African American Studies Commons^™

Cinema, Black Suffering, And Theodicy: Modern God, Terry Lindvall

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Shayne Lee, Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy: Modern God (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).

Exhibiting Forgiveness, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Exhibiting Forgiveness (2024), directed by Titus Kaphar.

Critical Race Religious Literacy: Exposing The Taproot Of Contemporary Evangelical Attacks On Crt, Robert O. Smith, Aja Y. Martinez

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

“And So My Soul Shall Rise”: Enslaved And Free African American Christianity Before Emancipation, Holly J. Lawson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

The Christianity of enslaved and free African Americans in the years immediately following the first Great Awakening through the end of the Civil War (roughly 1750-1850) evidences a complex cultural fusion and a complicated theological depth. There were many different aspects of the religious and spiritual practices of these African American Christians, including preaching, baptism, ecstatic spiritual experiences, evangelism, violent and non-violent forms of resistance to slavery, and, possibly the most prevalent of all, music and singing. The hundreds of thousands of African people unwillingly brought to America brought with them their African heritage, but the survival of their African …

Peele’S Black, Extraterrestrial, Naturalistic Critique Of Religion, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

While Jordan Peele’s films have always held their mysteries close to the chest, they eventually granted their viewers some climactic clarity. Get Out (2017) used an 1980s style orientation video to clear up its neuroscientific twist, while Us (2019) had Lupita Nyongo’s underworld twin narratively spell out the details of the plot. Yet Nope (2022) refuses to show its hand even after the game is over, never illuminating the connection between its opening scene and the broader film, nor a myriad of other questions. As such, critics complained that it stitched together two seemingly incongruent plots without explanation; one where …

Blessed, Broken, And Shared, Joseph Penny

Obsculta

This paper seeks to boldly confront the evils of racism while simultaneously pointing to a renewed baptismal ecclesiology and a praxis of radical communion as a way forward. Venturing into the unknown, we will persevere onward to the road less traveled by briefly charting the Catholic Church's historical cooperation with White Supremacy. We will also celebrate the wisdom gleaned from Black and Latin American communities and their seemingly mundane yet deeply sacred rituals.

Sense Of Belonging Of Lgbtq+, Racial Minority, And Religiously Affiliated College Students At Binghamton University, Nusrat Islam, Leah Cingranelli

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Binghamton University and institutions alike have put forth certain rules and efforts to ensure that students of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and students who are religiously affiliated feel safe. The reality is that many of these students feel unwelcome and ostracized due to their social identities (Blakmon et al., 2020). The aim of this non-experimental study was to investigate if there was a significant difference in sense of belonging among minority groups of undergraduate students who attend Binghamton University, as well as those who are not part of minority groups. We hypothesized that the sense of belonging amongst …

Black (Muslim) Lives Matter: African American Muslim Social Activism, Jacob C. Riccioni

The Hilltop Review

Over the past eight years, the Black Lives Matter movement has advocated for marginalized communities within the African American population and called for police brutality and anti-black racism to be abolished. With the rise of Black Lives Matter in contemporary society, I am left wondering, do African American Muslims support the Black Lives Matter movement? There is no simple answer for African American Muslim leaders and laypeople because the Black Lives Matter movement supports LGBTQ+ rights, which some Muslims do not condone, and some rallies have broken out into riots. Religious leaders and scholars are split between supporting Black Lives …

Everyday Peace: Historicising Local Agency In Managing Ethno-Religious Conflicts In Nigeria’S Middle Belt, Gloria Na’Antoe Longba’Am-Alli

The Journal of Social Encounters

Over the years, critical studies scholars have criticised liberal peacebuilding strategies for their elitist top-down policies, which hardly pay attention to the local concepts and acts of peace. Critical peace and conflict studies scholars’ advocacy for ‘everyday peace’ comes from negotiated governance, where loosely coordinated processes surpass liberal peace's top-down policies. Therefore, everyday peace recognises people's commentaries and practices shaping their resistance, resilience, and negotiation with conflicting groups. In particular, women and people far from city centres are often marginalised or are not included in peacebuilding efforts. In recognising these people’s limited involvement, this article draws on oral interviews, archival …

Spirituality Countering Dehumanization: A Cypher On Asian American Hip Hop Flow, Brett J. Esaki

Journal of Hip Hop Studies

Flow—an artistic connection to the beat—is essential to the experience and cultural mix of Hip Hop. “Flow” is also a term from positive psychology that describes a special out-of-body state of consciousness, first articulated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When Hip Hop performers get into artistic flow, they sometimes become immersed in psychological flow, and this article examines the combination for Asian American Hip Hop. Based on my national survey of Asian Americans in Hip Hop, I argue that dual flow inspires spiritual transformation and mitigates the dehumanization of social marginalization. However, the combination of terms presents problematic possibilities, given that Hip …

