The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion

Keynote Speaker and Respondent

The conference--which was held at the Bryant Conference Center, on the campus of the University of Alabama--began Thursday evening and, throughout its two days, was attended by approximately 100 people.

Prof. Tom Wolfe, Associate Dean for Humanities and Fine Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the School of Music's Jazz Studies Program, opened the conference, noting his own experiences of Africa acquired through his participation in the U.S.'s Jazz Ambassadors Program.

Prof. Wilson Moses, author of Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History, was the keynote speaker, opening the conference with a Thursday evening lecture on Alexander Crummel (1819-1898)--who was a topic of Moses's 1989 book--the noted supporter of a black Christian republic in of freed slaves--qualifying him as an early advocate for what has come to be known as black nationalism.

Near the end of the day on Friday, Prof. Tim Murphy, of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, introduced the conference's respondent, Prof. Eddie Glaude of Princeton University, author of Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America.

Prof. Glaude, whose comments shone a kind light on all of the day's previous speakers, drew on the work of the late comparative literature scholar, Edward Said, to focus attention on the need to carry out thoroughly historical scholarship on Africa and African-influenced cultures, rather than seeing in Africa a pristine or authentic originary point. In making this argument he drew his audience's attention to Said's 1985 book, Beginnings: Intention and Method.

Photos thanks to Samantha Sastre and Christine Scott