Afro-American Religious History Unit

The Afro-American Religious History Unit invites proposals that explore the religiosity of African-descended people within the geographical and geo-cultural boundaries of the United States. For our 2025 Annual Meeting in Boston, we are especially interested in proposals that engage one or more of the following topics:  

CELEBRATING THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY UNIT

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the first meeting of the Afro-American Religious History Unit.  The Unit grew out of a 1973 meeting  of 15 scholars, librarians and graduate students interested in “the advancement of scholarly research in black religious history.”  From this meeting a short-lived group organized around cataloging bibliographic resources and the Northeastern Seminar on Black Religion, a quarterly meeting held to discuss current research also emerged.  In December, 1974, The Unit was formed and held its first sessions at the October 1975 American Academy of Religion conference in Chicago.  Two panels were presented–one on “Slave Religion, The Black Church, and Reconstruction,” featuring papers by Albert J. Raboteau, and Herman E. Thomas, and the other on “Black Theology and the Black Church” with papers by James M. Washington, David Wills and Randall K. Burkett, with Albert J. Raboteau presiding.   At that meeting, the Unit organized a steering committee of four–Raboteau, Wills, Burkett and Washington, with the first two being chairpersons. The Unit recorded the names of 30 individuals from all over the country and a variety of institutions as members of the Unit.  They also organized the panels for the following year, including a panel of pre-circulated papers on “Methodology in the Study and Teaching of Black Religion.”  All of this is recorded in the Newsletter of the Afro-American Religious History Unit, which was edited by Randall K. Burkett and debuted in the fall of 1976.

These pioneer scholar-organizers of our field intended to share historical research into African American religious life and experience, and through the “Afro American Religious History Newsletter,” to foster community and research in the field.  Today the Unit is intellectually vibrant and features scholarship that is driving the conversations about religion and its role in society.  

We solicit papers and panel proposals honoring this auspicious action by scholars in search of and building intellectual community around the history of Black religious experience.  Papers and panels addressing the following themes are especially welcome:

 

•  The historical and historiographic footprints and imprints of these early scholars, including Randall Burkett, Albert Raboteau, David Wills and James M. Washington and their students
•  Reflecting on the evolution of the field of Afro-American religious history and current directions
• Evolution of queries, interpretations and methodological insights
• Bibliographic method and practice in the study of African American religious history

Freedom By Another Name: Medicine & Healing in the Era of Slavery 

(Co-Sponsors:  Religions, Medicines & Healing; Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence Unit; and Afro-American Religious History Units)

This panel highlights the 2024 presidential theme of “Freedom.” The panel is open to a variety of submissions, including analyses of the use of plant medicines, prayers, divination, laying of hands, ritual baths, and sacred ceremonies used for healing purposes among African descendants in the era of slavery. We welcome studies of slavery in Africa and/or the African Diaspora. We are especially interested in proposals that address how enslaved people experienced harrowing conditions of bondage, faced immense challenges of illness and physical suffering, but also sought freedom and empowerment through the sustained practice of African traditional healing rites.

Link to Presidential Theme, “Freedom,”  by AAR President 2025, Leela Prasad: https://aarweb.org/AARMBR/Events-and-Networking-/Annual-Meeting-/Presidential-Theme-2025-AM.aspx

The Women Who Made Malcolm X Possible with C. S’thembile West
Co-Sponsors: African Diaspora Religions and Afro-American Religious History Units

2025 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X/el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, revolutionary, civil/human rights activist, and Muslim minister (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965). Centering his work on the work Black women do to usher in freedom, and resurrecting from history the love and teachings of his mother, wife, children, and other women who made him possible we have chosen to honor Malcolm by honoring the Black women of his world.

Writing on the beautiful intersections between Malcolm, Martin, and James Baldwin and their mothers, “The Three Mothers,” author, Anna Malaika Tubbs asks, ‘How was Malcolm influenced by Louise Little’s roots from the rebellious Carib island nation of Grenada, she, who spoke several languages, her ‘home-training’ lessons in recitations of the alphabet in French, and admonitions to her children to study, and correct misinformation given by their white teachers?’ 

 

C. S’thembile West’s new book, Nation Women Negotiating Islam: Moving Beyond Boundaries in the Twentieth Century (2023), redeems the role of women, mothers, sisters, and daughters in the Nation of Islam (NOI). It sits at the intersection of Africana Studies, Religious and Islamic Studies providing the necessary counternarrative to past transgressive discourses. West recognizes and underscores the agency of NOI women in their negotiation of gender norms, sexual propriety, leadership models, education, and family building as a Black national project. Given our current political climate, this book can work as a tool for modeling equity and respectful scholarship on women’s roles as organizers, leaders, and change agents dedicated to uplifting and rehabilitating their communities as stewards of West’s arguments of  a “politics of protection.” 

