Fac/Staff profile
- Full-Time
- Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts
- African-American Identity and Literature
- African-American Sacred Music
- African & African American Studies
- English
- Humanities
- Women's & Gender Studies
Deborah Smith
Pollard
Ph.D.
Education
Ph.D. Michigan State University; M.A.T. Wayne State University; B.A. Michigan State University.
Current Research
"The Impact and Legacy of Edwin Hawkins and the Game-Changing Gospel Song `Oh Happy Day'"
Research Areas:
Selected Publications
Book
When the Church Becomes Your Party: Contemporary Gospel Music. Detroit: Wayne State UP, May, 2008. 240 pp.
Book Chapters and Articles in Referred Journals
"`Miss December, You Remember, I Bought You Twice:' Sex and the Contemporary Gospel Song." Forthcoming. Black Music Research Journal.
"‘Praise Is What We Do.’" Readings in African American Church Music and Worship, James Abbington, editor. Chicago: GIA Publications. June 2014: 491-519.
"‘Praise Is What We Do’: The Rise of Praise and Worship Music in the Black Church in the US.” In Christian Congregational Music - Performance, Identity and Experience. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
“The Women Have on All Their Clothes: Reading the Texts of Holy Hip Hop.” In Mamadou Diouf and Ifeoma Nwankwo, ed. Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World: Rituals and Remembrances. University of Michigan Press: 2010: 55-78.
"Motherlove, Initiation, Poverty, and Pride: Teaching "Getting the Facts of Life" by Paulette Childress White and "The Sky Is Gray" by Ernest Gaines." The CEA Forum Winter/Spring 2009: 38.1. Published online.
“That Text, That Timbre: Introducing Gospel Announcer Edna Tatum.” Linda F. Williams and Eileen Hayes, eds., Black Women and Music: More than the Blues. University of Illinois, 2007: 93-118.
“Edna Tatum: Gospel Announcer and Narrator in Performance.” Womanist Research & Theory3.2/4.1 (Spring/Summer 2001/2002): 34-45.
“Gospel Announcers (Disc Jockeys): What They Do and Why It Matters.” Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 31.2 (August 2000): 87-101.
“The Phenomenon Known as the Gospel Musical Stage Play.” CEA Critic 62.3 (Summer 2000): 1-17.
“African American Holyground in Another Good Loving Blues.” CLA Journal 44.1 (Sept. 2000): 65-87.
Encyclopedia Entries
Six entries—James Cleveland, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Donald Lawrence, Andrae Crouch, Ben Tankard, and Take 6—for the Grove Dictionary of American Music. Oxford: Oxford UP: 2013.
Teaching Areas:
History
- Member for
- 2 years 2 months