Jimmy Worthy

Professor Worthy’s research focus on black lived experiences relative to death consciousness, African Diasporic literature, and the ways in which such literature inflects the trope of transformation with the characteristics of initiatory rituals found in many West-Central African faith practices. His book project, Defiant Resurrection: A Study of Subjectivity, Restoration, and Sacred Imperative in African American Literature, investigates the redemptory orientations of African American authors from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. By analyzing West-Central African cosmology and Christianity as engendering belief systems, Professor Worthy situates authors’ resistance to white supremacist ideologies within an inherited, religious endeavor to achieve fundamental transformation. Defiant Resurrection argues that authors figure death as a porous boundary of exchange, making possible resurrected embodiment and community restoration.