List, Belmont University, 2007-2008 & 2009-2010

Presentations, Invited Lectures, & Panels

1. Invited Lecture, “The Nation in Black Political Theology,” for the Protestant Political Theology Project, Cambridge Institute on Religion and International Studies, December 2020
2. Presenter, “Spillers, Sacrifice, and Sacrament: A Black Feminist Approach to the Racial Symbolics of Christian Order,” Theology and Religious Reflection Unit, AAR, (Postponed due to COVID-19)
3. Invited Lecture, “Reproducing Justice: Race, Reproduction and Theodicy in Grimke’s Rachel,” Drew University, Graduate Department of Religion, November 2020.
4. Guest Lecture, Black Religion and Black Politics” for Religion and Politics, Pomona College, November 2020.
5. Invited Lecture, “Black Lives, Black Theology, and Black Power,” for Religion and Social Struggle class Dartmouth College, November 2020.
6. Invited Panelist, “Riot Ethics,” for the Atkins Center for Ethics, Carlow University, October 2020
7. Keynote Lecture, “Hagar’s Children,” Yale Divinity School, All School Conference, November 2019
8. Respondent , Sylvia Wynter and Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Religion Unit, AAR, 2019
9. Presenter, “The Fatal Anti-Blackness of Fetal Personhood Laws,” Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, AAR, 2019
10. Presenter, “Reproducing Justice: Blackness, Theodicy, and Obligation,” Political Theology Seminar, AAR, 2018
11. Presenter, “Disinheriting the Flesh: Jewishness, Blackness, and Belonging,” Blood, Soil, and Supersession: Reading White Supremacy Between Blackness and Jewishness, The Study of Judaism and the Black Theology Unit, AAR, 2018
12. Keynote Lecture, “Telling Slavery Slant, or, an Incoherence in Theological Anthropology: Race, Robots, and Redemptive Narratives,” Tell It Slant: Theology and Art, St. Francis College of Theology, Brisbane, Australia, June 15-17, 2018
13. Panelist, Reframing Continental Philosophy of Religion, Theology and Continental Philosophy of Religion Group, AAR, 2017
14. Guest Lecturer, “An Introduction to Womanist Theology and Ethics,” Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN, October 2017
15. Collaborator, Unruly Collaborations, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, University of Pittsburgh, September 2017
16. Presenter, “Double Negative: The Apocalyptic Imagination from W.E.B. Du Bois to Afro-Pessimism” for the Pre-Conference on the Meaning and Power of Negativity, 38th Annual Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference, February 2017
17. Guest Lecturer, “Of Flesh and Spirit: Reading Race and Reproduction in the Turn to Paul,” Lebanon Valley College, February 2017
18. Presenter, “Blackness at the End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois,” Between Hope and Pessimism: A Comparative Analysis of Hope and Pessimism in Black Studies and Modern Jewish Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion Section, AAR, 2016
19. Presenter, “Of Flesh and Spirit: Finding Hagar in the Turn to Paul,” Political Theology and the Liberation of the Postsecular at Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, Annual Conference of the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion, 2015
20. Panelist, “Destabilized Racial Identities and Social Activism in Black Theological Perspective”, Black Theology Unit, Roundtable Discussion, AAR, 2014
21. Respondent, “Violence and Theology,” Doing Violence to Theology, Additional Meeting, AAR, 2014
22. Convocation Speaker, “An Introduction to Queer Theory,” Bethel College, KS, 2013
23. Presenter, “Prayer and Performativity: Sarah Coakley and Judith Butler on Desire and Disruption,” 11th Annual Graduate Student Symposium: “Beyond Borders: Constructing, Deconstructing, and Transgressing Boundaries,”  Florida State University, 2012

Teaching & Research

Virginia Tech

• “Generations: Religion and the Fiction of Kinship,” College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
• “The Politics of Domesticity,” College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
• “Reproducing Race in America” College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
• “Reproducing Peoplehood,” College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences

Vanderbilt University

• Reformation History with Paul Lim, Vanderbilt Divinity School
• Constructive Christian Theology with Ellen Armour, Vanderbilt Divinity School
• ·       Contemporary Christian Theology, with Laurel Schneider, Vanderbilt University
• Constructive Christian Theology with Ellen Armour, Vanderbilt Divinity School
• ·       Constructive Christian Theology II with Paul DeHart, Vanderbilt Divinity School

Academic Service

Professional Organizations:

• Steering Committee Member, Theology and Continental Philosophy of Religion Group, AAR, 2017-Present
• Steering Committee Member, Black Theology Unit, AAR, 2018-Present

Conference Planning:

• Panel Co-Organizer, “Religion, Secularization, and Real Abstraction: Abstraction Beyond the Value Form,”  Theology and Continental Philosophy of Religion Unit, AAR 2020 (Postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19)
• Panel Co-Organizer, “Disinheriting the Flesh: Jewishness, Blackness, and Belonging,”  Blood, Soil, and Supersession: Reading White Supremacy Between Blackness and Jewishness, The Study of Judaism and the Black Theology Unit, AAR 2018
• Co-Organizer, Race, Property, Debt Symposium with Vincent Lloyd, University of Wisconsin, Madison, March 2016
• Panel Organizer & Presider, Strange Fruit: Critical Perspectives on Race, Religion, and Sexuality, Queer Studies in Religion Group, AAR 2016
• Panel Organizer & Presider | The Future of Debt: Theology, Economy, and the Political | Theology and Continental Philosophy of Religion Group, AAR 2015

Editorial & Refereeing:

• Journal External Reviewer: The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Postmodern Culture.
• Research Assistant | “Break Every Yoke,” Oxford UP (November 2019) by Vincent Lloyd and Joshua Dubler, Summer 2016.

Community:

• Contributor, “Habakkuk,” Discussion and Reflection, CEB Student Bible, 2014

Memberships

• American Academy of Religion
• American Comparative Literature Association

Research Languages

• French
• German

Latin