Josef Sorett

As the chief academic and executive officer of Columbia College, Dean Sorett’s central focus is to ensure that students have the best possible experience inside and outside the classroom. The dean oversees the College curriculum, which includes the Core Curriculum, as well as the other academic, co-curricular and programmatic services that form the foundation of the undergraduate experience at the College.

As an interdisciplinary scholar of religion and race in the Americas, and a professor of religion, African American and African diaspora studies, Dean Sorett employs primarily historical and literary approaches to the study of religion in Black communities and cultures in the United States, straddling the disciplines of history, literature, religion, art and music. His first book, Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics, illuminates how religion has figured in debates about Black art and culture across the 20th century. In addition to editing the recently released volume The Sexual Politics of Black Churches, Dean Sorett’s second book, Black is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life, was published in 2023. He is working on a third, There’s a God on the Mic: Hip Hop’s (Surprising) Religious History.