Taurean J. Webb, Ph.D. is the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies in the Social Transformation Research Collaborative and the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University. A race studies scholar, religionist, and mixed-methods historian of ideas, Webb’s research and teaching interests are in Black internationalism, Afro-Arab transnationalism, African American religious history, Black Renaissance-era visual arts, and visual arts and religious metaphor within contemporary transnational social movements.
His published writing can be found in the Journal for Palestine Studies, Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy, Jadaliyya, and Black Perspectives—the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society. He is currently working on his first book—a genealogy of Black religious presence within twentieth and twenty-first century Afro-Arab solidarity politics—and two smaller projects: an historical exploration of Black US religious discourse about the Middle East, in the wake of the 1979 Andrew Young resignation from the Carter administration; and a textual analysis of religious imagery within the twentieth century artistic oeuvre of African American international socialist and master draftsman, Charles W. White.
Webb’s work has been supported by the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative (RCPI) of the Religion and Public Life Program (RPL) at Harvard University; the Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University; and the Forum for Theological Exploration.
As a scholar-creative, Webb has worked with artists and arts institutions across the African and Arab diasporas and exilic migrations, produced traveling arts exhibitions, and is currently completing a documentary-style short film centering Black, Palestinian, and Lebanese visual artists.
Webb is a member of the American Studies Association, the American Academy of Religion, and was recently inducted into full membership of the Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR)—the oldest professional scholarly society for the study of religious experience across the African Diaspora.