Ahmad Greene-Hayes
Biographic Data
| ID | 1127942 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ahmad Greene-Hayes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ahmad |
| FAMILY NAME | Greene-Hayes |
| SIGNATURE | GREENE-HAYES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9117-2785 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
We Pursue Our Magic: A Spiritual History of Black Feminism
Booker T. Washington’s Protestant Coloniality in the Afterlife of the Plantation
This article uses Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, as a case study to interpret how coloniality structured Black Protestant institution-building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Washington, who was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia sometime around 1858 or 1859, was quite literally reared on a plantation, and spent most of his public career trying to wor…
Sinners: White Violence, the Spirit(s), and the Purifying Fire of the Blues: A Conversation Between Ahmad Greene-Hayes and Ambre Dromgoole
An in-depth conversation between Ambre Dromgoole (Cornell) and Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard) on Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners (2025) reveals a compelling visual and sonic text for exploring the intersections of Black religion, politics, and music. Their discussion examines the film’s narrative through the lens of Black religious and Spiritual traditions in the South, including but not limited to Black Protestantism, Hoodoo, and rootwork, considering…
The Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature
Whether invisible or hyper-visible, adored or reviled, from the inception of American literature the Black body has been rendered in myriad forms. This volume tracks and uncovers the Black body as a persistent presence and absence in American literature. It provides an invaluable guide for teachers and students interested in literary and artistic representations of Blackness and embodiment. The book is divided into three sections that highlight B…
A Call for Theoretical Disintegration: E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Religion, the Heteronormative Family and Its Church
Black is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life by Josef Sorett (review)
“A Very Queer Case”
In this article, I present the case of Clementine Barnabet, an Afro-Creole teenager who was arrested in 1911 and convicted in 1912 for allegedly committing “Voodoo murders” in southwest Louisiana and Texas. The press, the police, and other Louisiana officials, along with an author employed by the Louisiana Writers’ Project in the 1930s, used racialized and sexualized hyperbole to deem Barnabet a participant in a “Voodoo cult,” purportedly called …
Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad
Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions
Black studies scholars have long argued that archives are violent and dismembering, especially as the universities which house them preserve the physical and immaterial remnants of slavery. Religious studies scholars, especially historians of religion, have begun attending to this quandary while sifting through archives of slavery and religion. This article enters this discourse by focusing on the afterlives of slavery and their relationship to t…
Shots of Deliverance: Mother Estella Boyd’s Healing Hands and Global Black Pentecostal Reach
This article explores the religious labor of Mother Estella Boyd (1914–2003), an African American Pentecostal preacher, faith healer, and prophetess widely known in and beyond Black Pentecostal circles for her special practice of laying on of hands, which she referred to as “shots of deliverance.” Using the memoirs, interviews, and sermons of both Boyd and her spiritual children, this article uses a gendered analysis and argues that Boyd’s laying…
Black Church Rumor
In 1992, Jet published "James Cleveland Infected L.A. Youth with HIV, $9 Mil. Lawsuit Claims," which detailed how the Chicago-born gospel musician had not only allegedly sexually abused his foster son, Christopher B. Harris, but had also "[given] him the AIDS virus." This article takes this incident of rumor or accusation as a critical opportunity to think about the archival reality of Black queer sexuality, on one hand, and sexual violence in Bl…
Wayward Negro Religions in the Twentieth-Century Slum
Black Religious Studies, Misogynoir, and the Matter of Breonna Taylor's Death
This article reflects on the matter of state-sanctioned death in Black religious studies, with the murder of Breonna Taylor as its central focus. It examines how scholars of Black religion engage with the issues of state-sanctioned murder, antiblackness, and misogynoir, and it endeavors to underscore ways for Black male* scholars of Black religion to respond to the religious experiences and deaths of Black women and Black people of all gendered e…
Anti-Commodified Black Studies and the Radical Roots of Black Christian Education
This article thinks about the intellectual inheritances bequeathed to Black Studies scholars, and specifically to scholars of African American religions, from Black women Christian educators of the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It focuses on two women: Catherine (Katy) Ferguson (1774-1854), a Presbyterian who started the first Sunday school in New York in 1793, and Emily Christmas Kinch (1879-1932), a missionary in the African M…
"Queering" African American religious history
This article raises questions about how scholars of African American religions and of Black Queer Studies have historically and historiographically rendered queer and transgender persons as being devoid of a religion of their choosing. It calls for research on LGBTQ+ persons in African American religious history and discusses the necessity of "queering" theories and methods in the study of African American religions. To do this, it traces a genea…
Cracking the Codes of Black Power Struggles: Hacking, Hacked, and Black Lives Matter
Ahmad Greene-Hayes: “Black Lives Matter” is one of the most recent iterations of the Black Liberation Movement, with an unapologetic Black queer feminist politic led by women-identified, queer, tra
"Queering" African American religious history
This article raises questions about how scholars of African American religions and of Black Queer Studies have historically and historiographically rendered queer and transgender persons as being devoid of a religion of their choosing. It calls for research on LGBTQ+ persons in African American religious history and discusses the necessity of "queering" theories and methods in the study of African American religions. To do this, it traces a genea…
Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions
