Loading...
Symposium: “Haiti and Religious Nativism in Early American Literature” and “Generous Orthodoxy and the Tragic Disposition”
Back to Beloved Community Faculty Scholarship Symposium (Overview of Offerings)
Mulva Library, First Floor
100 Grant Street, De Pere, WI 54115, United States
24
Registered
Registration
Registration is now closed (this event already took place).
Details
Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount.
AnaMaria Clawson (English) presents “Haiti and Religious Nativism in Early American Literature”
How have we narrated the history of religious intolerance in the U.S.? This presentation examines the longer literary history of religious nativism and specifically the role that early U.S. perceptions of the Caribbean played in its development. Analyzing one early American novel set during the Haitian Revolution alongside anti-Catholic propaganda, it demonstrates how early Americans relied upon depictions of Black revolution to validate ongoing Protestant concerns about Catholicism’s perceived threat to moral and racial purity. Such depictions call our attention to the religious rhetoric through which depictions of Black resistance have been put for the purposes of reaffirming whiteness.
Ben Menghini (Theology & Religious Studies) presents “Generous Orthodoxy and the Tragic Disposition”
This presentation will consider the possibility of a generous orthodoxy, a concept left underdeveloped by the untimely death of theologian Hans Frei. Exploring how something as rigid and apologetic as orthodoxy can possibly become generous I will propose that the practitioners of an orthodoxy must approach the world with a tragic disposition, a vulnerable and receptive form of life. Generous orthodoxy then makes possible an alternative to the racial and colonial hegemonies that Dr. King lived his life resisting. This presentation draws on the work of theologian Willie Jennings, cultural theorist Stuart Hall, and anthropologist David Scott.