LIBRARY DIRECTOR
Elonda Clay joined the Methodist Theological School of Ohio in July 2020 as Director of the Library. Before becoming a library director, Elonda worked at the American Jazz Museum and various college and cultural archives as an archivist, a faculty librarian, and digital librarian. Clay has earned graduate degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia (M.A., Library and Information Science), the Interdenominational Theological Center (M.Div.), LSTC (ThM in Religion and Science) and received her undergraduate degree from Kansas State University (B.S., Physical Science).
Clay currently serves on the American Academy of Religion steering committees for Media, Religion, and Culture and Critical Approaches to Religion and Hip Hop. She was a very active participant in the Zygon Center for Religion and Science and the Hyde Park Religion and Science Society, serving as co-chair of the society for two years. Clay has published multiple articles and book chapters and made presentations on the topics of portrayals of race, genomics, and identity in entertainment media; hip hop and religion in cyberspace, Africana religions and ecology, and the politics of archival collection and representation.
Elonda Clay is a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands in Theology and Religious Studies. Her dissertation, “Lost Ancestors, Genetic Journeys, and Recycled Roots in the (United States) Genomic Imaginary: Intermediality and the Sacred in Media Portrayals of African Americans and Genetic Ancestry,” focuses on media portrayals of direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry testing and African American consumers of genomic services in the United States. She situates these representations within wider politics of representation, especially the points at which those portrayals intersect with discourses about ethno-racial and human origins, returns to roots, transformation, racial uplift, and ancestors.
ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN
David Powell
Library Services Coordinator
Beth Bringman