Joseph Richard Winters

Joseph Winters is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Duke University with a secondary position in the Department of African and African American Studies. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His interests lie in African-American Religious Thought, Religion and Critical Theory, Af-Am Literature, and Continental philosophy. Winters teaches and writes about religion and hip hop, religion, race, and film, critical approaches to religious studies, and the general connections between black studies and critical theory. Winters’ first book, Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress (Duke University Press, June 2016) examines how black literature and aesthetic practices challenge post-racial fantasies and triumphant accounts of freedom. The book shows how authors like WEB Du Bois and Toni Morrison link hope and possibility to melancholy, remembrance, and a recalcitrant sense of the tragic.