Singing in a Strange Land: Religion and the Black Intellectual Imagination, 1896-1940

Team Members/Contributors

J. Kameron Carter Duke University Divinity School Contact Me

About this first book grant for scholars of color

Singing in a Strange Land: Religion and the Black Intellectual Imagination, 1896-1940 gives account of how early twentieth-century black intellectuals, in forging disciplinary identities within the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology-- identities suited for the task of interpreting the political obstacles, creative genius and cultural possibilities of black life—were engaged in projects that became in character unavoidably religious. To tell this story, I analyze the explicit interpretations of black religion by four disciplinarily disparate intellectuals: Carter G. Woodson (historian), E. Franklin Frazier (sociologist), Zora Neale Hurston (anthropologist), and supremely W.E.B. Du Bois (who fuses these specialties); I also analyze the religious subtexts of their work as a whole so as to show that they were, in fact, religious thinkers. The study concludes by showing how this story of religion and the early black intellectual imagination is the prehistory of African American religious studies (including black liberation theology) particularly and black studies generally, and of the sensibilities yet informing them.