"Africana Religious Studies" Ten Years Later: Reflections on a Field-Changing (and Field Defining) Essay

The phrase "Africana Religious Studies" invokes multiple things all at once. It raises the question of diaspora(s), calls our attention to the ways that blackness moves across the globe. But, in this case, “Africana” isn’t merely a modifier. It also articulates a different approach to what “religion” is or might be; it offers a different genealogy, and calls for different questions. Enter Tracey Hucks and Dianne Stewart. Ten years ago, these two powerful thinkers set out to shape and develop a field. They wrote an essay entitled “Africana Religious Studies”; in this essay, they laid the groundwork for a new research agenda in ARS. On this ten-year anniversary of “Africana Religious Studies,” this roundtable panel seeks to consider the new directions of and for scholarship that Hucks’s and Stewart’s groundbreaking essay opened and opens. The panelists will provide brief reflections on how Stewart and Hucks’s article has helped to shape and expand their research.