Roundtable Discussion of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “The Black Church” (9/30/2021)

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS documentary, The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song, plus its accompanying Penguin Press book, reached an unprecedentedly large audience as it surveyed three-plus centuries of African American and American religious history across the whole of the nation. In this roundtable discussion, five distinguished scholars will reflect on the challenges, successes, and limitations in bringing modern historical scholarship to a broad public audience. What succeeds? What’s difficult to convey? What aspects of the Black church are particularly well represented or insufficiently covered in this historical survey? What tensions exist between scholarly inquiry and successful public history?

This event is sponsored by the American Society of Church History and cosponsored by the University of Minnesota‘s Departments of History, Religious Studies, and African American and African Studies, along with the CLA Office of Public Engagement.