Weinberg College welcomes College Fellow Ahmad Greene-Hayes to the Department of African American Studies and the Department of Religious Studies!
Greene-Hayes describes the new book that he is currently working on and shares who played a role in inspiring his research. Greene-Hayes’s work sits at the intersection of race, sexuality, and religion in America.
Where did you study?
I earned my Ph.D. in Religion, with graduate certificates in African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies, from Princeton University.
Please describe your research.
I am a historian and critical theorist of race, sexuality, and religion in the Americas. My scholarly interests ultimately center on how Black people articulate our own conceptions of the Divine and of the sacred, and often in defiance to overarching dominant discourses about racialization, sexuality, nation-making, and citizenship in the afterlife of chattel slavery.
What inspired you to pursue your area of study?
My grandmothers and all of the Black people of faith who had a hand in raising me inspire my research. For example, the bedroom closet of my great-grandmother, the late Louise Johnson, like that of so many other Black churchwomen, was a church archive in its own right. Housed within were church programs, ecclesial regalia, hats, suits, and several coffee-stained, large-print, King James Version Bibles riddled with family stories, tincture recipes, birthdates, wedding anniversaries, phone numbers and lottery tickets. Sitting with my grandmothers’ archives and the details of their lives led me to search in many more archives across the country for other stories—of seeking women, curious queer faith healers, and so many others whose stories are often eclipsed by a cultural obsession with powerful men.
What are you working on right now that excites you the most?
I am currently working on my first book manuscript entitled, Gods of the Flesh: Black Atlantic Religion-Making in Jim Crow New Orleans, which is under advance contract with the University of Chicago Press in the Class 200: New Studies in Religion series. My book examines the Black Atlantic religious cultures and sexual politics that emerged in New Orleans—a vibrant, American port city—amidst Jim Crow policing and the migration of African Americans, West Indians, and Central Americans to the region in the early twentieth century. It also tracks intraracial and intercultural conflicts among Black religious practitioners within “the Negro church” and between “Negro cults and sects.” Relatedly, the book also considers the world of policing encircling Black people during the era of Jim Crow, a period in which “policing” included the jail cell and the state-sanctioned court of the lynch mob, and it centers on how Black people countered them through new and rescripted Black Atlantic religious, political, and sexual cultures.
How do you enjoy spending your free time?
I absolutely love to cook, travel, and cycle. And, of course, I’m a huge fan of Netflix and HBO Max. I’m currently watching Nine Perfect Strangers, which has been a whirlwind full of surprises.