Todne Chipumuro
Assistant Professor of Religion
Assistant Professor of Religion
Todne Thomas Chipumuro, Assistant Professor of Religion, is a native of Knoxville, Tennessee. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University where she graduated cum laude and with Phi Beta Kappa distinctions with a double major in anthropology and Africana studies in 2004. Her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology was awarded by the University of Virginia where she also earned an M.A. in 2008.
Her research interests focus on Caribbean diasporic religions, black Atlantic migrations, Afro-diasporic family systems, and the anthropology of Christianity. Her dissertation, "Coming Alongside: Relatedness and Transcendence in a (Black) Atlantic Church Community," explores the spiritual kinship ties mediating the lived religious experiences and imaginaries of a West Indian and African American evangelical faith community in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to providing a closer look into how black evangelicals understand their connections to the sacred and one another, her work compels a reconsideration of kinship as a primarily biological phenomenon and provides a dynamic portrait of the changing geographies of the U.S. South in a globalizing world.
In her spare time, Todne is an avid crafter and enjoys knitting and quilting. She also enjoys thrift store shopping and antique browsing and is excited about participating in a local culture where these activities are so widely popular.