Rev. Moya Harris is an itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal church and the Fellowship Director and Church Network Coordinator at Sojourners. She’s interested in the intersection of womanism, hip hop, homiletics, and rhetoric. Generation X, also known as the hip hop or post-soul generation, has often been neglected or overlooked by the church. Through her research, she hopes to create a fresh way to share God’s in-breaking in the world through the preached Word. For her dissertation, Moya aims to articulate a womanist hip hop hermeneutic and homiletic by examining the homiletical and rhetorical endeavors of female hip hop artists such as Lauryn Hill.

She chose CTS because she was drawn to the notion of a PhD program that had African American preaching at the center instead of on the periphery, as well as a focus on sacred rhetoric. She wants to be able to share the genius of Black preaching and Black oratory with a hip hop sensibility.

Recent accomplishments include:

• Presenting a paper entitled “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The Theorhetorical Nature of Club Quarantine” at the “Contours and Configurations of Black Religious Rhetoric,” symposium sponsored by The Center for the Study of African American Rhetoric and Public Address and Memphis Theological Seminary
• Presenting a paper entitled “Signifying and the Null Persona” at the16th Biennial Communication Conference at Duquesne University and at the National Communication Association Annual Conference
• Publishing of “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The Theorhetorical Nature of Club Quarantine” in the Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric’s Hip Hop issue
• Serving on the panel for the AME Department of Research and Scholarship roundtable conversation regarding the realities and importance of preaching both historically and contemporarily