Conjuring Otherwise: Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men and the Sermonic Life of Black Folklore

This presentation examines Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men as an archive of African American religious thought, arguing that Black folklore functions as a form of vernacular preaching. By reading folktales as proclamation through a “hermeneutic of otherwise,” the paper expands the historiography of African American religion beyond churches and pulpits to the everyday storytelling practices through which Black communities make meaning.