We invite paper proposals in conversation with this theme and C. S’thembile West’s book. 

Author Meets Respondents Session on Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans with Ahmad Greene-Hayes

(Co-Sponsors: Religion and Sexuality; Queer Studies in Religion, and Afro-American Religious History Units)

Closed for submissions.

Author Meets Respondents Session on Black Religions in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake with Judith Weisenfeld

(Co-Sponsors: Science, Technology and Religion and Afro- American Religious History Units)

Closed for submissions.
 

In general the Unit would be very excited to receive paper, roundtable and panel  proposals addressing the following themes in African American Religious History:

Complex Afro-Protestant institutions (HBCUs, Prince Hall Freemasons/Order of the Eastern Star, Greek organizations)

• Religion and education –histories of seminaries, Sunday Schools, madrassas
• Religion and the press—religious newspapers, magazines, coverage of black religion in

Black Religions, property, land, and the environment

• Historical markers and historical black church communities
•  Securing historical status
•  Intersections between religious communities and landholding, environmental issues and activism
• Court cases and land disputes, burial grounds

Black material religions, the instruments/sources/archives used to produce Black religious materiality (Alexia)

• African American religions in slavery and freedom
•  Black religions, and property, land, environment
• African American religion and climate catastrophe

African-American Religion and climate catastrophe, broadly configured, particularly: 

• Historical topics that elucidate contemporary environmental landscapes and futures, especially in light of climate catastrophe and its impact on Black communities; 
• The legacies and impacts of migration patterns and how they have and continue to shape practitioners of African-American religions; 
• African-American religions and the environment, nature, and the land.
  
   

African-American Religion and so called “illicit” practices, specifically: 

• Black religious communities, carceral systems, and the (de)criminalization of recreational substance use; 
• Histories of African-American religion and narcotic and/or alcohol use, broadly configured (ritual, entheogenic, recreational, medicinal, etc.); 
• Black religious communities and religious activism in relation to the history of other practices criminalized or deemed illicit, especially queer sex, sex work, pornography, and other practices 
  
   

Redressing the historiographical dearth of LGBTQI+ African American religious histories, specifically: 

• The theoretical possibilities of “queering” African-American religion; 
• The historical presence of gender nonconformity, gender fluidity, and a spectrum of sexualities and genders physically and conceptually within Black religious communities; 
• The methodological and theoretical limitations of heteronormativity and gender normativity;
• The intersections of Black trans studies and African-American religions. 
  
   

Retheorizations of the geographical and cultural boundaries of African-American Religion in relationship to the concept of the West and the Borderlands, specifically: 

• Historic movement to, and practices of, African-American religions in the West and on the Borderlands of “America”; 
• Interactions with and conversations about relationships with Indigenous communities and their religious practices in the West by Black religious practitioners;
• Afro-Spanish, Afro-Indigenous, and other intercultural religiosities; 
• Concepts of space, the embodiment of space, and boundaries in African-American religion; 
• Black religions among asylum seekers and within immigrant communities in America;
• The impact of immigration upon enactments and definitions of African-American religions.
  
   

Graduate education and pedagogy in African(a) American Religious History

•  The role of comprehensive exams for Af-Am/Africana exams, religious studies/history/div schools (Joseph)
• Teaching Black religion in an era of censorship (Michael M.)

African American Religious History and slavery/freedom

 

• African roots and revivals
•  Black economies and religious imaginings
•  Race-gendered constructions of religion

Sources from the Archives of African American Religious History

• Critiques of the archives of Black religion; 
• New theories and methods in the study of African-American religious practices, experiences, interiority; 
• The legacy of the AARDOC (https://aardoc.sites.amherst.edu/), The North Star (https://www.princeton.edu/~jweisenf/northstar/faq.html), and other archived projects;
•  How to find/teach/write with primary sources
• Using oral histories, images, music, literature and film to study African American religious history

Intellectual Trajectories in the Study of African-American Religion - Highlighting Undergraduate & Graduate Student Work 

• Proposals for five-to-seven-minute presentations of term papers, dissertation chapter drafts or other short pieces in development are especially welcome.
• Poster presentations (engage undergrad/grad students) that lead into a panel presentation (Malene)

The steering committee is open to configuring this session as a conversational space for works-in-progress with comments from a faculty member. 

**Guidelines for successful/strong proposal submissions**

 

Successful proposals should:

1) respond directly to the call’s themes;

2) engage historical and interdisciplinary archival methods and name sources used or examined,

3) situate the intervention(s) in historiographical context by engaging relevant authors and key texts, but only as necessary, and

4) indicate the time period and relevance to the field of African-American religious history. 

 

We also invite creative proposals that are attentive to alternative methods of presenting, including but not limited to multimedia presentations, interviews, flash/micro talks, fireside chats, and facilitated discussions.