Jonathan Ort
Jonathan Ort Email Interests:

Anticolonial nationalism; Back-to-Africa thought; Black theological movements; Christian missionaries and empire; decolonization; Liberia; slavery and abolition; race and religion; U.S. imperialism
Africa, Caribbean & Atlantic, 2024 (PhD Student)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Anticolonial nationalism; Back-to-Africa thought; Black theological movements; Christian missionaries and empire; decolonization; Liberia; slavery and abolition; race and religion; U.S. imperialism

BIOGRAPHY

I am a member of the History Department’s 2024 cohort and a Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellow. I study how Christian discourse has shaped the modern making of race, particularly as regards Liberia. I spent the three years before coming here at Yale Divinity School, where I received a Master of Divinity (2024). That experience informs how I seek to consider race and religion as categories that co-constitute one another.

My interests also stem from research that I have conducted about the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company—which has, since 1926, run the world’s largest contiguous rubber plantation in Liberia. As a volunteer with the Princeton and Slavery Project, I examined how Firestone’s exploitation of Liberia propelled Princeton University’s modern rise. In 2023, I traveled to Liberia through a Graduate Research Fellowship with Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance.

I hold an A.B. in History, with certificates in African Studies and Spanish Language and Culture, from Princeton University (2021). My senior thesis traced, contrary to predominant narratives, how in 1938 Jamaican laborers devised insurgent tactics against British rule. In 2020, I served as Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Princetonian, Princeton’s independent, daily student newspaper.

I am a 2023 alum of Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), As a member of FASPE’s Clergy & Religious Leaders cohort, I considered the moral responsibilities—and risks—that result from the mantle of professional authority. I have also worked part-time at the Project M.O.R.E. Reentry Welcome Center, a nonprofit that serves residents returning home from incarceration in New Haven, Connecticut.

I am always glad to connect with prospective students and anyone who shares similar interests.

SELECTED WORK