Research

In my research, I analyze race, religion, and education in the United States, especially the intersecting religious, moral, and racial daily practices in institutions we might not immediately consider religious, such as public schools.

My first book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools (NYU Press, 2024) uses New York City as a window to reframe religion’s role in twentieth-century American public education by examining how religion undergirded practices and policies on race such as desegregation, narratives of American history, and juvenile delinquency prevention.

My next book project asks how state actors and educators committed to racial justice imagined forming moral citizens through public schools in the 1990s-2000s, in the context of school privatization, standardization, and militarization. Examples I examine include the racial achievement gap, character education, abstinence-only education, school police, and active shooter drills, alongside the rise of culturally responsive teaching.

I have also published on how a salvation narrative undergirded a reform school for Black Protestant boys from 1937-1942 in American Religion, and, with Dr. Cara Rock-Singer, how James Baldwin and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein can help us imagine different educational futures, accepted at The Jewish Quarterly Review.

I am committed to public scholarship and collaboration. My work with co-authors has been published in The New Republic, Religion and Politics, and American Religion’s “Sources” project. My past projects include research into the history of race, racism, and people of color at Transylvania, with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members.