Books
Winner of the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions.
“A groundbreaking volume....This vivid, theoretically rich, and well-executed work has much to teach scholars of American history and the history of religion about the ways that black people in the twentieth century engaged in far-reaching reconstruction of their own racial, as well as religious, identities.”
“Judith Weisenfeld’s Hollywood Be Thy Name is a generative, well researched study of filmic representations of African Americans, black religious customs, and ideas about race in America.... Weisenfeld raises important questions about the medium of film, its engagement with, and shaping of, notions of race and culture in the United States. . . . An illuminating study of the history of race and film in America.”
“Drawing on a rich collection of autobiographies, letters, stories, interviews, newspaper and journal articles, archives, film, and secondary literature, Judith Weisenfeld has written a fascinating account of the black YWCA of New York City during the first half of the twentieth century.... In addition to being an intriguing history of African-American women’s Christian activism and of black New York, it is also filled with engaging stories that make readers want to know more.”
