In her spare time, an associate professor of English at Penn State Brandywine has discovered a key figure lost in history.

Now, Kimberly Blockett will bring that figure back to life through a sabbatical year of writing.

Blockett has been given fellowships by the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities to uncover more of the remarkable life of black evangelist Zilpha Elaw, according to a Penn State Brandywine report by Haleigh Swansen.

“Elaw sits at the intersection of the three most important social movements of the 19th century,” Blockett said.

“Most denominations did not believe in female preachers, women weren’t supposed to travel much, and slavery was still legal, but Elaw was a black female itinerant evangelist traveling to slave states, putting herself in danger and doing all sorts of things she wasn’t supposed to do.”

Blockett’s work aims to research far beyond the limited details revealed in Elaw’s spiritual autobiography and bring to light what she did in the 30 years afterward — a time most scholars simply assumed she was dead.

Read more about Kimberly Blockett’s journey into the life of Zilpha Elaw on the Penn State Brandywine website here, and check out previous DELCO Today coverage of the campus here.