Braxton Shelley promoted to full professor

Congratulations to Braxton Shelley who has been promoted to the rank of full professor at Yale University.

Professor Shelley began his work as associate professor of sacred music, divinity, and music—joint appointments held in the Institute of Sacred Music (ISM), Yale Divinity School and the Department of Music—in July of 2021. Since then, his work has been “impactful in the extreme” according to ISM director, Martin Jean, who says he is grateful for the many ways Shelley has built bridges among Yale departments, in the New Haven community, and within the Black Church community at large. He has also raised the profile of Black Sacred Music into a place of prominence in the academy. Among his many achievements, he has established the Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church which sponsors programming and events that bring together scholars, practitioners, and students of Black sacred music on Yale’s campus. “Braxton is not only a scholar and pedagogue of the highest renown, but he is also an amazing human being”, said Jean.

Professor Shelley is the author of numerous books, including Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination (2021) which won several awards including: the Lewis Lockwood Award from the AmericanMusicological Society, given for a book of exceptional merit by a scholar in the early stages of their career; the Emerging Scholar Award-Book from the Society for Music Theory, for a book published no more than seven years after the author’s receipt of a Ph.D.; and both the Ruth Stone Prize and the inaugural Portia Maultsby Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology.

His second book, An Eternal Pitch: Bishop G. E. Patterson and the Afterlives of Ecstasy, was published in the fall of 2023 by The University of California Press. His biography of the gospel choir director Mattie Moss Clark is under contract with Yale University Press for its “Black Lives” series.