Angela M. Nelson
Director
School of Cultural and Critical Sciences
Associate Professor
Department of Popular Culture
249 Shatzel Hall | 419-372-0284 | anelson@bgsu.edu
Dr. Angela Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Popular Culture and Director of the School of Cultural and Critical Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. A significant portion of my academic career has been in administrative service on my campus as undergraduate advisor, department chair, program director, and school director. My interdisciplinary research and teaching specifically centers 20th and 21st century Black popular culture in the United States of America. My research questions include: (1) How do the social or cultural concerns, identities, experiences, and perspectives of African Americans influence their artistic or ministerial expressions and their relationship with the culture industry brokers who administer their expressions? (2) How do the social or cultural concerns, identities, experiences, and perspectives of culture industry brokers influence their relationship with African Americans and their administration of African Americans’ artistic or ministerial expressions? (3) How do the audiences, processes, administration systems, apparatuses, and structures surrounding television, music, and religion elevate or oppress African American artistic or ministerial expressions? (4) How do African Americans respond to the audiences, processes, administration systems, apparatuses, and structures surrounding television, music, and religion that elevate or oppress their artistic or ministerial expressions? My teaching and scholarship endeavors to bring marginalized voices of African American women, in particular, to the center of cultural conversations, bridging academic and public spaces.
Professional Affiliations:
- National Council for Black Studies
- Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
- 20th and 21st Century Black/African American Popular Culture
- Black/African American Sacred Music, Secular Music, Popular Music
- Blacks/African Americans in Comic Art, Situation Comedy, Stage Plays
EDUCATION:
- Ph.D., American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University, 1992
- M.M., Music Education, Bowling Green State University, 1989
- B.M., Music Education, Converse College, 1986
SELECT COURSES TAUGHT:
Undergraduate
- POPC 1700 Black Popular Culture
- POPC 3800 Black Popular Music
Graduate
- POPC 6800 Black Popular Music
- POPC 6800 Black Women, Popular Culture, and Respectability
CURRENT PROJECTS:
My current project centers Black female actor Esther Rolle as a Black feminist artist-activist in the television industry. Specifically, I analyze Rolle’s artistic-activist participation and resistance in the production and dissemination of the 1970s situation comedy Good Times. A series that is significant because it reflected a divided, multifaceted, and changing American society while at the same time affirming dominant (or “white”) values of family, middle-class morality, and patriarchy. My aim is to explain how the social and cultural concerns, identities, and perspectives of such African American women as Rolle influence their artistic expressions and how these concerns, identities, and expressions are inherently critical of oppressive and repressive cultural, political, economic, and social arrangements. Further, I want to explain how the social and cultural concerns, identities, and perspectives of such culture industry brokers of television as Jewish American male Norman Lear affect the artistic expressions of African American women.
SELECT PUBLICATIONS:
Books:
- Nelson, Angela M. “CeCe Winans, Black Gospel Music, and the Ambivalence of Stardom.” Religion and Popular Music: Artists, Fans and Cultures, ed. Andreas Häger. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 29-46.
- Nelson, Angela M. “‘Put Your Hands Together’: The Theological Meaning of Call-Response and Collective Participation in Rap Music.” Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop Spirituality, ed. Andre Johnson. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2013. 55-66.
- Nelson, Angela M. “African American Stereotypes in Prime-Time Television: An Overview, 1948-2007.” African Americans and Popular Culture, ed. Todd Boyd. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2008. 185-216., (2001) University of Mississippi Press, Jacksonville: MS
Articles:
- Nelson, Angela M., Guest Editor, “Black Popular Culture” special issue, Africology: Journal of Pan African Studies and Popular Culture Studies Journal, 8.2, Fall 2020.
- Nelson, Angela M., Guest Editor, “Religions in African American Popular Culture” special issue, Religions, 10.9, Fall 2019.
- Nelson, Angela M. “’At This Age, This Is Who I Am’: CeCe Winans, Exilic Consciousness, and the American Popular Music Star System.” Open Cultural Studies 2 (December 2018): 475-485.
Updated: 10/03/2023 10:54AM