Event

Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies whose teaching and research explores the intersections of race, religion, and gender in the United States. A historian of African-American religion, she specializes in the religiosity of enslaved people in the South, religion in the African Atlantic, and women’s religious histories.  Her first book The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (UNC 2021) offers a gendered history of enslaved people’s religiosity from the colonial period to the onset of the Civil War. She is currently at work on her second project, which traces the gendered, racialized history of phenomena termed “witchcraft” in the United States. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Forum for Theological Education, among others. She received her B.A. in English from Spelman College, and Master of Divinity and Ph.D. from Emory University.

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The McNeil Center sponsors a seminar that meets on Friday afternoons approximately twice a month between September and May, with the paper for each session circulated in advance. Over two hundred people attend at least once a year, with an average attendance of 40 to 50 at meetings held at various sites in the Delaware Valley. While most of the regular attendees are graduate students and faculty from institutions in the Philadelphia area, participants come from as far afield as Long Island, New York City, Princeton, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington. 

Beginning in Spring 2022, we will utilize a hybrid format for seminars in which participants may gather together at the McNeil Center building (or occasionally at an MCEAS Consortium institution host in the Philadelphia area) or attend via Zoom. All in-person attendees must comply with the University of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 policies. To get access to the seminar papers and Zoom links, or to join our mailing list, please email us at mceas@sas.upenn.edu.