Jake Dorman

Contact Information Phone: (785) 864-9453 Office: 3613 Wescoe Hall Email: dorman@ku.edu

Jacob S. Dorman is an Assistant Professor in his first year at KU who holds a joint appointment in History and American Studies with specialties in African American history, black religion, and 1920's Harlem.

Last year Dorman was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities and received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 2004. He has published in the journal Nova Religio and in anthologies on new religious movements and on alternative African American religions. Oxford University Press will publish his manuscript, "Chosen People: Black Orientalism, Black Israelites and the Harlem Renaissance," which examines the way African Americans used Orientalist ideas to create to new religious movements that critiqued racism and the discourse of civilization. Research fellowships from Yale's Beinecke Library and the Gilder Lehrman Institute have supported a second project, a cultural history of everyday life during the Harlem Renaissance, told partly through the letters and diaries of its artists. Dorman's interests include race, music, Rastafarianism, whiteness, and contemporary black and Jewish identities. He has also contributed to National Public Radio and to the online religious studies journal The Revealer.