Dr. Maria Hamilton Abegunde
Bio
Maria Hamilton Abegunde, Ph.D. I am a memory keeper, poet, ancestral priest, and doula. I use the arts, contemplative practices, and ritual to explore ways to heal trauma through community, collaborative, and co-creative practices. My poetry, creative nonfiction, and essays have been published in the journals COGzine, the Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, nocturnes, North Meridian Review, Obsidian, Tupelo Quarterly, and FIRE!!!; in the books SO WE CAN KNOW: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, ASHE: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expressivity, Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, and The Eternal Year of African People; the exhibitions Be/Coming, Keeper of My Mothers’ Dreams, and Sister Song: The Requiem, and the project Stargazing: Re/Imagining Elizabeth “Lizzie” Breckenridge at Wylie House. I am a Cave Canem, Sacatar, Black Earth Institute, and NEH Summer Institute fellow. I am a faculty member in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, and am an affiliate faculty member in African Studies and Gender Studies. I began teaching the A263 Contemporary Social Issues in the African American Community in 2015.