By Val Timke
On April 3rd, 2026, Dr. Sarah E. Rollens (the R.A. Webb Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College) visited the Department of Religious Studies at UT Austin for a presentation and conversation about her recent work titled: “An Unknown Stranger: The Representation of Jesus in W.E.B. Du Bois’s ‘Jesus Christ in Texas.’” Her research interests include Christian origins, social theory, and the Synoptic Gospels. Her recent publications include Judeophobia and the New Testament: Texts and Contexts (co-edited with Meredith Warren and Eric Vanden Eykel, 2024); Worth More Than Many Sparrows: Essays in Honour of Willi Braun (co-edited with Patrick Hart, 2023); and Framing Social Criticism in the Jesus Movement (2014). She is currently Co-Editor of Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rhodes.
During the colloquium, Dr. Rollens posed the question: Whose impressions of historical Jesus are worth studying, and why? Dr. Rollens engages the reception history of Jesus as “limitless,” with many iterations of Jesus appearing over the years, each one an afterlife. To which Jesuses, then, should our attention be turned? She directs our attention to one particular afterlife of Jesus who appears in “Jesus Christ in Texas.”
W.E.B. Du Bois’s story is set in the Jim Crow South, with regional laws still oppressing Black Americans. In the story, only some characters can recognize “The Stranger” as Jesus when he appears to them. Dr. Rollens argues that recognition and misrecognition of Jesus reflect the reality of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South as well as the experience of Jesus’s character in the Gospel of Mark. The misrecognition in Du Bois’s story functions as a social critique, with white Christians missing the intimacy and vulnerability required to correctly identify “The Stranger” as Jesus. Meanwhile, Black people in the story immediately recognize him. The Gospel of Mark also utilizes the motif of the “Messianic secret,” resulting in misrecognition from most characters.
The usage of the gospel of Mark in Du Bois’s work marks an interesting moment in the reception history of Jesus, demonstrating how an ancient text can be repurposed in ways that prompt us to read Mark differently as well. For example, as Dr. Rollens illustrates, studying Jesus and his interactions with ordinary people might be less a question of Jesus’ identity and more about what we can learn about ourselves.
The colloquium was planned and introduced by Lara Boleslawsky, a PhD student in Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Conversations about Dr. Rollens’s work included the current state of scholarship in the subfield of the historical quest for Jesus. Professors and graduate students were abuzz with the possibilities of pivoting from the quest for one historical Jesus to a search for many through reception history. Discussion also extended into questions of recognition and misrecognition of the divine in W.E.B. Du Bois’s other stories. The conversation was exciting and productive, even running past the allotted time.
We are grateful to Dr. Rollens for the thought-provoking presentation of her research and the generative discussion.
Val Timke is a PhD student of Ancient Mediterranean Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at UT Austin. Her research focuses on animal studies as a narrative tool and the preservation of monsters in myth.