Participant Info

First Name
Judith
Last Name
Weisenfeld
Country
State
NJ New Jersey
Affiliation
Princeton University
Website URL
http://www.judithweisenfeld.com
Keywords
African American religious history, 20th century U.S. religious history, race and religion in the U.S., African American women and religion, religion and American film
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I teach in the Department of Religion at Princeton University where I am the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

My research focuses on early 20th century African American religious history, and I have been especially interested in the relation of religion to constructions of race; the impact on black religious life of migration, immigration, and urbanization; African American women’s religious history; and religion in film and popular culture. My current research explores the intersections of psychiatry, race, and African American religions in the late 19th and early 20th century U.S.

Recent Publications

Books

New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration (NYU Press, 2016)

[Winner of the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions]

Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949 (California, 2007)

African American Women and Christian Activism: New York’s Black YWCA, 1905-1945 (Harvard, 1997)

Recent Articles and Essays

“A Rare Human Document”: LoBagola’s African American Humbug Religion,” American Religion 1:1 (Fall 2019): 27-48

“Framing the Nation: Religion, Film, and American Belonging,” The Journal of Mormon History 45:2 (April 2019): 23-48

“Race, Religion, and Documentary Film,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History, eds., Paul Harvey and Kathryn Gin Lum (Oxford University Press, forthcoming March 2018), 288-303

“’Real True Buds’: Celibacy and Same-Sex Desire in Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement,” in Gillian A. Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather White, eds., Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth Century United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 90-112

“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

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Race, Religion, Women