We’re excited that Duke Divinity student Melissa Gamble is joining us as an intern this summer. She’s helping with various projects around the office, including planning for the Homegrown: NC Women’s Preaching Festival this fall and collaborating on programming around LGBTQ spirituality.
Here’s a quick Q&A to get to know her a little better:
Where did you grow up?
Riverside, CA
Last book you read?
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a neurosurgeon because I was obsessed with the show “E.R.”
What made you want to enter ministry?
One of the reasons I chose to enter ministry was the alternative ways of engagement in the Spirit by folks in my communities in California and in New York (where I was in between undergrad and divinity school). Being involved in queer/trans communities of color both inside Christianity and outside of its purview has radically changed how I understand myself, ministry and the expression of spirituality in places considered outside of sacred space. In other words, I decided to enter ministry because ultimately “I found God in myself & I loved her/ I loved her fiercely” (Ntozake Shange), and I desire a world where we may all say that we have found God in ourselves – and mean it.
What would you do if you were invisible for a day?
I would do absolutely nothing.
Favorite classes at Duke Divinity?
Introduction to Christian Theology by Dr. J Kameron Carter and How Blackness Thinks by Dr. J Kameron Carter and Joseph Winters
What’s the last place you traveled to?
New Orleans
When you’re not interning at RCWMS, what are you up to?
I’m mostly biking, reading, playing the violin, dancing wherever, and scheming ways to end the world as we know it (thank you, Frantz Fanon).
What’s next after you graduate?
I am planning on pursuing a PhD in African American Religions.
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