Sound Falls 'Round Me Like Rain

With a lecture and live violin performance featuring Dr. Melanie R. Hill's new book, Colored Women Sittin' on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music (UNC Press), this talk shows how literature and music, sound and sermon function wholly through the spiritual geniuses of Black women writers, preachers, artists, and freedom movement activists. From Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to Ruby Sales and Aretha Franklin, Colored Women Sittin' on High highlights Black women preachers, writers, and artists as the virtuosic alchemists of our time.

Melanie R. Hill, Ph.D. is Named Term Chair Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice and Assistant Professor of American Literature with specializations in African American Literature, Black Music Performance, and Womanist Literature/Thought/Theology in the Department of English at Rutgers University, Newark. Her newly released book, Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music (UNC Press), explores the literary and musicological histories of Black preaching women. Colored Women Sittin’ on High has been officially endorsed and praised by both Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, and civil rights legend, Ruby Sales. In October 2025, Dr. Hill was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Hill is a classically-trained Gospel Soul Violinist who has performed in concert in Paris, France, at the White House on two occasions under the Obama administration, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Apollo Theater, the Staples Center, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and for the late Pope Francis’s Papal Mass.

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Host or Publisher Center for Africana Studies