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With This Root about My Person
Charles H. Long and New Directions in the Study of Religion
Edited by Jennifer Reid and Davíd Carrasco
Charles H. Long's groundbreaking works on Africana religious studies serve as the backdrop to With This Root about My Person. The volume features twenty-six essays by a diverse group of students and scholars of Long. Revitalizing an interpretive framework rooted in the Chicago tradition, the essays in this volume vigorously debate the nature of religions in the Americas. In doing so they wrestle with the foundations of the study of religion that emerged out of the European Enlightenment, they engage the discipline's entrenchment in the conquest of the Americas, and they grapple with the field's legacy of colonialism. The book demonstrates tremendous breadth and depth of scope in its skillful comparative work on colonialism, which links the religions of the Americas, Melanesia, and Africa. This seminal work is an important addition to the Religions of the Americas Series and a valuable contribution to the field to which Charles H. Long was for so long devoted.
Jennifer Reid is professor of religion at the University of Maine, Farmington. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa. She is the author of Myth, Symbol and Colonial Encounter, Worse Than Beasts: An Anatomy of Melancholy and the Literature of Travel in 17th and 18th Century England, as well as numerous articles in the history of religions. She edited the volume Religion and Global Culture: New Terrain in the Study of Religion.
Davíd Carrasco is Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America with a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Divinity School at Harvard University. He was recently awarded the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle.
"Read this book in order to be reminded of the breadth and depth of Charles Long's contributions to the study of religion or . . . in order to be persuaded of Long's historical and continued relevance in the field."--Alexander Rocklin, The Journal of Religion
"This book is truly a great boon for all scholars and students who will be introduced to the depths of Long's scholarship in relation to both confessional theology and critical theories and methods in religious studies."--Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Reading Religion
"In explicating Long's critique of Black theology and US civil religion, his theorization of religion and modernity, and his role in creating and innovating the history of religions, With This Root about My Person makes a significant contribution to the field."--Edward E. Curtis IV, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"Expanding like a beautiful fan, the collection explores Long's impact on the study of African diasporic religions, American civil religion, the philosophy of religion, and indigenous religions in the Americas. In tracing the linkages between Long and the concept of indigeneity, this volume forges new theoretical ground, mapping an orientation toward the sacredness of the material world while facing (down) the colonial imperative to extract resources. This volume will inspire new ways of facing current and future concerns. Highly recommended."--J. Kahn, Choice
"Remarkably the contributors illustrate a different aspect of the history of religions field due to Long's influence. This volume provides material for courses, or in the Long tradition, animated late-night discussions about the content and method of the history of religions."--Jill Raitt, author of The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century
Introduction
Jennifer Reid
Part One. Religious Imagination of Matter: Topographies of Method
Chapter One. Mapping Oceans: Charles H. Long, Colonialism, and the Study of Religion
David Chidester
Chapter Two. Long Contact with Significations
Jay Geller
Chapter Three. Indigeneity: The Work of History of Religions and Charles H. Long
Philip P. Arnold
Chapter Four. Seeking an Interpretive Center in the Study of Religion
Randal Cummings
Chapter Five. After Fetishism: The Study of Religion in the Age of the Commodity
Tatsuo Murakami
Chapter Six. About Cargo and the Melanesians
Garry W. Trompf
Chapter Seven. "With This Root about My Person, No White Man Could Whip Me": Charles H. Long as Intellectual Rootworker in Africana Religious Studies
Tracey Elaine Hucks
Part Two. Religion, Worlds, and Order
Chapter Eight. Opacity in Native American Visions
Lisa Poirier
Chapter Nine. Religion and Revolution in the Life and Work of Louis Riel
Jennifer Reid
Chapter Ten. American Civil Religion: The Gift and the Economy of Revolutionary Freedom
Carole Lynn Stewart
Chapter Eleven. "Fired in the Crucible of Oppression": Toward a Theology of Spiritual Freedom
Raymond Carr
Chapter Twelve. Aesthetically Analyzing the Transactional Moment: The Involuntary Presence as the Grotesque
Jeania Ree V. Moore
Chapter Thirteen. Civil Religion in America: When the "Empirical Other" is Us
Karen E. Fields
Chapter Fourteen. The "Donation" of King James: Misreadings of the Black Atlantic
Vincent L. Wimbush
Part Three. Religions of Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas
Chapter Fifteen. Thus Spoke Ọrunmila: Ifa Hermeneutics, Education, and African Cultural Renaissance
Jacob Olupona
Chapter Sixteen. The Fetish and Charles Long's Theory of Contact and Exchange
Sylvester A. Johnson
Chapter Seventeen. Charles H. Long--Intellectual Godfather: African Atlantic Research Team and Cuba's Distinct Religions
Jualynne E. Dodson
Chapter Eighteen. The Lithic Imagination and the Tertia: Resources of Art and Literature for the Study of Afro-Atlantic Religion
Rachel Elizabeth Harding
Chapter Nineteen. Contact/Exchange in Charles H. Long's Thought and the "Concealed" Spatial/Sexual Dimension of Black Embodiment
James A. Noel
Chapter Twenty. Contested Hermeneutical Aims in Theologies Opaque
Victor Anderson
Chapter Twenty-One. No Other God: The Theological Crisis of American Life
Matthew Johnson
Part Four. The Chicago Tradition, Charles H. Long, and the History of Religions
Chapter Twenty-Two. Yes, There Is (or Was) a Chicago School of History of Religions
Nancy Falk
Chapter Twenty-Three. An Arche of His Own: Charles H. Long as Consummate and Constant Teacher
Lindsay Jones
Chapter Twenty-Four. The Chicago School: An Academic Mode of Being
Charles H. Long
Chapter Twenty-Five. Codex Charles Long: The Scholar Who Traveled to Many Places to Understand Others
Davíd Carrasco
Bibliography
Index
Also Of Interest
