Event

From the Back of the Church: Irreverent Religion in African American History

Click here to register.

Vaughn A. Booker is an Assistant Professor in the Program in African and African American Studies and the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. As a historian of African American religions, he focuses on Black subjects who engage in practices of (re)making simultaneously religious and racial identities, communities, and forms of authority.

His first book, 'Lift Every Voice and Swing: Black Musicians and Religious Culture in the Jazz Century' (New York University Press, 2020), explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century. Vaughn’s next book project focuses on humor in the history of African American Christianity. This research was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship.