Dalton News

Professor Josef Sorett P '26,'29 Speaks to Black Radical Tradition Class

Students in HS History Teacher Donald Okpalugo’s elective, “The Black Radical Tradition,” attended a guest lecture from Professor Josef Sorett P ’26 ’29, Dean of Columbia College, Professor of Religion & African American Studies on Wednesday, November 30.
Professor Sorett spoke about his book Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics, in which he challenges the historiographical narrative of the Harlem Renaissance as a secular movement. 

Drawing on a variety of sources, from the songs of Aretha Franklin to the writings of Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston, Professor Sorett contends that religion was actually a formidable force animating and organizing African American literary visions throughout the years between the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s.

Story submitted by HS History Teacher Donald Okpalugo
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