Onaje Woodbine Associate Professor Philosophy and Religion

Additional Positions at AU: Associate Professor in Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies
Degrees: Ph.D. Religious Studies, Boston University

M.T.S. Philosophy, Theology and Ethics, Boston University

B.A. Philosophy, Yale University
Bio: Onaje X. O. Woodbine’s research explores the varieties of black religious experience, especially as they are lived on the margins of power and outside the bounds of established institutional authority. His most recent book, Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball, garnered national praise as “a profound narrative of survival [and] self-determination … in this season where black male bodies are under attack.” Covered by The New York Times (“street basketball functions as an outlet of mourning and healing of urban youths”), NPR’s All Things Considered (“invites readers to look at basketball differently … as a sacred space where young black boys go to ‘reclaim their humanity’”), ESPN (“full of colorful tales and haunting heartbreaks”), Boston Magazine (“painful, beautiful, nonfiction debut”), and the National Catholic Reporter (“A powerful and deeply moving work … reveals a world of redemption and hope rarely glimpsed from the outside”), Black Gods was longlisted for the 2017 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and named one of The Boston Globe’s best books of 2016.

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