Braxton Shelley appointed to endowed professorship

Congratulations to Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School professor Braxton Shelley, who has just received a new endowed professorship at Yale Divinity School. Read below the full text of the announcement by YDS, and link to the YDS news piece detailing this appointment.

Braxton Shelley has been appointed to the newly endowed George Washington Williams Chair at YDS, named for the first African American to graduate from Newton Theological Institution (which continues today as part of Andover Newton Seminary at YDS). Professor Shelley’s accomplishments have probably become familiar to you over the four years he has served on the YDS and Institute of Sacred Music faculties. He has become a tremendously influential scholar and has set a high standard internationally. His academic publications have won awards from all three of the most significant professional societies in music—an extremely rare accomplishment. He has published two significant books: Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination (2021) and An Eternal Pitch: Bishop G. E. Patterson and the Afterlives of Ecstasy (2023). He has two more books nearing completion and under contract: Digital Antiphony: Black Gospel, Social Media, and the Craft of Collectivity (Oxford University Press) and Mattie Moss Clark: A Life in Song (Yale University Press). The Music and the Black Church program under Professor Shelley’s directorship has flourished since its founding in 2021, engaging scholars across the University and bringing to Yale some of the most prominent gospel musicians in the country for concerts and transformative interactions with students.