Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones
Assistant Professor of Theology and Africana Studies
Degrees
PhD, Duke University, 2016
MDiv, Duke University, 2009
BA, University of Virginia, 2005
On research leave for the 2026-27 academic year.
Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones joined the Candler faculty in May of 2025 as assistant professor of theology and Africana studies. Adkins-Jones came to Candler from Boston College, where she served as assistant professor of theology and African and African diaspora studies. A constructive theologian and scholar of Black religion, she specializes in Mariology, Black feminist and womanist thought, and theological anthropology.
Her first monograph, Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology (Oxford University Press, June 2025), offers a theological account of the global sex trade, centering the Black Madonna to examine how Christian theologies of purity and rape intersect with Black flesh. She is also the recipient of a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers to support her monograph project See No Evil: Technology, Violence, and the Future of Black Being, which explores how visual technologies impact public perception of violence and Black death, developing a theological framework for Black protest.
Adkins-Jones is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Studies Association, the National Women’s Studies Associations, and the Society of Christian Ethics.
BOOKS
Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology, Oxford University Press, June 2025
CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES
“Couwenbergh’s The Rape of the Negress: Visual Violence, Theological Erasure, and Black Feminist Fugitivity.” Meridians 22(1): 146-168 (2023).
“If Favor Were Fair,” Living by the Word Lectionary Commentary, The Christian Century (2023).
“A Miracle Among Us,” Living by the Word Lectionary Commentary, The Christian Century, (2023).
“Aesthetics of Resistance: Black Theology and the Visual Culture of The Shrine of the Black Madonna #9.” Africana Studies Review 7(1): 62-86 (2021).
“A Theological Anthropology of Racism” in T&T Clark Handbook for Theological Anthropology, T&T Clark, (New York, NY): 345-356 (2021).
“Through A Glass Darkly: Theological [Re]Visioning with All The Boys” in Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College (2018).
2026 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grant for Teacher-Scholars