Blindspotting And Covid: The Gentrification Of Racism, Ashley Starr-Morris

Journal of Religion & Film

The novel Coronavirus is not only exposing old patterns of racism and systemic inequalities, but deepening them as well. The notion of blindspotting, as described in the film by the same name, is used to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the “spiritual emergency” or crisis of racism in America. "Blindspotting" is an image or situation that can be interpreted in two ways but is understood by some in only one way, thereby producing a blind spot. In 2020 and 2021, we see segments of American society, from politics to white Christian nationalism, upholding a sacred canopy of exceptionalism by …

Akbar, My Heart: Caregiving For A Dog During Covid-19, Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond

Animal Studies Journal

Covid-19 originates with humans’ instrumentalization of other animals, an “inconvenient truth” elided by scientists procuring a vaccine while refusing to contend with the captivity, slaughter and encroachment on wild animals’ habitats that brought the fatal disease upon us. The interlocking of homo sapiens’ and other species’ suffering is, of course, glaringly evidenced by disproportionate Black and brown death due to Covid-19 worldwide, itself intensifying the foundational pandemic of anti-Black violence.

“Akbar, My Heart” contemplates transpecies loss in a relational frame, attending to the entanglement of white supremacy with anthropocentrism at the same time that I reflect on caregiving for my …

Restoration Quarterly: Vol. 63, No. 1

Restoration Quarterly

PDF of the cover of Restoration Quarterly: Vol. 63, No. 1.

This repository hosts selected Restoration Quarterly articles in downloadable PDF format. For the benefit of users who would like to browse the contents of RQ, we have included all issue covers even when full-text articles from that issue are unavailable. All Restoration Quarterly articles are available in full text in the ATLA Religion Database, available through most university and theological libraries or through your local library’s inter-library loan service.

Burden, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Burden (2020) directed by Andrew Heckler.

Table Of Contents, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Transformational Leadership: Flow, Resonance, And Social Change, Enas Elhanafi

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

South Africa As A Dynamic Teaching Experience, Robert A. Simons, Christine Dickinson

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

My Mother On Dream Interpretation And The Lack Of Finality In Death, Liz Johnston

Comparative Woman

This is an interview with my mother, a dream interpreter. Here, we explore her practice of reading dreams and discuss her experiences in communicating with spirits.

The Fluid Pastoral: African American Spiritual Waterways In The Urban Landscapes Of Harlem Renaissance Poetry, Maren E. Loveland

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 1921 Langston Hughes penned, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” in his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Hughes 1254). Weaving the profound pain of the African American experience with the symbolism of the primordial river, Hughes recognized the inherent power of water as a means of spiritual communication and religious significance. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the American pastoral as typified by white poets such as Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, the African American poets emerging from the Harlem Renaissance established a more nuanced pastoral landscape embedded within urban cultures, utilizing water in particular as …

Interview With Carlton Pearson, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

Editor John Lyden had the opportunity for a conversation with Rev. Carlton Pearson, the subject of the Netflix film Come Sunday which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2018. They discussed Pearson's theology of inclusion and what led him to it.

Emerging Challenges To Long-Term Peace And Security In Mozambique, Ayokunu Adedokun

The Journal of Social Encounters

Mozambique’s transition from civil war to peace is often considered among the most successful implementations of a peace agreement in the post-Cold War era. Following the signing of the 1992 Rome General Peace Accords (GPA), the country has not experienced any large-scale recurrence of war. Instead, Mozambique has made impressive progress in economic growth, poverty reduction, improved security, regional cooperation and post-war democratisation. Mozambique has also made significant strides in the provision of primary healthcare, and steady progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Notwithstanding these stellar achievements, Mozambique still faces a large number of political, social and economic problems: …

"I Do Feel The Fire!": The Transformations Of Prison-Based Black Male Converts To Islam In South Central, Malcolm X, And Oz, Kameron J. Copeland

Journal of Religion & Film

Historically, imprisoned Black male converts to Islam have been known for their narratives of redemption and struggles for religious freedom behind bars. While Islam possesses a strong visible presence throughout predominately Black areas of inner cities, it has become a natural feature of Black popular culture in mediums such as hip-hop, film, and literature. By the 1990s, the portrayal of Islamic conversions yielding Malcolm X-style transformations among young Black men, who formerly embodied self-destructiveness, were visible in films featuring Black male protagonists. The prison-based transformations typically involved highly influential Black Muslim leaders improving the social conditions of the inmate, the …

The Legacy Of Gil Scott-Heron, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Books: Suggestions For Further Reading, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

The Wings Over Jordan And The Scholarship Of Oral History, Regennia N. Williams, Glenn Brackens

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

A Former Student And Colleague Remembers Gil Scott-Heron, Linwood Gato Martinez-Bentley

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Guest Editor's Introduction, Sherlynn Allen-Harris

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgments And Disclaimer, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Black Lives: The Effect Of The Digital Age On African American Identity And Political Participation, Lauren Grimes

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.