Joseph Tucker Edmonds

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/45326
Joseph L. Tucker Edmonds, PhD is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Religious Studies at Indiana University's School of Liberal Arts (IU, Indianapolis), the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture (CSRAAC), and on the leadership team of the IUI Center for Africana Studies and Culture (CASC). His research addresses the intersection between Black religion and the body, with a particular focus on agency, care, and wellness. Dr. Tucker Edmonds is a founding member of the Black Health Equity Working Group at the IUI Center for Africana Studies and Culture, and he is currently working with the local NAACP branch and the 4 largest hospital systems to address the disparate health outcomes for Black communities in Indianapolis. He was the 2020 recipient of the Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship from Indiana Humanities which supported his collaborative, community-engaged project on the history of Black women’s agency and the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Indianapolis. Prof. Tucker Edmonds and his research team just completed a documentary on the history of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA, and he is working with local Black religious leaders for the upcoming installation of the historical marker honoring this critically important institution. In addition to Dr. Tucker Edmonds’ work on Black women and institution-building, he is currently collaborating with a professor in the IUI School of Social Work and a community partner on Black men and racial trauma. This research has led to ground-breaking research and highly-cited articles on the impact of racial trauma and new models of care and programs targeted to marginalized communities. He is an award-winning scholar and teacher who co-chairs the Teaching Religion Unit for the American Academy of Religion and has received grants from the Wabash Center on Teaching and Learning, the Lilly Endowment, and the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation. Dr. Tucker Edmonds is the author of The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom (2020) as well as a number of articles and essays in scholarly journals.

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 10 of 14
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Black Joy, Full Participation, and the University Classroom
    (American Academy of Religion, 2022) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph L.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Diasporic Dances: Theological Musings Betwixt and Between Blackness
    (Taylor & Francis, 2017) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph L.
    This article brings Black theology in conversation with the diasporic character of Black identity as well as critical theorizing on late capital. By being attentive not only to the normative racializing strategy in the United States, but also attending to the persistence of color caste systems, the contemporary movement of global bodies and theories, and impact of multiple performances of Blacknesses on racial identification, this article argues for a new theological method. This attempt to "trouble" Black race and the Black body, its use in theological scholarship, and to identify its descriptive and analytic deficiencies are facilitated by conversations with African theology, critical race theory, Kelly Brown Douglas and Judith Bulter’s theories on gender and performance. Finally, this article argues for a theology of diaspora that takes seriously the troubling of race, the reconsideration of embodiedness, and the excavation of difference and variety as a liberatory project.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    I Want to Break Free: Abolition and Full Participation in the Religious Studies Classroom
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph L.
    “I Want to Break Free: Abolition and Full Participation in the Religious Studies Classroom” explores how the framework of abolition provides a model for organizing the religious studies classroom, challenging hegemonic disciplinary practices, and rethinking the contemporary implications of the carceral state. This chapter engages my course, “Religion Behind Bars,” as a space where religious communities and university classrooms are studied as sites and cyphers for abolition. Students and I use Vincent Lloyd and Joshua Dubler’s Break Every Yoke and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons as texts to think through the processes of abolition, full participation, and breaking free. Ultimately, I illustrate that this technique enables students to more thoughtfully engage the relationship between the carceral state, studying religion, and the idea of full participation. “Breaking Free,” therefore, becomes a way to do close readings of religions and the carceral state, as well as prepare students for a new relationship to engaged citizenship.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Other Side of Dissatisfied Affiliation: Race, Religion, and the Vision of Carlton Pearson
    (Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program, 2024-10-28) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph L.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Review of Richard Kent Evans's MOVE: An American Religion
    (Indiana University Press, 2023) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Revisiting Frederick Douglass and the Nineteenth Century Religious Imagination
    (Institute for American Thought, 2024) Tucker Edmonds, Joseph L.; McKivigan, John R.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Cultural Trauma Scale (CuTS): Psychometric evaluation of Black men's beliefs, emotions, and coping
    (2023-11) Gregory Jr., Virgil Lee; Tucker Edmonds, Joseph
    Racism and gender-based prejudice produce a synergistic and toxic effect that necessitates analysis. There is a need to conduct more research with Black men as their experiences with race-based trauma may differ, given their concurrent disproportionate exposure to other forms of violence. Objective: The study’s purpose was to develop items for and evaluate the factor structure and internal consistency of the Cultural Trauma Scale (CuTS) in an exclusive sample of Black men. Method: Using the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, Community Alliance for Research Engagement principles, the study was conducted in a context of community engaged research. Data were collected from individual interviews and focus groups, subject matter experts, and a sample of 150 adult Black men. Principal axis factoring (PAF) was used to determine the factor structure of the scale items. Results: Via PAF the final factor structure included five constructs addressing: American & Its Justice System: Cognitive- Emotional Responses (Cronbach’s Alpha = .88), Cognitive-Behavioral Coping (Cronbach’s Alpha = .77), Willingness to Seek Cultural Trauma Treatment (Cronbach’s Alpha = .88), Tripartite Police Fear (Cronbach’s Alpha = .81), and Resilience (Cronbach’s Alpha = .61). Conclusion: The CuTS represents psychometric advancement in the measurement of Black male social justice and healing from cultural trauma. Keywords: Cognitive-Behavioral, Cultural Trauma, Black, Men, Psychometric Clinical Impact Statement: The measurement properties of the Cultural Trauma Scale (CuTS) were examined in an exclusive adult Black male sample. The data suggest the CuTS measures trauma regarding Black structural, cognitive, emotional, familial, and professional health seeking concepts. This study provides a tool for measuring constructs within a Black male demographic that are frequently encountered in Black clinical research and practice.