Braxton D. Shelley

Braxton D. Shelley is a scholar of music, religion, and Black expressive culture. His book An Eternal Pitch: Bishop G. E. Patterson, Broadcast Religion, and the Afterlives of Ecstasy was published by the University of California Press in 2023. He is also the author of Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Shelley earned his B.A. in Music and History with highest distinction from Duke University in 2012 before completing a Master of Divinity and a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Music at the University of Chicago. He is currently Associate Professor of Music, Sacred Music, and Divinity at Yale University and Director of the Program in Music and the Black Church.