Jamil Drake
B.A. in Religion, Morehouse College
M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary
Th.M., Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Ph.D., Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University
Jamil W. Drake is Assistant Professor of African American Religious History. He joined the faculty at Yale Divinity School in 2022. Previously, he was a member of the faculty in the Religion Department at Florida State University. He specializes in 20th century African American Religious History.
His research covers a range of topics in Black religion and modern society. The topics include religion and the human sciences; religion and politics; religion and race; and religion and medicine. He is the author of To Know the Soul of a People: Religion, Race, and the Making of Southern Folk (Oxford, 2022). His next two research projects explore the intersection of Black religion and the health sciences in the U.S. His next book, Let My People Live: The Medicalization of Black Religion in the Early 20th Century, explores the role of Black religion in public health campaigns against germs among Black people. The following book project chronicles a story about the rise of liberal Black Protestantism through the life and work of Reverend Fredric Rivers Barnwell, a minister, public health worker, and civil and animal rights activist in Jim Crow Texas in the World War I and World War II periods.
Jamil is a Co-PI of the Callie House Project, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. His work has been featured in edited volumes, peer review and online journals.
