As a nice break from all the doom and gloom in the world (and the depressing stuff we often cover), we decided to ask the wonderful Dr. Judith Weisenfeld to come talk to us about her life and work.

Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Effron Center for the Study of America.

Her research focuses on early twentieth-century African American religious history, and she has explored a range of topics, including in the relation of religion to constructions of race, the impact on black religious life of migration, immigration, and urbanization in African American women’s religious history, and religion in film and popular culture.

She is currently the Director of The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities and Cultures, a four-year project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation aimed at producing deeper understandings of the history and diversity of Black religious life in the U.S.

Here she talks to Kelly and John about how she got into religious studies, the joys of accidentally discovering new things during research, and her books Hollywood Be Thy Name and New World A-Coming.

She is on Twitter @JLWeisenfeld