Nicole Turner

PhD, MA, University of Pennsylvania
MDiv Union Theological Seminary (New York)
BA, Haverford College

Nicole Myers Turner’s research focuses on Black religion, politics, and constructions of manhood and womanhood and is situated at the intersections of African American Religious History, Africana Studies and Black Digital Humanities.  Her book, Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (UNC Press, March 2020), chronicles how free and freed Black people used their churches and religious educational institutions to create a meaningful freedom.  This study illuminates the changes in black political strategies, disrupting and illuminating the presumed political significance of Black churches and highlighting how ministry became gendered male. The project also uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology to demonstrate how broad-based networks established through the churches and conventions became the foundations for Black people’s engagement in electoral politics.  She is currently completing work on a complimentary digital history project, Mapping Black Religion, which invites engagement with Black digital humanities’ critiques of mapping and with interpreting the relationship between Black religious community and electoral political participation.