2020 ARCEL Fellows

Larissa Romero, a Chicana Christian minister, prays through painting. A contemplative and ecstatic experience, her abstract work reflects her relationship with God in its varied seasons. She currently serves the Pascack Reformed Church in Park Ridge, NJ, and will soon be moving to Nashville. Larissa’s theological curiosity lies in discovering the intersections of liberation mestizaje and brujeria alongside painted prayer. She continues to be blessed by lots of love in her life: incredible friends (hey Toasted Grace and Hometown Glory), caring in-laws, an amazing aunt and cousins, parents Darla and Gabe Romero, sister Aleya, hyperactive pup Strider, fierce cat Kali, and darling comrade and husband George.

Mahalia Damm is a religious educator from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She completed her BA in Developmental Psychology and Spanish at Hope College before moving east to Boston, where she is currently completing her MDiv in Global and Community Engagement at Boston University. Her work focuses on helping children explore their theological imaginations and develop their capacity as active participants in the creation of a kinder world. She is the creator of Marsh Chapel's Growing Together Peace and Justice Children's Library. She believes wholeheartedly in the transformative powers of plants, poetry, and play.

Olivia Kamil Smarr (she/her) is a Black queer public theologian and movement artist. She combines traditional West African dance movements with contemporary Black American dance styles, using music spanning the African diaspora to show how ancestral rhythms survive in our bodies and are embedded within our spirits. Olivia explores, challenges, and creates innovative ways of spiritual engagement in this unique societal moment, conjuring revolution, power, magic, and passion through movement. She engages with a theology that transcends faith and views the body itself as divine and holy, embracing the connection of sensuality and spirituality. Olivia centers those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and survivors of trauma, including religious trauma, in her work. She has an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and is currently enrolled in a Master’s program at Chicago Theological Seminary, exploring the arts as spiritual resistance to oppression.

Peregrine Morkal-Williams is a first-year student at United Theological Seminary and artistic dabbler-across-the-board. He grew up Unitarian Universalist but doesn't always connect spiritually with that tradition. He thinks art-making has important lessons about process for all areas of life, especially spirituality and collaborative endeavors. Like many former-weird-kids, he was greatly relieved to discover that being a weird adult is not nearly as stressful.

Stephani Pescitelli (they or she) is a born, raised, and rooted Midwesterner currently based in South Minneapolis where she is working towards a Master of Divinity and MA in Theology and the Arts at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is a Lutheran-raised Unitarian Universalist Catholic Worker, and intentional communal life, relationships, food, and the everyday are at the heart of her theology and spiritual practice. Her current interests and practices include dance and movement, creative writing, queer theology, ritual design and rites of passage, somatics, sexuality, and affect theory. When she isn’t daydreaming about queer utopia and imagining the future of religious life in America, she is in the kitchen making a mess and dancing with her housemates.

Dr. Harris-Smith is a scholar in the field of Communication & Culture. She is currently a senior lecturer in Speech Communication at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. In addition, to demonstrating excellence in her teaching and presenting Dr. Harris-Smith is co- author of The ABCs of Diversity: Helping Kids (and Ourselves!) Embrace Our Differences published by Chalice Press (June 2020). Dr. Harris-Smith spent a majority of her growing up in Queens, New York attending New York CIty Public Schools. She graduated from Hobart & William Smith Colleges earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. Several years later she earned a spot in the New York City Teaching Fellows program and attended St. John's University earning a Master of Science degree in Education. Feeling compelled to teach beyond the junior high/high school classroom Dr. Harris-Smith attended Princeton Theological Seminary in 2007. Desiring to go as far as she could educationally, Dr. Harris-Smith earned a her Ph.D. in Communication & Culture from Howard University in 2013. Her desire is to make the complicated plain in the classroom and beyond. In conjunction with bringing a unique style to the academic classroom Dr. Harris-Smith is wife to Leon and mother to Asa and Eden. Her hope is to help make the world a better place now and for the future.