Charlotte H. Richard
Postdoctoral Fellow, Mellon Teaching Fellow
Department of Religion
Charlotte Richard is a historian of the African Diaspora whose work focuses on Black religion, transnational activism, and decolonization in the Americas, with particular emphasis on Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the United States. Her research examines how religious movements, spiritual practices, Black radical politics, and anti-colonial thought shaped freedom struggles across the twentieth-century Atlantic world. By centering Jamaica as a key site of political, religious, and cultural exchange, her work challenges U.S.-centric narratives of Black liberation.
Her current book project, Small Axe: Jamaican Decolonization and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, examines the influence of Jamaican religious movements, press networks, and anti-colonial activism on U.S. Black freedom struggles. Tracing a web of transnational exchange, the project reorients scholarly conversations about race, religion, resistance, and liberation by showing how the flow of influence moved not only from the United States outward, but from the Caribbean inward.
Her broader scholarship engages themes of memory, Black radicalism, diasporic intellectual exchange, Rastafari, Black women's religious practice, and the spiritual dimensions of resistance. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Black Studies and Siyabonana: The Journal of Africana Studies. At Dartmouth, she teaches courses on African American religious history, Afro-Caribbean religions, the Civil Rights Movement, and the transnational politics of Black liberation.
Contact
Department(s)
Religion
Education
- PhD University of New Hampshire, Durham
- MA University of Nebraska, Kearney
Selected Publications
"Jump Nyabinghi: Black Radical Militancy, Rastafarianism, and Jamaican Cultural Influence on Black America," Journal of Black Studies 55, no. 2 (February 2024): 117-138, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934723121337.
"Hailing Jamaican Independence: Jamaica's Independence Movement and the American Press," Siyabonana: The Africana Studies Journal 1, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 96-116, https://www.journalofafricanastudies.com/_files/ugd/062711_a9d2b916a8394....
Works In Progress
Small Axe: Jamaican Decolonization and the US Civil Rights Movement, University of Rochester Press, Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, publication expected 2027.
"The Flying Prophet: Alexander Bedward and the Theological Imagination of Black Liberation," under peer review, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism
"White Refugees, Black Subjects: Gibraltar Camp and Jamaica's Independence Movement," under peer review, The Journal of Caribbean History.
Sanctified Crossings: Black Women, Embodiment, and Religious Resistance. Second book project in development. This project traces Afro-Caribbean and African American women's religious practices across the Black Atlantic, examining ritual, healing, sound, embodiment, and devotional life as forms of resistance to slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, and racial capitalism.
"Rastafari and the Cold War: Religion, Radicalism, and U.S. Empire in Jamaica." Article in progress. This article examines Rastafari, Black radical politics, and state repression in Cold War Jamaica, with particular attention to how religious communities and radical movements negotiated decolonization, socialism, sovereignty, and U.S. imperial power.