H42.2228-001 Lec 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Judith Casselberry
Black Womanist Spirituality in Popular American Music
Judith Casselberry
H42.2228-001 (Albert 75916)
Monday – Thursday 9:30 am – 12:15 pm, 4 points
Classroom 613
This seminar examines the expressions of spirituality in the works of various Black American women singer-songwriters. We
will focus on material that reveals a womanist (Black feminist) perspective, generated across a range of religious and spiritual
terrains with African diasporic/Black Atlantic spiritual moorings, including Christianity, Islam, and Yoruba. Employing an
interdisciplinary approach to Black women’s spirituality in music by incorporating ethnomusicology, anthropology, literature,
history, and social theory, we will examine the work of Shirley Ceasar, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Abby Lincoln, Sweet Honey in
the Rock, and Dianne Reeves, among others.
Judith Casselberry (Bachelors of Music in Music Production and Engineering, Berklee College of Music; MA in Ethnomusicology, Wesleyan
University; Ph.D in African American Studies and Anthropology, Yale University). Her research interests include the anthropology of Black
Americans in the United States, with specific focus on women and gender, religion, music, and social movements. Her current research is on Black
American Apostolic (Pentecostal) women in the New York metropolitan area. In September she will join Princeton University’s Center for African
American Studies as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate for the 2008-2009 academic year. Casselberry, as a vocalist/guitarist, performs nationally
and internationally with Toshi Reagon and BigLovely. Over the past seven years she has participated in European tours of “The Temptation of
Saint Anthony,” directed by Robert Wilson with book and libretto by Bernice Johnson Reagon.
