Anthony Heilbut is a record producer and author of The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times. Published in 1971, The Gospel Sound is a groundbreaking work which offers a rich and extensive account of the history and theory of the form and performance of gospel music. 

Johari Jabiris Associate Professor of Black Studies at University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Gospel Army of the Civil War.

The Gospel Materialities Working Group is an affiliated group of the RU Center for Cultural Analysis (CCA). It is aimed at exploring not only the history and aesthetics of modern gospel and its performativities, but the material culture produced by, as much as that which helped produce, what historian and musicologist Mark Burford calls “the gospel field.”

The Gospel Materialities Working Group welcomes group members from all RU campuses or their institutional partners. To join officially and participate in the ongoing programming, small group study, publication prospects, and archive development, contact JP Sloan (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and request a copy of Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times.

The Gospel Materialities Event Flyer