April 19, 2021: "Where Credit is Due": Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Study of World Christianity -- a lecture by Joel Cabrita, Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University

Canonical texts in the area of World Christianity, many authored by white European and North American scholars, have significantly relied upon the intellectual work of African researchers. Yet the contributions of these African collaborators are largely unacknowledged and tend to be marginalized in official histories of the field. Bantu Prophets in South Africa (1948), written by Swedish Lutheran missionary scholar Bengt Sundkler, is one such widely acclaimed classic of African Studies, and a foundational text for the study of World Christianity. This talk revisits the history of the writing and circulation of Bantu Prophets and its second edition (1961), revealing for the first time the significance of Sundkler's main research assistant, the Lutheran priest Titus Mthembu, to the making of this famous text. Living amidst the strictures of a racist and repressive state, Mthembu's proximity to this book became his means to argue for African autonomy from white rule and the integrity of a realm of Black religiosity. The talk thus probes the production of religious knowledge in twentieth-century Africa, the fraught and racialized power dynamics between professional scholars and their “assistants”, and the reliance of the field of World Christianity on a realm of hitherto obscured indigenous intellectual labour.

Joel Cabrita is currently Assistant Professor of African History at Stanford University. Her previous posts have been held at the University of Cambridge and SOAS, University of London. Her most recent book is the prize-winning The People’s Zion: Southern Africa, the United States and a Transatlantic Faith-Healing Movement (Harvard University Press, 2018). She is also the author of Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church (Cambridge University Press, 2014), as well as co-editor of Relocating World Christianity (Brill, 2017) and Religion, Media and Marginality in Africa (Ohio University Press, 2018). Throughout 2017-2018 she worked with the South African photographer, Sabelo Mlageni, in organizing and curating two photographic exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cambridge, UK focusing on Mlangeni’s work on Zionist Christians in South Africa. Cabrita’s current research project is a biography of the mid-twentieth-century Swazi Pentecostal leader and politician, Regina Gelana Twala.

Date: April 19, 2021
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

See: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/martin-marty-center/conferences-and-events/rustandy-global-christianity-distinguished-speaker

Kirsten Collins, PhD student in the Divinity School, will present a paper for the Jewish Studies Workshop. The link for the zoom session and an advance copy of the paper will be available at the workshop website https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/. Papers and zoom links will also be pre-circulated via the Jewish Studies Workshop listserv. If you need further information or would like to be added to the workshop listserv, you can do so at https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/subscribe/, or email the workshop coordinators, Ido Telem telem@uchicago.edu or Benjamin Arenstein barenstein@uchicago.edu.

Date: April 19, 2021
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

See: https://voices.uchicago.edu/jst_hb/

“To write a genealogy of survival is not to write a history of survival but instead to ask where such a history might begin. What are survival’s limits? What are its archives? What are its languages? And what field of translations mediates its generalizations?” “Who is speaking about survival?” These are some of the questions that Adam Stern (University of Wisconsin–Madison) asks in Survival (2021), an exploration of the notion of “survival” in Christian and Jewish tradition and in contemporary political discourse.

Respondents: Sam Catlin (PhD student, Divinity School and Dept. of Comparative Literature) and Kirsten Collins (PhD student, Divinity School).

Moderator: Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions, and History of Judaism, Divinity School.

This is the first event in the series "Greenberg Book Conversations" sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. It is open to the public, but registration is required (at the link below).

Date: April 20, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

“To write a genealogy of survival is not to write a history of survival but instead to ask where such a history might begin. What are survival’s limits? What are its archives? What are its languages? And what field of translations mediates its generalizations?” “Who is speaking about survival?” These are some of the questions that Adam Stern (University of Wisconsin–Madison) asks in Survival (2021), an exploration of the notion of “survival” in Christian and Jewish tradition and in contemporary political discourse. Prof. Stern will be joined by respondents Sam Catlin (PhD student, Divinity School and Dept. of Comparative Literature) and Kirsten Collins (PhD student, Divinity School) and the discussion will be moderated by Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions, and History of Judaism, Divinity School. To register for this virtual event, go to https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ofuqtpz8rHtAkYEhKaH-Zx6sNXp321MoV. This event is part of the series Greenberg Book Conversations, sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. For more information, contact the administrator of the Greenberg Center, Nancy Pardee, at npardee@uchicago.edu.

Date: April 20, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Join Anita Norich, Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, for a talk that will focus on questions about women and Yiddish writing. When and what did women write in Yiddish? Why are so few of them known as prose writers? How did critics respond to them? How did they respond to one another? Register to attend online at https://bit.ly/3tMHmOu. This event is sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Center for East European and Russian-Eurasian Studies, the Department of Germanic Studies, Translation Studies, and the Yiddish Fund of the University of Chicago.

Date: April 22, 2021
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

The two-day event with Anita Norich continues as she joins Jessica Kirzane (Asst. Instructional Professor in Yiddish, Department of Germanic Studies) in a conversation about their current projects translating women’s prose from Yiddish to English, the challenges and rewards of translation, and the ways in which translation is changing the understanding of Yiddish and Jewish literary history. Register to attend online at https://bit.ly/3d60eRL. This event is sponsored by the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Center for East European and Russian-Eurasian Studies, the Department of Germanic Studies, Translation Studies, and the Yiddish Fund of the University of Chicago.

Date: April 23, 2021
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Erin Galgay Walsh, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School, will present a paper for a joint meeting of the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception Workshop and the Early Christian Studies Workshop. For information and the zoom link, please contact the workshop coordinator, Doren Snoek, dsnoek@uchicago.edu.

Date: April 26, 2021
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Erin Galgay Walsh - “Beware her Path: Eve in Greek and Syriac Poetry from Late Antiquity”

4:30 p.m. (Central)

Erin Galgay Walsh, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School, will present a paper for a joint meeting of the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception Workshop and the Early Christian Studies Workshop. For information and the zoom link, please contact the workshop coordinator, Doren Snoek, dsnoek@uchicago.edu.

Date: April 26, 2021
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM