Hayes is especially interested in understanding the role of women in the AMEC during the late nineteenth century. "The men are the bishops and pastors, but when you look at the congregations, the women are making everything run," she said.

Yet women receive almost no recognition in church archives, and she has found language in old documents suggesting they were tightly controlled within the church's domain.

To illustrate this absence, she recalls reading a plaque on the back wall of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that celebrates the accomplishments of a long-ago pastor. At the bottom, it notes that the memorial was commissioned by his wife-but she is not named. Since then, the only information Hayes has been able to uncover is the woman's name and where she is buried.

"I wonder why the women who kept the church running were so hidden," Hayes said. "Is that invisibility a key part of what it meant to be an AME woman at the time?"

She finds this to be in contrast to religious customs rooted in Africa. "Within communities across the African diaspora, spiritual practices that survived the transatlantic slave trade" often amplify women's power, she said. "That is the antithesis of how women exist in Christianity in America."

As she works on her senior honors project, Hayes is also applying to PhD programs in Africana studies and history. She hopes to one day have a faculty position, to continue researching and teaching. "These are two things I have learned I love to do," she said.

"When I came to Bowdoin, I didn't know what being a professor was like, or that academia was even a possible career path," she said. The Mellon Mays program and her Bowdoin advisors-especially Judith Casselberry and Bianca Williams -helped show her that the door was open to her.

At the same time, Hayes's own research process has solidified her commitment to an academic career. "When I did my independent study junior year, I struggled with the question of whether, as an undergraduate, I could trust my own ideas," she said. "I wasn't confident in my voice or my insights."

"But over the past year, through this project, I've developed my own voice as a scholar and as a person, and I've learned to trust it."