Black Judah: Race, Gender and the Twelve Tribes of Transnationalism

John L. Jackson, Jr., University of Pennsylvania
Friday, February 8, 2008
3:00-5:00pm
Arab Studies Board Room, ICC 242
Co-Sponsored by the Anthropology Program
Event open to public RSVP

Focusing on the transatlantic flow of practitioners, religious beliefs, and cultural practices, this lecture highlights current fieldwork exploring how Black Hebrew Israelites in New York City, Washington DC, and Dimona (Israel) construct a globally diverse spiritual subjectivity with its own particular iteration of Black Diasporic possibility.

John Jackson is Richard Perry University Associate Professor of Communication and Anthropology Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Anthropology University of Pennsylvania. His books include Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity, University of Chicago Press, 2005, and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America, University of Chicago Press, 2001 (paper 03). He is editor of the special issue "Racial Americana" for The South Atlantic Quarterly, Duke University Press, 2005. Well-known articles include "Gentrification, Globalization, and Georaciality," contributed to Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness, eds., Kamari Clarke and Deborah A. Thomas (forthcoming, Duke University Press, 2006); and "An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object," American Anthropologist 106(1): 32-42, March 2004. He is currently Associate Producer of the film project “Harlem Stories (Non-Fiction)” and producer of the award-winning “Divided We Stand,” a 90-minute feature film (fiction).

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs Lecture Series
2007-2008: Religion, Identity, and Race

Co-Sponsored with the Anthropology Program, Georgetown University

This lecture series features well-known anthropologists of religion and politics, drawn from major universities. They are invited to explore the complex and changing nexus of religion and identity, drawing on diverse fieldwork from around the world. Sensitive issues of “race” and its politicization, multiculturalism, global and local media influence, colonial legacies, missionary activities, and “cultural clashes” are highlighted to enable the broader Georgetown community to consider the anthropology of religion in new ways.