Judith Casselberry

Geoffrey Canada Associate Professor of Africana Studies

Professor Casselberry teaches courses on African American women’s religious lives; music and spirituality in popular culture; music and social movements; and issues in Black intellectual thought. Her interest in African American religious and cultural studies, with particular attention to gender, guides her research agenda. Her current ethnography, , employs feminist labor theories to examine the spiritual, material, social, and organizational work of women in a New York-based Pentecostal denomination (Duke University Press, April 2017). She is co-editor with Elizabeth Pritchard of . This collection of essays by leading scholars examines Black women’s engagement with Pentecostalism in Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, Haiti, Grenada, and the U.S. (forthcoming in Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People series with Duke University Press). In addition to research and publishing on organized Pentecostalism, she is working on a project examining the transnational Pentecostal roots of international music icon Grace Jones and their imprint on her performance aesthetics and identity.

Professor Casselberry’s interest in links between lettered and performed scholarship comes from her career as an academic and performer. As a vocalist and guitarist, she performs nationally and internationally with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely, and has enjoyed a career as an international recording artist with Casselberry-DuPreé and JUCA. She has shared stages with Sweet Honey in the Rock, Odetta, Stevie Wonder, Etta James, and Elvis Costello, among others.

Conferences, Panels And Invited Lectures

Plenary Session, “‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’: A Roundtable on Black Women, Musical Performance, and Power,” with Daphne A. Brooks and Maureen E. Mahon. International Association for the Study of Popular Music Conference, Northeastern University, Boston MA, 2007

“Power and Performance among African American Holiness-Pentecostal Women.” The Louisville Institute Winter Seminar, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, KY., 2006

“‘We’ll Understand it Better By and By’: Black American Pentecostalism and the Politics of Respectability.” American Studies Association Atlanta, GA., 2005

“Liz McComb and Pentecostal Performance Strategies.” Barnard Center for Research on Women, Faculty Lecture Series. Barnard College New York, NY., 2005

“Rethinking Rock Music Genealogy: Liz McComb and Pentecostal Performance Strategies.” On panel entitled, “‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’: Black Women, Performance, and Power.” American Studies Association Atlanta, GA., 2004

“Questioning Christian Imagery and Biblical Interpretations: The Funk of Me’Shell Ndegeócello.” International Cultural Encounter in Cuba: History, Culture and Society in the African Diaspora. Havana, Cuba. Sponsored by the Association of Black Anthropologists, 2000

“The Living-Dead and Spirits: Inspiration and Guidance for Black Women in Popular American Music.” 10th annual Women’s Studies Conference, Southern Connecticut State University. New Haven, CT., 2000

“The Living-Dead and Spirits: Inspiration and Guidance for Black Women in Popular American Music.” New England Chapter of Society for Ethnomusicology. (1999 James T. Koetting Memorial Prize recipient), 1999

Invited lecturer, “Call and Response, Signifyin’ and Other Strategies of Power in Black Music.” Tufts University. Music Dept., 1998

Invited lecturer, “100 Years of Black Women in Music,” co-taught with Hattie Gossett and Toshi Reagon. Learning Alliance, Options for Education and Action, New York, NY., 1992

Invited lecturer, “Strike While the Iron is Hot: Developing and Managing Careers in Music” Berklee College of Music., 1991

Chapters, articles:

Contributor, Radical Harmonies: A History of the Women’s Music Cultural Movement. Boden Sandstrom, ed. University of Illinois Press., 2010 (forthcoming)

“Koko Taylor.” Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas, 2nd edition. Colin Palmer, Editor in Chief. Macmillan Reference Books, USA: Michigan., 2005

Reviews:

Jerma A. Jackson’s Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age, for The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History. Vol. 8, Number 2. Spring. 2005

Marla F. Frederick’s Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith, for The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History Vol. 7, No. 2. Spring. 2004

Education

PhD, African American Studies and Anthropology, Yale University
MA, Ethnomusicology, Wesleyan University
BM, Music Production and Engineering, Berklee College of Music

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Department of Africana Studies