Author-Meets-Critics Roundtable: Ralph H. Craig III, Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner

In Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner, Ralph H. Craig III explores the place of religion in the life and career of pop culture icon Tina Turner (1939-2023). To explain her religious beliefs in articles, memoirs, interviews, and documentaries, Turner drew on a synthesis of African American Protestantism, American metaphysical religion, and Nichiren Buddhism. This book reads across her public archive to provide a genealogical study of Turner’s religious influences and of her as a religious influence in her own right. This roundtable brings together scholars from the subfields of Buddhist Studies and African American Religions to consider the implications of Craig’s book for the study of religion and popular culture, Buddhism in the West, American Buddhism, and African American Religion.