LaShun Pace · I Know I've Been Changed

​Come to class ready for church--- whatever that means to you. 
​At its core, this course is an African American Rhetoric course and whether you are devout Christian or Agnostic, scholars who study Black rhetoric know the historical, cultural, and political roles of the Black Church in the lives of Black communities in the United States.  In this course, we are looking at what all that now means in digitized contexts.
 
The pandemic/COVID-lockdowns ushered in a moment where more Black ministers than we had ever encountered were preaching from the pulpit in ways that were streamed right into our homes via social media.  Likewise, in the spirit of the Black Archive (the topic that opened the course), the sounds of Black Gospel music across decades is more accessible to us.  What does this mean?  What does all of this do?  We’ll be talking about all that in this week (psst…we are even going to look at Christian comedy… can you say Ms. Shirleen?)

OUR VAULT of HIstory/Context
(Pre-Digital Moments now digitally curated)

click here for course syllabus.

your reading choices

• "Afro-Indigenous Women Healers in the Caribbean and Its Diasporas: A Decolonial Digital Humanities Project" by Franny Gaede, et al
• "Digital Hush Harbors" by Melva L. Sampson
• “'Everything is Either Sent by God or Used by God': An Exploratory Study on the Impact of COVID‑19 Upon the Religious Lives of Black Families Living with Dementia" by Yiran Ge, Mayra Sainz, Janelle Gore, Fayron Epps
• "The 'Good News': How the Gospel of Anti-Respectability Is Shaping Black Millennial Christian Podcasting" by Allissa V. Richardson
• "Hashtags and Hallelujahs: The Roles of #BlackGirlMagic Performance and Social Media in Spiritual #Formation" by Carla Jean-McNeil Jackson
  
• "An Informal Conversation with Danyelle 'Nippy' Thomas" by​ Erika D. Gault
• “'My People Are Free!': Theorizing the Digital Black Church" by Erika D. Gault
• "The Sound of Celebration" by Kyle Brooks
• "Spirituals and the Chain of Memory in James Cone’s Spirituals and the Blues" by Peter Gaál-Szabó
• "Spitting Rhymes ’til Mourning Comes: an Exploration of Hip Hop, Suicidal Thoughts, and Spiritual Lament" by Jay Paul Hinds
• "Sunday Sounds: Preserving the Radio Ministry of Brooklyn’s Bethany Baptist Church" by Colleen Bradley-Sanders
  
• "Whither Shall We Go? The Past and Present of Black Churches and the Public Sphere" by Kendra H. Barber 
  
• "Wrestle On, Jacob: Antebellum Spirituals and the Defiant Faith of the Hebrew Bible" by Will Kynes

The readings above are all copyright-protected. 
​Please click here for a password-protected page to retrieved your readings.