Andrew Hudson
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Pentecostal Construction of Race (2013-2019) 
Funded by UPenn Benjamin Franklin Grant; Mellon SAS Dissertation Completion Grant

This monograph explores the case study of an Appalachian white Pentecostal Christian history to highlight the construction of race in religions in the history of the United States. In particular the project tracks the construction of whiteness. The group under review, Church of God (close to 15 denominations epicentered in Eastern Tennessee, USA), were originally identified as neither white nor Protestant by popular culture, religious elites, and academic social scientists in their formative years 1884 to 1923.  Yet by 1955 the largest group to emerge from this history, now known today as Church of God (Cleveland, TN), was able to construct both a white and Protestant Christian identity.  This project reconstructs the social history of these religious groups that today amount to over 8 million people globally and are a thriving part of Pentecostal Christianity, the largest and fastest growing form of Christianity in the world.  By exploring legal depositions, material culture, ethnography, vernacular architecture, historic filmography (16mm), and oral histories, this project unravels the mythic element of how religious histories are told and written in the United States and who is allowed to be counted as legally and properly a religion. Key to this projects narrative is the ongoing construction of identity within the overlapping, conflicting, and reinforcing elements of religion, race, and class. The project draws on this micro study to illuminate larger questions about the ways in which identity is crafted in the writing of American histories generally and religious histories specifically.

The project is currently in the initial stages of revision for publishing.


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 When Science Meets Race (2016-2017) 
Funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and the Penn Museum

This film project was a CAMRA documentary coproduced with Melissa Skolnick, Arjun Shankar, Ore Badaki, and Andrew Hudson and advised by executive producers John L. Jackson Jr. and Ra'anan Alexandrowicz. The film has been screened and submitted to Penn Museum in its current form as a four-chapter documentary.  The project documents the process, thought, actions, and reactions to a series of public classroom discussions "Science and Race: History, Use and Abuse" at the Penn Museum. These discussions focused on the Samuel Morton collection of skulls from the 19th century used to scientifically construct race.  The film interacted directly with the events of the public classrooms as well in depth on several topics from the public discussions, the skull collection, the use of museums, and race in medicine.
Click Here to Watch.

​(2021; this film is currently being revisited and expanded)
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Listening to the Walls: a visual ethnography of three religious spaces in one place
(2016)
A short film (13min 12sec) which explores the place of Wat Preah Buddha Rangsey in South Philadelphia.  Methodologically this film focuses on material culture and religion and seeks to situate the built places and constructed spaces, (architecture, windows, textiles, sculpture, and painting) as a central protagonist within the focus of religious studies.  The film follows the production of particular religious spaces through the construction, rehabbing, and repurposing of buildings.  Once an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue, a Lutheran Christian Church, and a paper box factory, currently the structures have been reconstructed into a beautiful Khmer (Cambodian) Theravada Buddhist Temple complex in the urban setting of South Philadelphia.
Click Here for Trailer. 

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This is Our Story
(2015)
This short film (12min) explores the personal and social histories of an urban protestant Christian church in Northeast Philadelphia, Glading Presbyterian Church.  Filmed over a period of seven months, this project was filmed on location at the church building and in the private homes of church members. The film highlights the communal life of a faith community by amplifying the diverse individual and collective stories that make up this particular religious community in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania.

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​Mountains, Stories, Beliefs
​Project funded by the 2014 School of Arts and Sciences Dean's New Media Grant, University of Pennsylvania

(9 minutes) Short film focusing on the ecological impact of mountains and forests on the religious practices, beliefs, and cosmologies of Appalachian Pentecostals. Film highlighted the Unicoi Turnpike in Southeastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.  This project was an exploration in visual and material encounters with ecology in religion. This film aided in the incorporation of visual production alongside written-text in my research of Space, Place, and Time of religions.  


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