Rate My Professor Josef Sorett

An interdisciplinary scholar of religion and race in the Americas, Josef Sorett employs historical and literary approaches to study religion in Black communities and cultures in the United States, bridging history, literature, religion, art, and music. He earned a B.S. from Oral Roberts University, an M.Div. in religion and literature from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in African American Studies from Harvard University. Before joining Columbia's faculty in 2009, he was a fellow at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute and an instructor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Medgar Evers College. His accolades include Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award (2018), the Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence (2022), grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion, and Fund for Theological Education, and a senior fellowship at Yale University’s Institute for Sacred Music (2016-2017). Sorett’s key publications are Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2016), the edited volume The Sexual Politics of Black Churches (Columbia University Press, 2022), and Black is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life (Oxford University Press, 2023). He is currently completing There’s a God on the Mic: Hip Hop’s (Surprising) Religious History. His popular courses on the Core Curriculum, African-American Studies, and gospel music engage students with critical questions about culture, identity, and race.