Joseph R. Winters, 2024–25 | National Humanities Center

Joseph R. Winters (NHC Fellow, 2024–25)

Project Title

Beyond Imperial Piety: Black Study, the Opaque Sacred, and World De-formation

Duke University

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Fellowship Work Summary, 2024–25

Joseph Winters finished revising his book, The Disturbing Profane: Hip Hop, Blackness, and the Sacred (Duke University Press, in press August 2025). He also completed an article, “The Wildness of Racialized Experimentation,” which will be part of a special issue for Method and Theory in the Study of Religion on Donovan Schaefer’s 2022 monograph, Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism After Darwin (Duke University Press). 

In addition, Winters completed an essay, “Black|Human: Iterations in the Cut,” which will be included in Chris Cameron and Anthony Pinn’s edited volume, Black Humanist Studies: History, Theory, Method, and Application (University of Massachusetts Press, forthcoming, 2026). 

Winters also completed and revised an essay, called “A Harrowing Message: Love, Death, and the Visualization of Black Chiasmus,” which will contribute to a volume on Arthur Jafa and Black Religion, edited by Nathanael Homewood.