Black studies scholars have long argued that archives are violent and dismembering, especially as the universities which house them preserve the physical and immaterial remnants of slavery. Religious studies scholars, especially historians of religion, have begun attending to this quandary while sifting through archives of slavery and religion. This article enters this discourse by focusing on the afterlives of slavery and their relationship to t…
Shots of Deliverance: Mother Estella Boyd’s Healing Hands and Global Black Pentecostal Reach
This article explores the religious labor of Mother Estella Boyd (1914–2003), an African American Pentecostal preacher, faith healer, and prophetess widely known in and beyond Black Pentecostal circles for her special practice of laying on of hands, which she referred to as “shots of deliverance.” Using the memoirs, interviews, and sermons of both Boyd and her spiritual children, this article uses a gendered analysis and argues that Boyd’s laying…
Cracking the Codes of Black Power Struggles: Hacking, Hacked, and Black Lives Matter
Ahmad Greene-Hayes: “Black Lives Matter” is one of the most recent iterations of the Black Liberation Movement, with an unapologetic Black queer feminist politic led by women-identified, queer, tra
"Queering" African American religious history
This article raises questions about how scholars of African American religions and of Black Queer Studies have historically and historiographically rendered queer and transgender persons as being devoid of a religion of their choosing. It calls for research on LGBTQ+ persons in African American religious history and discusses the necessity of "queering" theories and methods in the study of African American religions. To do this, it traces a genea…
Anti-Commodified Black Studies and the Radical Roots of Black Christian Education
This article thinks about the intellectual inheritances bequeathed to Black Studies scholars, and specifically to scholars of African American religions, from Black women Christian educators of the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It focuses on two women: Catherine (Katy) Ferguson (1774-1854), a Presbyterian who started the first Sunday school in New York in 1793, and Emily Christmas Kinch (1879-1932), a missionary in the African M…
Wayward Negro Religions in the Twentieth-Century Slum
Black Religious Studies, Misogynoir, and the Matter of Breonna Taylor's Death
This article reflects on the matter of state-sanctioned death in Black religious studies, with the murder of Breonna Taylor as its central focus. It examines how scholars of Black religion engage with the issues of state-sanctioned murder, antiblackness, and misogynoir, and it endeavors to underscore ways for Black male* scholars of Black religion to respond to the religious experiences and deaths of Black women and Black people of all gendered e…
Shots of Deliverance: Mother Estella Boyd’s Healing Hands and Global Black Pentecostal Reach
This article explores the religious labor of Mother Estella Boyd (1914–2003), an African American Pentecostal preacher, faith healer, and prophetess widely known in and beyond Black Pentecostal circles for her special practice of laying on of hands, which she referred to as “shots of deliverance.” Using the memoirs, interviews, and sermons of both Boyd and her spiritual children, this article uses a gendered analysis and argues that Boyd’s laying…
Black Church Rumor
In 1992, Jet published "James Cleveland Infected L.A. Youth with HIV, $9 Mil. Lawsuit Claims," which detailed how the Chicago-born gospel musician had not only allegedly sexually abused his foster son, Christopher B. Harris, but had also "[given] him the AIDS virus." This article takes this incident of rumor or accusation as a critical opportunity to think about the archival reality of Black queer sexuality, on one hand, and sexual violence in Bl…
“A Very Queer Case”
In this article, I present the case of Clementine Barnabet, an Afro-Creole teenager who was arrested in 1911 and convicted in 1912 for allegedly committing “Voodoo murders” in southwest Louisiana and Texas. The press, the police, and other Louisiana officials, along with an author employed by the Louisiana Writers’ Project in the 1930s, used racialized and sexualized hyperbole to deem Barnabet a participant in a “Voodoo cult,” purportedly called …
Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad
Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions
Black studies scholars have long argued that archives are violent and dismembering, especially as the universities which house them preserve the physical and immaterial remnants of slavery. Religious studies scholars, especially historians of religion, have begun attending to this quandary while sifting through archives of slavery and religion. This article enters this discourse by focusing on the afterlives of slavery and their relationship to t…
The Cambridge Companion to the Black Body in American Literature
Whether invisible or hyper-visible, adored or reviled, from the inception of American literature the Black body has been rendered in myriad forms. This volume tracks and uncovers the Black body as a persistent presence and absence in American literature. It provides an invaluable guide for teachers and students interested in literary and artistic representations of Blackness and embodiment. The book is divided into three sections that highlight B…
A Call for Theoretical Disintegration: E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Religion, the Heteronormative Family and Its Church
Black is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life by Josef Sorett (review)
Sinners: White Violence, the Spirit(s), and the Purifying Fire of the Blues: A Conversation Between Ahmad Greene-Hayes and Ambre Dromgoole
An in-depth conversation between Ambre Dromgoole (Cornell) and Ahmad Greene-Hayes (Harvard) on Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners (2025) reveals a compelling visual and sonic text for exploring the intersections of Black religion, politics, and music. Their discussion examines the film’s narrative through the lens of Black religious and Spiritual traditions in the South, including but not limited to Black Protestantism, Hoodoo, and rootwork, considering…
We Pursue Our Magic: A Spiritual History of Black Feminism
Booker T. Washington’s Protestant Coloniality in the Afterlife of the Plantation
This article uses Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, as a case study to interpret how coloniality structured Black Protestant institution-building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Washington, who was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia sometime around 1858 or 1859, was quite literally reared on a plantation, and spent most of his public career trying to wor…
Race, History, and American Society (14 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Religious studies (8 works) · African american (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Art (5 works)