Kwanzaa 2022, Theme: "Cultivating Your Chosen Family"

Meredith Coleman-Tobias

Professor

Meredith Coleman-Tobias is Assistant Professor of Religion here at Mount Holyoke College. She specializes in Caribbean and North American iterations of African Atlantic religious cultures. She is specifically interested in contemporary religious migrations, which she began to study during her tenure as a Fulbright fellow in Barbados (2009-2010). Her current research project focuses on Sobonfu Somé, a recently-deceased Burkinabé spiritual teacher and leader based in Sacramento, California. Investigating Somé’s ritual work and ‘mission’ in Western countries over the last two decades, she examines African and non-African descendants’ intentional practice of Dagara spirituality in North America as a lens through which to understand historical and contemporary Africana religious formations. She is writing a comprehensive, spirituo-biographic manuscript documenting Somé’s life and work. She brings to her research a background in community theater, and interrogations of performance, place-making and knowledge reproduction significantly inform her understanding of religious communities.

Coleman-Tobias earned her B.A. from Spelman College, M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and Ph.D. from Emory University.