Sharde’ N. Chapman is a Ph.D. candidate in the African American Religion cohort at Rice University. In 2010 she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Rhodes College. While studying at Rhodes she studied Medieval and Renaissance Art History in Western Europe at Lincoln College, Oxford University. In 2009 she presented a paper titled “The Disintegration of Black Love,” which examined portrayals of romantic relationships in hip-hop culture at the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Gender Conference. Her undergraduate thesis work centered on the marginalization of women in the Black Church.  After graduating from Rhodes, Sharde’ went on to Union Presbyterian Seminary (formerly Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education) where she received her Master of Divinity degree in 2013. While at Union she was awarded the 2012 Independent Presbyterian Church Scholarship for Excellence in Service. She also had a paper published in the proceedings “Calling For the Order of the Day: Theological Education for the 21th Century Plural, Global, and Urbanized Society” in 2011.  Sharde’s research interests include mysticism, Womanism, and the influence of social location on religious experience.