The Department of Religious Studies is proud to announce that two recently published books by our faculty, Dr. Richard Turner and Dr. Jenna Supp-Montgomerie, have been named finalists for a 2022 PROSE Award. According to the Association of American Publisher's website, "Since 1976, the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Awards) have recognized the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by celebrating the authors, editors, and publishers whose landmark works have made significant advancements in their respective fields of study each year."
Congratulations to Dr. Turner and Dr. Supp-Montgomerie!
Soundtrack to a Movement, African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism is a finalist in the Music and the Performing Arts category. Dr. Turner's book, published April 2021 explores how jazz helped propel the rise of African American Islam during the era of global Black liberation. The book demonstrates that the values that Islam and jazz shared—Black affirmation, freedom, and self-determination—were key to the growth of African American Islamic communities, and that it was jazz musicians who led the way in shaping encounters with Islam as they developed a Black Atlantic “cool” that shaped both Black religion and jazz styles.
Read more about Dr. Turner's book
When the Medium Was the Mission, The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture is a finalist in the Theology and Religious Studies category. Dr. Supp-Montgomerie's book, published February 2021, is an innovative exploration of religion's influence on communication networks, and tells the story of how connection was made into the fundamental promise of networks, illuminating the power of public Protestantism in the first network imaginaries, which continue to resonate today in false expectations of connection.