We are pleased to spotlight graduate student members of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. If you would like to be featured, please contact us via the form on our website or email info@society-buddhist-christian-studies.org.
My name is Chera Jo Watts, and I am a first-year doctoral student at The University of Georgia in the Department of Religion and Institute for African American Studies. I am a mother, writer, gardener, yoga practitioner, and artist striving towards what Darlene Clark Hines labels a “Black Studies Mindset.” As a first-generation college graduate from a poverty class background, my degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Psychology (2007), Master of Arts in Religion, and Graduate Certificate in African American Studies (2022) from The University of Georgia. My broad research interests include African American women’s religion and literature, focusing primarily on Womanism, and bridging the gap between the Academy and the everyday. I assert that we have much to learn from ancestors, and from each other, while living and operating among what Black Buddhist bell hooks labels imperialist white supremacist capitalist cis-patriarchy. These teachings facilitate personal and communal healing as we continuously dismantle white supremacy in the tangible ways we can from the spaces that we occupy. Also, I currently serve as the Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Institute for African American Studies at The University of Georgia.
Within SBCS I am a graduate student member, and I strongly encourage other graduate students consider membership with this organization. This community consists of imaginative and generous scholars, and you could make numerous international connections within the field of Religious Studies (along with other disciplines). As the current Executive Associate for Digital Services, I currently support the Society in a professional role through web updates, monitoring email, and various tasks as instructed by the governing board.
How do your research interests relate to the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies? What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently learning from published Womanist-Buddhists, and SBCS published several journal articles focused on this thread of Womanist thought and scholarship (especially see Volumes 34, 2014, and 36, 3016). I am grateful to be in conversation with these folks through their work.
In May 2022, I finished my Master’s Thesis (published in ProQuest) under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine. My thesis focuses on Womanist Buddhist thought in the works of Alice Walker while paying special attention to her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and then tracing the importance of her Buddhist practice across other works, such as essays and poetry. My first peer-reviewed journal article was also published in 2022. Reading Between the Times: An Ongoing Womanist Buddhist Project may be accessed online through MDPI, and it was included as part of a Special Edition of the journal which focused on Spirituality, Identity, and Resistance in African American Literature. At the moment, I have a few journal articles in process which extend this work, and I expanded analysis to include Black Buddhist bell hooks. For hooks, I am especially interested in her focus on living from a “love ethic,” and I’m grateful for an upcoming panel presentation at the 2023 bell hooks Symposium hosted by Berea College this June. Finally, along with Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine, I am co-authoring an Oxford Bibliography entry for “Alice Walker” in which we acknowledge the importance of Walker’s spiritual practices, including Buddhism, on her life and writings.