The praxis of Love:
A community Conversation on
All about Love: New Visions, by bell hooks

PANELISTS

Rev. Dr. Jessica Chapman Lape

Rev. Dr. Jessica Chapman Lape is a womanist pastoral theologian, a clinically trained chaplain, and a community trained doula. She completed two clinical pastoral education internships through Wake Forest Baptist Health and PIH Health and a two-year clinical pastoral residency through Wake Forest Baptist Health. She also served as a clinical chaplain in the Southern California area for several years working in hospice, palliative care, and perinatal care. She also served as a community trained doula working specifically with African American birthing persons in Southern California.

In 2021, Chapman Lape received her PhD in Practical Theology from Claremont School of Theology where she earned the school’s prestigious Presidential Award for Academic Excellence. Her dissertation, “MissTreated: A Clinical Pastoral Theology on the Mistreatment of African American Women in U.S. Healthcare,” researches and discusses black women’s perception of their mistreatment in U.S. healthcare. With scholarship that encompasses womanist pastoral theology, clinical pastoral care, and healthcare research, Chapman Lape is committed to advancing the field of pastoral theology and clinical pastoral care to include the profession of black indigenous birthwork in order to address and interrupt black women’s mistreatment in U.S. healthcare.

Dr. David Todd Lawrence

Dr. David Todd Lawrence is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of English at the University of St. Thomas. He teaches African American literature and expressive culture, folklore studies, and cultural studies. His writing has appeared in Journal of American Folklore, Southern Folklore, The Griot, Open Rivers, and The New Territory.

His book, When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics and Community in Pinhook, Mo (2018), co-authored with Elaine Lawless, is an ethnographic project done in collaboration with residents of Pinhook, Missouri, an African American town destroyed during the Mississippi River Flood of 2011. He also co-directs the Urban Art Mapping Project with Heather Shirey and Paul Lorah.

Rosy Petri

Rosy Petri is a mother, self-taught artist, and storyteller from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her multidisciplinary works fuse fabric portraiture, multimedia storytelling, and illustration as an act of witness. In 2021, Petri served as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the bell hooks center at Berea College in Kentucky. In 2020, she was selected as a Mary L Nohl Emerging Artist Fellow and a Mildred L. Harpole Artist of the Year from the City of Milwaukee Arts Board. In 2019, as the 11th Pfister Artist in Residence, Petri created a space to celebrate creative traditions of the African diaspora. Petri was a Milwaukee Artist Resource Network mentee under artist Della Wells.

Petri’s work can be viewed in several prestigious collections, including the bell hooks Center at Berea College, the Pfister Hotel, Hunger Task Force, Northwestern Mutual’s Giving Gallery, African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee County Courthouse. She is currently a member of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network, Women of Color Quilter’s Network, and a board member of the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. Learn more about Petri's art and fine craft online.

MODERATOR

Rev. Dr. Ry Siggelkow

Rev. Dr. Ry O. Siggelkow is the director of the Leadership Center for Social Justice. He earned his PhD in Theology and Ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary  and previously served as the direction of Initiatives in Faith and Praxis at the University of St. Thomas when he taught courses at the intersection of race, class, and gender with a focus on migration, the abolition of borders, and theologies of liberation.

An ordained Mennonite minister and former pastor of Faith Mennonite Church in Minneapolis, Siggelkow has been actively involved in grassroots community organizing for several years alongside Spanish-speaking undocumented people. He is co-founder of Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza (Peoples of Struggle and Hope), a faith-based, women-centered, and immigrant-led organization that seeks to build power in the community so that all people have a place to belong, a place to stay, and a place to grow.