Jerry Jackson Lecture in the Humanities by Dr. Marcus Harvey

Description

The last three decades have witnessed the incremental growth of a promising but nascent subfield within the academic study of religion called “Africana religious studies,” a designation encompassing African religio-cultural traditions in Africa and in African diaspora communities around the world.  Some scholars working in this new discipline have seen fit to build entire projects around questions of method and to devise research agendas “no longer burdened by Western theoretical and disciplinary regimes or the devout translator’s Euro-Christian template.”

Guided by this proposal, this lecture considers the story of Burkina Faso elder Malidoma Somé as an important theoretical resource. In his autobiography, Of Water and the Spirit, Somé recounts the experience of being kidnapped in 1960 at age four by a French Jesuit missionary and educated by Jesuits. When Somé escaped and returned to his home many years later, he underwent a long initiation rite called Baor that installed in him a form of knowledge entirely at odds with what he learned at the Jesuit schools. Somé found himself lodged between two knowledgescapes: one bent upon the cultural subjugation of his people, and the other nurtured by disciplined relationship with an elusive, dangerous spiritual realm. The lecture will contend that the keen epistemological analysis Somé provides in Of Water and the Spirit can significantly expand the theoretical scope of Africana religious studies moving forward and is thus deserving of critical investigation.

Dr. Marcus Harvey, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, UNC Asheville, will deliver this Jerry Jackson Lecture in the Humanities, co-sponsored by the Honors College.