Kaylen Smith is a third year Ph.D. candidate whose research focuses on late twentieth-century African American religious history. She is broadly interested in studying the intersections of race and religion, particularly concerning the African American experience.

Kaylen graduated magna cum laude from Williams College with highest honors and a B.A. in History and Psychology, along with a concentration in Africana Studies, in the spring of 2022. She served as a student Teaching Assistant for the Africana Studies Department at Williams and researched as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Her undergraduate thesis, “Material Repentance: The Religion Behind Reparations,” won the Russell H. Bostert Prize for best thesis in American history and the Robert C.L. Scott Graduate Study Prize for the best thesis of a student pursuing graduate study. Her research evaluated Black Power activist and former Executive Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), James Forman, his Black Manifesto (1969), and the demand for reparations from white religious institutions. As such, her thesis explored the relationship between the call for reparations and the idea of repentance, while also examining related issues of white churches' economic and political investments.

Kaylen is currently researching religion and spirituality as practiced by various Black Power activists throughout the 1970s and works as a GSP Peer Mentor and a Diversity Fellow through the Graduate School.

Photo credit: Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy, LLC