Alumni Feature: Daiya Malone (’20)

This fall, we connected with a number of young alumni from The King’s College to hear how they’re spending their time. How do they reflect on their years at King’s, and what has it looked like in practice for them to pursue the mission of shaping institutions? Read more alumni stories here.

Name and Graduation Year
Daiya Malone, B.A. Humanities, December 2020

Current Occupation
M.A. Art History student at American University, studying 13th to 17th-century European art

What does a typical day look like for you?
My days are pretty typical for a student. Each day begins with taking Riggs, my recently rescued Border Collie, for a walk. Then I head straight to the university for class. After class, I come home and live the life of a scholar: reading, researching, and writing. Each evening I pause to take Riggs out again, and I usually use that time to catch up with family or friends back on the West Coast. I spend my weekends working at Ford’s Theatre Society where I assist the Park Rangers in the museum by day and help with operations for the productions at the theatre in the evenings.

How did your experiences as a King’s student (either in class or outside of it) give you a deeper perspective that you now use in your day to day?
My King’s education gave me the tools to view my life and the lives of other people through the lens of the human experience and all that that entails. This means extending empathy and compassion to others in a world that is often unforgiving and cruel. This means recognizing my own limitations and need for Christ as I aspire to find my place in my professional sphere. And it also means understanding that our lives and our actions will always ultimately contribute to something larger than ourselves. It is up to us to ensure that that larger purpose is truly good. These thoughts trickle into my everyday work as I encounter different aspects of the world and engage in my research.

In what ways do you see your current work contributing to God’s restoration of the world (or whatever larger purpose you see yourself as part of)?
Throughout the pandemic, a friend and I began to have regular conversations about the essence and demonstration of biblical femininity and what this means for the modern woman. After reading various texts together, I was inspired by Edith Stein’s Essays on Woman to use my graduate research as an opportunity to explore the representation of women in Christianity. By researching this topic, I hope to engage in conversations that explore gender roles within the church as well as women’s implicit and explicit sacrifices in leadership. Masculinity and femininity are not forces that are meant to always be at odds with each other, but it is necessary to acknowledge the ways in which oppression and abuse have dehumanized the daughters of Christ throughout history. I hope that my research will be an attempt to work in the spirit of reconciliation and encourage others to celebrate God’s order and creations in all of their differences.