Apostles of Beauty: The Harlem Renaissance and Christian Social Ethics
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (2 July 2023) | Viewed by 756
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This issue is an engagement with the work that black aesthetics does to recalibrate what it means to be Christian and human from harmful ideals set in place by modernity’s racial regime of representation. The field of aesthetics and the science of human taxonomies that aid and abet a racial hierarchy also fashion a social ethic, organizing values and norms according to concepts of supremacy. The Harlem Renaissance offers an engagement with a black aesthetic that serves as intervention into the regime of representation, in order to recalibrate our understanding of human, and consequently, our social life together. The fact that there is repeated engagement with religious imagery during the Harlem Renaissance is an indication that the artists and intellectuals recognize the legitimizing ideological source for the regime of representation. To interrupt the regime is to engage it at its source. This volume is interested in wide varieties in approaches from fields like, but not limited to, Black womanist and Feminist analysis, queer theory, Christian Theological and Social Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Black Aesthetics, Cultural analysis, and black critical theory.
In summary, the focus of the volume is as follows:
- An analysis of the aesthetic aspects of the human, and the religious aspects of the aesthetic to unmask the normative practices associated with white aesthetics as a regime of representation.
- An identification and articulation of black aesthetics as the practice of interruption and recalibration of human being towards a healthier social ethic.
- To speak of a black Jesus as a model for the human, the sacred, and the communion of saints, articulating the work of Social Ethics as removing the obstacles that prevent our ability to be together in community.
- This issue will be a useful supplement to current work being done by intellectual historians and cultural theorists on the Harlem Renaissance. Scholars like Erin D. Chapman, Wallace Best, Josef Sorett, Craig Prentiss, Robert Gooding Williams, Addison Gayle, Stuart Hall, and M. Cooper Harris offer historical and theoretical engagements with black aesthetics. This volume will speak to the moment in light of its potential to offer norms for social life together.
Dr. Reggie L. Williams
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- aesthetics
- Black Aesthetics
- social ethics
- Harlem Renaissance
- Black Jesus
- race
- New Negro
- Great Migration
- W.E.B. Du Bois
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Langston Hughes
- Nella Larsen
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