Jerrilyn McGregory
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604737820
- eISBN:
- 9781604737837
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604737820.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book explores sacred music and spiritual activism in a little-known region of the South, the Wiregrass Country of Georgia, Alabama, and North Florida. It examines African American sacred music ...
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This book explores sacred music and spiritual activism in a little-known region of the South, the Wiregrass Country of Georgia, Alabama, and North Florida. It examines African American sacred music outside of Sunday church-related activities, showing that singing conventions and anniversary programs fortify spiritual as well as social needs. In this region African Americans maintain a social world of their own creation. Their cultural performances embrace some of the most pervasive forms of African American sacred music—spirituals, common meter, Sacred Harp, shape-note, traditional, and contemporary gospel. Moreover, the contexts in which African Americans sing include present-day observations such as the Twentieth of May (Emancipation Day), Burial League Turnouts, and Fifth Sunday. Rather than tracing the evolution of African American sacred music, this ethnographic study focuses on contemporary cultural performances, almost all by women, which embrace all forms. These women promote a female-centered theology to ensure the survival of their communities and personal networks, and function in leadership roles that withstand the test of time. Their spiritual activism presents itself as a way of life. In Wiregrass Country, “You don’t have to sing like an angel” is a frequently expressed sentiment. To these women, “good” music is God’s music regardless of the manner delivered.Less
This book explores sacred music and spiritual activism in a little-known region of the South, the Wiregrass Country of Georgia, Alabama, and North Florida. It examines African American sacred music outside of Sunday church-related activities, showing that singing conventions and anniversary programs fortify spiritual as well as social needs. In this region African Americans maintain a social world of their own creation. Their cultural performances embrace some of the most pervasive forms of African American sacred music—spirituals, common meter, Sacred Harp, shape-note, traditional, and contemporary gospel. Moreover, the contexts in which African Americans sing include present-day observations such as the Twentieth of May (Emancipation Day), Burial League Turnouts, and Fifth Sunday. Rather than tracing the evolution of African American sacred music, this ethnographic study focuses on contemporary cultural performances, almost all by women, which embrace all forms. These women promote a female-centered theology to ensure the survival of their communities and personal networks, and function in leadership roles that withstand the test of time. Their spiritual activism presents itself as a way of life. In Wiregrass Country, “You don’t have to sing like an angel” is a frequently expressed sentiment. To these women, “good” music is God’s music regardless of the manner delivered.
Becky Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041167
- eISBN:
- 9780252099731
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041167.001.0001
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, ...
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Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, meditation, free writing, mindfulness, ritual) to keep our hearts open as we reckon with multiple injustices. Teaching with Tenderness makes room for emotion, offers a witness for experiences people have buried, welcomes silence, breath, and movement, and sees justice as key to our survival. It allows us to rethink our relationship to grading, office hours, desks, and faculty meetings, sees paradox as a constant companion, moves us beyond binaries, and praises self and community care.
Teaching with Tenderness identifies a range of stresses that students and faculty bring to the classroom—as young people worried about the state of the world, veterans, trauma survivors, people with disabilities, and social justice activists—and ways of teaching that remind us that we belong to each other. It identifies why people take flight from their own bodies and strategies that enable people to stay fully present for each other. The book draws upon the author’s teaching at a range of universities in the United States as well as in China, Greece, and Thailand. Thompson writes as a professor, poet, yoga teacher, and humanitarian worker seeking spontaneous, planned, and found rituals of inclusion that lean us toward justice, rest on rigorous study, and treat the classroom as a sacred space.
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Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, meditation, free writing, mindfulness, ritual) to keep our hearts open as we reckon with multiple injustices. Teaching with Tenderness makes room for emotion, offers a witness for experiences people have buried, welcomes silence, breath, and movement, and sees justice as key to our survival. It allows us to rethink our relationship to grading, office hours, desks, and faculty meetings, sees paradox as a constant companion, moves us beyond binaries, and praises self and community care.
Teaching with Tenderness identifies a range of stresses that students and faculty bring to the classroom—as young people worried about the state of the world, veterans, trauma survivors, people with disabilities, and social justice activists—and ways of teaching that remind us that we belong to each other. It identifies why people take flight from their own bodies and strategies that enable people to stay fully present for each other. The book draws upon the author’s teaching at a range of universities in the United States as well as in China, Greece, and Thailand. Thompson writes as a professor, poet, yoga teacher, and humanitarian worker seeking spontaneous, planned, and found rituals of inclusion that lean us toward justice, rest on rigorous study, and treat the classroom as a sacred space.
James Mark Shields
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190664008
- eISBN:
- 9780190675523
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190664008.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism, Religion and Society
Chapter 2, "Unification and Spiritual Activism: Murakami and Manshi" begins with an analysis of an academic movement called Daijō hibusseturon大乗非仏説論, which argued for a return to early Buddhism ...
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Chapter 2, "Unification and Spiritual Activism: Murakami and Manshi" begins with an analysis of an academic movement called Daijō hibusseturon大乗非仏説論, which argued for a return to early Buddhism by critiquing the Mahāyāna derivations that had come to dominate in East Asia. It then turns to the work of two scholar-priests, both associated with the Ōtani-ha (Higashi Honganji) branch of the Shin sect: Murakami Senshō and Kiyozawa Manshi. Murakami and Kiyozawa might accurately be considered late representatives of the Buddhist Enlightenment. However, this chapter argues that they establish a bridge from the work of the early Buddhist modernists and reformers to the New Buddhists of the early twentieth century. In short, these two immensely influential figures established two distinctive possibilities for the emergent Buddhist modernisms of the early twentieth century.Less
Chapter 2, "Unification and Spiritual Activism: Murakami and Manshi" begins with an analysis of an academic movement called Daijō hibusseturon大乗非仏説論, which argued for a return to early Buddhism by critiquing the Mahāyāna derivations that had come to dominate in East Asia. It then turns to the work of two scholar-priests, both associated with the Ōtani-ha (Higashi Honganji) branch of the Shin sect: Murakami Senshō and Kiyozawa Manshi. Murakami and Kiyozawa might accurately be considered late representatives of the Buddhist Enlightenment. However, this chapter argues that they establish a bridge from the work of the early Buddhist modernists and reformers to the New Buddhists of the early twentieth century. In short, these two immensely influential figures established two distinctive possibilities for the emergent Buddhist modernisms of the early twentieth century.
Becky Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041167
- eISBN:
- 9780252099731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041167.003.0007
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
What might bringing tenderness into the world look like? Student activism and willingness to explore historical memory from their own families often illuminate lived examples of tenderness. The life ...
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What might bringing tenderness into the world look like? Student activism and willingness to explore historical memory from their own families often illuminate lived examples of tenderness. The life changing experience Thompson had as a first responder during the refugee crisis in Lesvos, Greece (2015-2016), as I met Syrian, Afghan, Palestinian, and Pakistani families coming on rafts from Turkey, taught her much about tenderness as a quality of being with each other. Refugee families modeled tenderness for her as they risked their lives to save their lives.
While militarism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy remain structural impediments to tenderness, as teachers we find ourselves seeking renewal, knowing that, as Angela Davis has written, “without deep, abiding practices of self care, there can be no radical social transformation.” So this is where we start, rethinking our relationship to our bodies, grading, office hours, faculty meetings, and methods of evaluation. We want to send students off ready to do justice work. Such work may start with examining what the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet has called the “jewel at the left side of your chest.” Our own jewels in this lifetime.
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What might bringing tenderness into the world look like? Student activism and willingness to explore historical memory from their own families often illuminate lived examples of tenderness. The life changing experience Thompson had as a first responder during the refugee crisis in Lesvos, Greece (2015-2016), as I met Syrian, Afghan, Palestinian, and Pakistani families coming on rafts from Turkey, taught her much about tenderness as a quality of being with each other. Refugee families modeled tenderness for her as they risked their lives to save their lives.
While militarism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy remain structural impediments to tenderness, as teachers we find ourselves seeking renewal, knowing that, as Angela Davis has written, “without deep, abiding practices of self care, there can be no radical social transformation.” So this is where we start, rethinking our relationship to our bodies, grading, office hours, faculty meetings, and methods of evaluation. We want to send students off ready to do justice work. Such work may start with examining what the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet has called the “jewel at the left side of your chest.” Our own jewels in this lifetime.
