News and Announcements:

Mercer University Press announces a new series: Voices of the African Diaspora, edited by Chester J. Fontenot, Jr., Griffith Professor of English at Mercer University. This series presents the development of the intellectual tradition of the African Diaspora. The series will bring together a variety of disciplines -- including literary and social/cultural criticism, anthropology, sociology, religion/philosophy, education, political science, psychology and history -- by publishing original critical studies and reprints of classic texts. The reprints will include both nineteenth and twentieth-century works. Our goal is to make important texts accessible and readily available both to the general reader and to the academic.

Palgrave announces a new series: Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice, edited by Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas.

Emory University Receives Gift of African American Cultural Arts Archive

Artist and filmmaker Camille Billops and theater historian James V. Hatch have donated to the Special Collections and Archives of Emory University a significant portion of an extraordinary collection of African American cultural art assembled over the past thirty-five years.

Emory's Curator of African American Collections Randall Burkett describes the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives at Emory University as perhaps the most important collection of materials related to 20th century African American arts and letters in private hands.

With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Hatch and Billops began to conduct oral histories with artists in all disciplines-art, cinema, dance, drama, literature, music-and on related educational and political topics. Billops began photographing the works of black artists in exhibitions and private collections. To complement this project, that now numbers nearly 10,000 slides, they assembled a library of books, periodicals, and clippings. Hatch began to collect published and unpublished plays, set designs, theater programs, and historical and biographical works, creating a black theater collection that is one of the most comprehensive to be found.

The Hatch/Billops Collection in New York will continue its active program of documentation and acquisition, as well as publication of an annual volume of interviews, Artist and Influence. Materials to be transferred to Emory include the oral history tapes, typescripts of unpublished plays, posters, photographs, and more than one hundred boxes of books and periodicals. Burkett envisions the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives at Emory University becoming a center for scholarly research in African American arts and letters of the twentieth century.

Emory's archive also includes the complete run of Artist and Influence: The Journal of Black American Cultural History, published by Hatch and Billops since 1981, which features transcripts of interviews, panel discussions and forums with minority artists, as well as a set of more than 1,200 interviews from which the published transcripts were selected. The journal sheds new light on movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, the role of black musicians, and the careers of filmmakers, actors, sculptors, photographers, animators, choreographers, vocalists, and painters.

 

Academic Positions:

The Harvard Divinity School is extending its current search in African American Religious Studies (originally announced in November 2001) into the 2003-04 academic year. In addition to senior candidates already under consideration and any new senior candidates who wish to be considered, the search committee seeks qualified candidates at the assistant or associate professorial level. The expectation is that at least one candidate, and possibly two candidates in this search, will be offered an appointment of appropriate rank to begin in the 2004-05 academic year. The field of specialization is open, but scholarly accomplishment, publications, and demonstrated teaching excellence in the area of African American Religious Studies are required. The responsibilities of the(se) new position(s) include teaching and advising students at the masters and doctoral levels and an ability to contribute to ministerial studies at the Divinity School. This also involves opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration within the Divinity School, with the undergraduate and doctoral programs in the Study of Religion, the Department of African American Studies, and other departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The search committee will resume consideration of candidates in September. Letters of application or nomination, accompanied by a recent curriculum vitae, letters of recommendation, and writing sample and/or publications should be sent to Monica Beatty, Faculty Search Coordinator, Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. Applicants are encouraged to submit full dossiers by October 1, 2003. Harvard Divinity School is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Applications from women and/or ethnic minority and international candidates are especially encouraged.

The American Society of Church History invites applications for the part-time position of Executive Secretary. Founded in 1888, the Society sponsors Winter and Spring meetings for scholarly exchange and publishes the journal Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. Duties of the Executive Secretary include arranging meetings, managing finances, conducting correspondence, and supervising the website. Current stipend of $12,000 is negotiable depending on qualifications. The initial term is for 5 years. Applicants should send a letter, c.v., and two letters of reference to Prof. Catherine Brekus, The University of Chicago Divinity School, 1025 East 58th Street, Chicago IL 60637 by April 15. Interviews will take place at the Spring meeting in Louisville, KY on May 8-9. The ASCH is an affirmative action/ equal opportunity employer.

