Maria Hamilton Abegunde

Maria Hamilton Abegunde

Assistant Professor, African American and African Diaspora Studies

Affiliate, African Studies

Affiliate, Gender Studies

Founding Director, The Graduate Mentoring Center (2014-2021)

Education

  • Ph.D., Indiana University, 2014
  • M.A., Women’s and Gender Studies, DePaul University, 2009
  • B.A., English, Fiction Writing Concentration, Northwestern University, 1986

About

Dr. Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde is the inaugural recipient of the Ph.D. in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. Her research and creative activity center memory, trauma, and healing, and responds to the following questions: How do the unresolved traumas of our ancestors impact us? How can the arts create community-based spaces for researching historical harms? How can African-centered and contemplative practices help individuals and communities reflect on these traumas and harms without further injury, and in ways that lead to healing and justice?

Before coming to IU Dr. Abegunde worked in elementary school education for over 20 years and as an independent teaching artist. As a result of the latter, Captain Bill Pinkney invited her to be the lead team teacher for the first leg of Middle Passage Voyage project, an experiential voyage in which teachers from around the country were selected to sail and teach about the Middle Passage routes. Dr. Abegunde and her team sailed from Puerto Rico to Brazil over a two-month period. At the invitation of Dr. Sylvia Frey, Dr. Abegunde also served as poet and ritualist-in-residence for the UNESCO-Transatlantic Slave Trade Route-USA Project for eight years.

Dr. Abegunde is the author of one poetry collection, What Is Now Unanswerable, inspired by the 1992 murder of Tammy Zwicki, and two poetry chapbooks, including  Wishful Thinking about the 2001 disappearance of Tionda and Diamond Bradley in Chicago. She is the commissioned poet for the exhibitions Be/Coming, Keeper of My Mothers’ Dreams, Sister Song: The Requiem, Ancestral Masquerades, and the Lynch Quilts Project. She is a trained facilitator and trainer in Civic Reflection Dialogue and Powerful Conversations on Race.

Because of her work on intergenerational/ancestral trauma, community healing, arts-based practices, she was invited to join faculty in the School of Education at the University of Juba, South Sudan to help create a two-year Master’s program in Teaching Emergencies.

One of Dr. Abegunde’s long–term projects is the interdisciplinary, collaborative, and arts-based Stargazing: Re/Imagining the Life of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Breckenridge at the Wylie House Museum.

When Dr. Abegunde is not teaching and working, she enjoys watching/reading science fiction and dancing.

Selected publications

Book Chapters


"Conjuring Transformation: The Magic is in the Process." In Contemplative Practices and Acts of Resistance in Higher Education: Narratives Toward Wholeness. Co-edited by Michelle C. Chatman, Leeray Costa, and David W. Robinson-Morris.Routledge. Pages 127-130. PDF.

"Open Pedagogy as the Intersection of Digital Skills and Community." Willa Tavernier and Maria Hamilton Abegunde. In Handbook of Black Librarianship Third Edition, Part V: Library Technology and Black Librarianship. Co-edited by Andrew P. Jackson, Marva L. Deloach, and Michele Fenton. Lanham, MA. Rowman & Littlefield. Pages 269-274. July.  PDF.

"The Spirit of the Rhythm Catches You and You Dance." In Black Joy Unbound. Edited by Stephanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle, 133-145. Bloomington, IN. BLF Press. PDF.

"The Ancestor Abiodun Tells Me about the Time She Forgot Osun." From The Ariran's Last Life. In Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue. Edited by Sheree Renee Thomas, Pan Morigan, Troy Wiggins. Nashville, TN: Third Man Books, 373-389. PDF.

"Tey: Seeing as a Ritual for a Good Death ." In ASHE: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expressivity. Edited by Paul Carter Harrison, Michael Harris, and Pellom McDaniels III, 59-73. Routledge. PDF.

"The Ariran's Last Life: Chapter 1." In  Best African American Fiction, edited by Early Gerald and Nikki Giovanni, 3-20. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Essays/Creative Nonfiction

"Keeper of My Mothers' Dreams: The Life Force of Healing." FIRE!!! Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), Spring. PDF.

"Memory: Juba Four Years After Leaving." North Meridian Review, No. 2, Vol. 2, Spring 2021: 147-164. PDF.

"A Lectio Divina for Gwendolyn Brooks: Honoring the Ancestor, Contemplating Healing."  Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, 43.2, no. Winter: 58-71. PDF.

"'We are Human' ": Using Contemplative Practice in a Black Studies Class after Philando Castile." With Chare'A Smith, Ryan Lucas, and Moniel Sanders. Journal for Liberal Arts and Sciences 22, no. 1: 59-74. PDF.

Poems

"Memory: Juba Three Days After Leaving." Cutthroat 28: The Nature of Nature and Human Nature.

"Fieldwork." In essay "No one would believe us: An Autoethnography of Conducting Fieldwork in Conflict Zone" by Mintzi Martinez-Rivera. In Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethnical Approaches part of the Critical Folkloristic: Critical and Ethical Approaches for the 21st Century. Edited by Solimar Otero and Mintzi Martinez-Rivera. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. PDF.