Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones has joined the Emory University faculty as an assistant professor of theology and Africana studies. She comes to her new role from Boston College, where she was an assistant professor of theology and African and African diaspora studies. A scholar of Black religion, she recently published her first monograph, Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology (Oxford University Press, June 2025).
A graduate of the University of Virginia, Dr. Adkins-Jones earned her master of divinity degree and her Ph.D. from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Mikayla Johnson is a new instruction librarian and assistant professor at the Mississippi University for Women. She has been serving as
Johnson holds a master’s degree in information science from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree in English form the University of Alabama.
James Ijames has joined the Columbia University faculty as an associate professor of theatre and head of the playwriting concentration for the theatre program. His most recent teaching position was with Villanova University in Pennsylvania. One of Ijames’ most recent plays, Fat Ham – an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set at a family barbecue in the American South – won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize and was a 2023 nominee for the Tony Award for Best Play.
Professor Ijames holds a bachelor’s degree in drama from historically Black Morehouse College in Atlanta and a master of fine arts degree in acting from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Uchenna Anele has been selected to serve as interim chair of the department of animal sciences in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at North Carolina A&T State University. A faculty member at the HBCU since 2017, he specializes in ruminant health. Earlier in his career, he taught at North Dakota State University and Texas Tech University.
Dr. Anele earned his bachelor’s degree in agriculture and his master’s degree in pasture and range management from the University of Agriculture in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He holds a doctorate in forage utilization and ruminant nutrition from the University of Bonn in Germany.
Tara M. Holman is a new assistant professor of literature and creative writing at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Her writing and teaching interests focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American and Black Atlantic literature and culture, with a particular focus on gender and sexuality. She also conducts research on Black feminisms, race and aesthetics, visual cultural studies, and queer performance studies.
Dr. Holman received her bachelor’s degree in English and international studies from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in English from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
A. Lamont Williams is a new assistant professor of sport administration at the University of Cincinnati. He comes to his new appointment from San Jose State University, where he was an assistant professor and researcher. His scholarship focuses on critical studies, athlete activism, legal discourse, and fashion. He is also the founder and chief executive officer of Siempre Sports, a workforce development company centered on standardizing sports front offices through online education.
Dr. Williams holds a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and a master’s degree in sport management from Western Illinois University. He received his Ph.D. in sport management from Florida State University.
Morgan Parker is a new assistant professor of English literature at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Previously, she taught as an associate adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine, and as a visiting faculty member at New York University and Columbia University. She is the author of You Get What You Pay For (Penguin Random House, 2024).
Parker received a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and anthropology from Columbia University and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from New York University.