Fellowships and Grants:

The Five College African Scholars Program announces four and one-half month residency fellowships from January to May 2004 and August to December 2004. Junior and mid-level scholars, who are citizens of an African nation and who teach in African universities, are eligible to apply. Proposals are invited for writing projects, based on applicant’s current research, which can be completed and prepared for publication during the residency. Projects may be in any discipline or interdisciplinary. They should be relevant to the study of Africa in the social sciences or the humanities and demonstrate a benefit to the scholar’s home university. Because the program does not provide laboratory facilities, scientific proposals will be considered only if they are at the stage of reviewing data and scholarly literature in order to publish results.

Each fellow will be hosted by a faculty member at one of the Five College institutions - Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College or University of Massachusetts Amherst. Six fellowships will be awarded in 2004; provisions include a $3,000 stipend for each month in residence, airfare, laptop computer, housing, health insurance, access to libraries, office, and a modest research allowance. For more information, including application, eligibility, and selection criteria, please visit the website. If you would like materials sent to you by mail, please email or mail your request. Applications must be received by the deadline: May 15, 2003.

John Lemly, Program Director
Five College African Scholars Program
706 Herter Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
USA

Recent and Forthcoming Books

Mary Jo Deegan, ed. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893-1918 (Northern Illinois, 2002)

Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers (Oxford, 2002)

Sharla M. Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (UNC, 2002)

Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism (Missouri, 2003)

Karla F.C. Holloway, Passed On: African American Mouring Stories (Duke, 2002)

Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915 (Massachusetts, 2003)

George E. Lankford, ed., Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery, Narratives from the 1930s WPA Collection (Arkansas, 2003)

Andrew M. Manis, Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Civil Rights and the Culture Wars, 2nd edition (Mercer, 2002)

Stephen A. Marini, Sacred Song in America (Illinois, 2003)

Paula J. Massood, Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film (Temple, 2002)

Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (Georgia, 2003)

Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, Power and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora (California, 2002)

Marvin A.McMickle, An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage (Fortress, 2002)

Omar Maurice McRobert, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood (Chicago, 2003)

Albert G. Miller, Elevating The Race: Theophilus G. Steward and The Making of An African-American Civil Religion, 1865-1924 (Tennessee, 2003)

Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santeria to Obeah and Espiritismo (NYU, 2003)

Anthony B. Pinn, The Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Orbis, 2002)

Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Fortress, 2003)

Craig R. Prentiss, ed., Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity (NYU, 2003)

Teresa L. Reed, The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music (Kentucky, 2002)

Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion and Civil Rights (Fortress, 2003)

John Saillant, Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753-1833 (Oxford, 2002)

R. Drew Smith, New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America (Duke, 2003)

Johnny E. Williams, African American Religion and the Civil Rights Movement in Arkansas (Mississippi, 2003)

Juan Williams and Quinton Dixie, This Far By Faith: Stories from the African-American Religious Experience (Harper, 2003)

Scott C. Williamson, The Narrative Life: The Moral and Religious Thought of Frederick Douglass (Mercer, 2002)

Richard L. Wood, Faith in Action: Religion, Race and Democratic Organizing in America (Chicago, 2002)

Dissertations

Marla Faye Frederick, "The Cultural Politics of Religious Experience: African American Women's Spirituality and Activism in the Contemporary United States South (South Carolina)" (Duke, 2000)

Regina Lemel Graham, "I Have a Testimony: A Perspective of Death, Grief and Widowhood in African American Culture" (UNC Greensboro, 2002)

Julia Robinson Harmon, "Reverend Robert L. Bradby: Establishing the Kingdom of God among Migrants, Women and Workers, 1910--1946 (Michigan)" (Michigan State, 2002)

Roudell Kirkwood, "The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and the Education of Afrikan Adults: An Historical Study of Quinn Chalep, Chicago, Illinois, 1947-1997" (Northern Illinois, 2001)

Debra Washington Mubashshir, "A Fruitful Labor: African American Formulations of Islam, 1928--1942" (Northwestern, 2001)

Raymond Wise, "Defining African American Gospel Music by Tracing its Historical and Musical Development from 1900 to 2000" (Ohio State, 2002)

Articles

Martin Japtok, "Constructing Childhood: The Christian Recorder and Literature for Black Children, 1854-1865," African American Review 36: 3 (Fall 2002).

Benjamin Sevitch, "W.E.B. Du Bois and Jews: A Lifetime of Opposing Anti-Semitism," Journal of African American History 87 (Summer 2002): 323-37.

Zachery Williams, "Prophets of Black Progress: Benjamin E. Mays and Howard W. Thurman," Journal of African American Men 5 (Spring 2001): 23-37.

 

 

 

 

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