Biography

The Rev. Dr. Jeania Ree Moore joins Brite Divinity School as the new Visiting Assistant Professor of Womanist Theology, Ethics, and Literature. Dr. Moore, who recently made history as the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Theology from Yale University, joins Brite as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow.

Jeania Ree is a womanist theologian, scholar of Black studies, writer, advocate, and ordained United Methodist Deacon for whom the Deacon’s call to “justice, compassion, word, and service” describes an interdisciplinary vocation connecting academy, church, and public square.

Jeania Ree’s academic research and public writing draws on theology and ethics to engage a range of sites in African American history and culture, focusing on Black women’s culture, epistemologies, and experiences. Inspired by the romance novels she used to steal from her grandmother’s bookshelf, her doctoral dissertation—the first to be written by an African American woman in theology and Black Studies at Yale University—examines popular romance fiction as a site for Black women’s moral agency and theological manifestation of hope as social praxis.

Prior to obtaining her doctorate, Jeania Ree worked in faith-based legislative advocacy on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., leading efforts on immigration, gun violence prevention, criminal justice reform, and more as Director of Civil and Human Rights with The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society. There, she learned something about the resources necessary for the hard work of hope in tough times.

Jeania Ree looks forward to continuing this work in the distinct ecology of Brite and Fort Worth, TX.