Episode 207: EXTRA CREDIT with Judith Weisenfeld!
Transcript for Episode 207:
PDF version and the Buzzsprout link.
Shownotes:
It’s an EXTRA CREDIT episode! Extra Credits are meant to dive deeper into topics we’ve covered before—with voices beyond our own.
And this time, we are literally giddy with the joy and honor of welcoming Dr. Judith Weisenfeld to the pod. See, this whole season has been about race, religion, and gender, and — if you’ve been listening, you’ll already know — that her work sits at this intersection. Not just sits. Owns the intersection. Teaches the rest of us how to write about the intersection. Teaches all of us in the process.
Prof. Weisenfeld teaches in the Department of Religion at Princeton University where she is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion. She’s also Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Prof. Weisenfeld holds national top honors as an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians.
In short, she is a brilliant scholar of whom we are not worthy. She’s here not because of her incredible accolades and positions, but because of her mind-blowing, vital work, which you, dear nerds, have heard us cite before and use as our Story Time in E201.
So maybe you already know that her work focuses on early twentieth-century African American religious history, especially how religion relates to constructions of race, black religious life and migration, immigration, and urbanization, African American women’s religious history, and religion in film and popular culture.
THE Dr. Judith Weisenfeld
This was a wide-ranging conversation: we talked old projects, new ones, why we study religion, what mentoring means, why reducing the study of race to Black folk and Black communities and cultures to a place we can talk about race is a problem.
We also talked about how is allowed to be a theorist because Prof. Weisenfeld’s “first and only subtweet” has reordered Megan’s brain so thoroughly that she cites it at least once a month. Behold:
Extra Credit Homework for Extra Extra Credit:
Prof. Weisenfeld has written so much. Here’s our top picks, some of which will look familiar! We assign this icon of religious studies ALL THE TIME, NERDS! Get into it:
New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration (2017)
Podcast interview with The Classical Ideas Podcast.
We also mentioned the Journal of the American Academy of Religion roundtable dedicated to Prof. Weisenfeld’s book (vol 88, issue 2: 2020). That whole volume is here. (If you need access, please contact us.)
“Space, Place,” 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
“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 Mattersroundtable 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
Prof. Weisenfeld, being just the raddest mentor ever, asked us to talk about the work we are most proud of. Here’s what we cited:
Ilyse said her newest article (just out in Dec 2020!), “Job Ads Don’t Add Up: Arabic + Middle East + Texts ≠ Islam,” is her proudest work, because methodologically it’s interesting and it goes for blood, even though she remains proud of her book projects.
Megan is proudest of her book, Abusing Religion (which came out in July 2020), and especially the final chapter.
Judith said she’s proudest of two things:
“‘My Story Begins Before I Was Born’: Myth, History, and Power in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust,” in S. Brent Plate, ed., Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making (Palgrave, 2003), 43-66, which she appreciates because of her writing in the piece!
“’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, which won Honorable Mention 2015 LGBT Religious Archives Network History Award, but which Judith said was just a really important method and research experience.
And, she also recommended her own homework!
Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture (2011), by Jane Iwamura.
If you can believe it, we didn’t do Primary Sources. But stay tuned past the end theme song for a treat.