Joshua Ro

Joshua Ro
spirituality in Black music; moral epistemology; jazz studies; Black studies; critical theory; ethnomusicology

B.A. English and History, University of Maryland, College Park

M.Div. Pastoral Ministry, Westminster Theological Seminary

S.T.M. Religion and the Black Experience, Union Theological Seminary

Joshua Ro is a PhD student in African American Studies and Music. He is interested in researching Black musical traditions, particularly jazz, as sites of moral, political, and spiritual formation for the care, memory, and liberation of communities. He hopes to examine musicking along the intersections of Black church history, African spiritualities, critical theory, and Eastern religion, to document and theorize specific ways such formation might occur.

In 2023, Joshua’s article entitled “Womanist Imagination and Liberation from the Politics of Colorblind Positivism” was published in the African American Intellectual History Society blog, Black Perspectives, and his S.T.M. paper at Union was entitled “Ascension: Jazz as a Formative Spiritual Ethic in Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, and Nina Simone.”

At Yale, Joshua hopes to heed the call most often attributed to the great Thelonious Monk: “Jazz is freedom. You think about that!”