Public Scholarship
Projects
The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities and Cultures (2021-present).
Principal Investigator, $1 million Henry Luce Foundation grant.
Project Director overseeing grant-making program, project development, events, and staff.
Black Religious Studies Working Group convener.
“Questions at the Crossroads” conversations.
SPIRIT HOUSE: A Crossroads Project (2023-present).
Work with Crossroads Project Media and Technology Consultant and web designer Megan P. Goodwin to showcase projects produced by Crossroads Project Fellows and staff.
Harlem is Heaven: The Kingdom of Father Divine in 1940 Harlem (2024).
A StoryMap for SPIRIT HOUSE.
The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History (1997-2005).
Archive for the period under my leadership of the online journal I founded, managed, and edited.
Selected Online Essays
“Archival Treasures: Spencer Williams’ Brother Martin Trailer,” UCLA Film & Television Archive Blog, August 15, 2022
“Tuning the Religio-Racial Mind,” in Out There: Perspectives on the Study of Black Metaphysical Religions on The Immanent Frame, March 25, 2022.
“Black Religions in the American Public Square,” in Faith and the American Insurrection, Berkley Forum, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, February 3, 2021.
“Space, Place,” in A Universe of Terms on The Immanent Frame, February 28, 2020.
“For His People: James H. Cone and Black Theology,” Black Perspectives, September 3, 2018.
“Writing a New History of Black Religion: An Author’s Response” to the Online Roundtable on New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration on Black Perspectives, September 30, 2017.
“Religion on Display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture,” Sacred Matters, January 3, 2017.
“A Dreadful and Improbable Creature: Race, Aesthetics, and the Burdens of Greatness,” Sacred Matters roundtable on The Birth of a Nation at 100, April 21, 2016.
“Religious Cultures Under the Radar: Jews of African Descent,” Sacred Matters, December 30, 2015.
“Religion in African American History,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (March 2015).
“Happy S. Love,” frequencies: a collaborative genealogy of spirituality, October 26, 2011.
Contributions to TRANS/MISSIONS: Media, Culture, Religion, Society:
The Ephemera of Commemoration, September 9, 2011
Lieby Kletzky and Religious “Otherness,” August 17, 2011
Tabloid Religion, August 1, 2011
Mood Lavender: Covering Religion and Black Sexuality, June 2, 2011
News at 10: Local Stories, Big Picture, November 17, 2010
GLBT Coverage: It Could Be Better, October 11, 2010
The Sherrod Effect, Then and Now, September 9, 2010
Gleek Religion, April 19, 2010
Fighting With a Camera, March 25, 2010
Playing Indian, February 8, 2010
What’s Love Got to Do With It?, December 17, 2009
Disney’s Voodoo Princess, November 6, 2009