The 1990s—Rethinking American Religious History A Progress Report on “Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary History Project”

Like many fields, the academic study of religion has under-gone a number of intellectual turns. The ethnological turn of the late twentieth century challenged scholars to rethink the normative histories upon which our intellectual history is built. The study of “Black Religion” has played a key role in modeling this kind of interrogation. In a 1991 issue of the CSSR Bulletin, Albert J. Raboteau and David W. Wills presented a report on a collaborative, grant funded project to enrich scholars’ archival and methodological resources for thinking about “Afro-American religious history,” and “American religious history” more broadly. Additionally, the online presence of their work is among the earliest examples of open-source scholarship in the academic study of religion (https://aardoc.sites.amherst.edu/menu.html).