Dr. Stephen C. Finley
Raised in Santa Ana, California, Stephen C. Finley (MA/PhD, Rice University, 2006/2009; MDiv, Virginia Union University; B.A. Pepperdine University) is the Inaugural Chair of the Department of African & African American Studies at Louisiana State University and Professor of African & African American Studies (Associate Professor of Religious Studies and AAAS prior to May 2022). He is the former Executive Director (2018-2021) of the Society for the Study of Black Religion.
He is the co-editor (with Margarita Simon Guillory and Hugh R. Page, Jr) of Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There Is a Mystery”… (Brill 2015), which initiated Africana Esoteric Studies, a new area of scholarship with a robustly growing body of work, including his coauthored article (with Biko Mandela Gray and Hugh R. Page, Jr), “Africana Esoteric Studies and Western Intellectual Hegemony: A Conversation with Western Esotericism” (History of Religions 60.3, February 2021: 163-187. Published April 28, 2021). He is co-editor (with Biko Mandela Gray and Lori Latrice Martin) of The Religion of White Rage: White Workers, Religious Fervor, and the Myth of Black Racial Progress (Edinburgh University Press).
His monograph, In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam was published by Duke University Press (2022). He is co-author (with Biko Mandela Gray and Lori Latrice Martin) of Ivory Towers, Regulatory Technologies, and the (Re)Production of Anti-Black Violence in the Academy: Introducing Black Faculty Studies (under
advance contract with Johns Hopkins University Press).
His The Afro-Theosophysics of Robert T. Browne: Race, Blackness, and Theory of Religion is under advance contract with Oxford University Press. This monograph explores the life and thought of Robert T. Browne. Born to formerly enslaved parents, Browne was a major leader in early-twentieth century Black intellectual thought and a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance, though he is largely unknown to history. He was a pan-Africanist, who edited The Negro World, the primary periodical for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1930s. A Theosophist, Methodist, Occultist, and scientist, Browne theorized the nature of reality in many publications but especially in The Mystery of Space: A Study of the Hyperspace Movement in the Light of the Evolution of New Psychic Faculties and An Inquiry into the Genesis of the Essential Nature of Space, which was published in 1919 and necessitated Browne concealing his racial identity. The monograph on Browne will be part intellectual history as it mines Browne’s use of quantum physics, mathematical theory, race, and the occult to think about theory of religion.
The book brings together Finley’s growing interest in religion, science, the metaphysics of blackness, and the nonmaterial in theory of religion. Some of his initial thoughts about these intersections were published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (December 2021), considered the top journal in the field, in the article, “The Afro-Theosophysics of Robert T. Browne: Preliminary Thoughts on Theory and Method in the Study of Religion.” These interests congeal in research groups and scholarly societies in which he participates: Esalen Institute, Center for Theory and Research (Black Superhumanism Work Group) in Big Sur, California and the Society for UAP Studies (Advisory Board and Editorial Board). His favorite color is purple. His favorite flowers (purple, of course) are lisianthus and delphinium. He has extensive collections of fine crystal and African American art. Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. is his fraternal affiliation.