Africans, African Americans, and the Abrahamic Religions Symposium Schedule
Boston University Photonics Center Colloquium Room, 9th floor PHO 906
April 19 – 20, 2012
Thursday, April 19:
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM- Registration
9:45 AM– 10:00 AM- Welcome remarks by Linda Heywood
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM- Session I: Africa to Pre-Emancipation U. S.
- Linda Heywood and John Thornton, “The Abrahamic Religions in Pre-Colonial Atlantic Africa”
- Ras Michael Brown, “Beyond Conversion: Reconceptualizing Engagements with Christianity in African American Religion”
- Margaret Washington, “Movin’ with Spirit: The Sea Island Gullahs and the St. Vincent Shakers”
- Moderator Sylvia Frey
11:30 AM – 12:15PM- Lunch
12:15 PM – 2:15 PM- Session II: Emancipation to Civil Rights
- Robert Hill, “Adam-Abraham-Anglo-Saxon, The Indomitable Lepor’ in the Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy: The Religious Challenge of Revival and the Religion of Ras Tafari in Jamaica”
- Mechal Sobel, “A fire in the belly: Bill Traylor’s hegira from African Baptist to Black Catholic”
- Bettye Collier-Thomas, “The Nexus: Women, Religion, Race, and Civil Rights”
- Sylvester Johnson, “African Americans, Anticolonialism, and the Civilizationist Problem of Abrahamic Religions”
- Moderator Walter Fluker
2:15 PM – 3:15 PM- Keynote Address by Lamin Sanneh
4:00 PM Break at The Library Room at the Castle 225 Bay State Road Boston, MA DirectionsToCastle
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Keynote address by Tudor Parfitt “1930: Annus mirabilis for Black Judaism”
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM- Speaker Dinner at the Castle 225 Bay State Road Boston, MA
Friday, April 20:
8:45 AM – 9:00 AM- Registration
9:00 AM – 9:15 AM- Call to Order: Welcome remarks by Linda Heywood
9:15 AM – 10:45 AM- Session III: Civil Rights to the Present
- Laurence Mamiya, “Is the Black Church Dead?: An Assessment of the Black Church in the Post-Civil Rights Era”
- Nimi Wariboko, “Spirituality and the Weight of Blackness in Nigerian Pentecostalism”
- Edward Curtis IV, “A Transnational History of African American Islam”
- Moderator Emily Budick
10:45 AM – 11:00 AM- Break
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM- Session IV: The Abrahamic Religions and the Atlantic World
- Ivor Miller, “Coded Communication between the Catholic Church and African derived institutions in 19th century Cuba”
- Patrick Sylvain, “Vodun: In the Crossfire of Christian Hegemony”
- Denize de Almeida Ribeiro, “Candomble of Brazil and Religious Intolerance.”
- Moderator Kim Butler
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM- Break
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM- Session V: African Americans, Abrahamic Religions, and Social Justice Campaigns-Bag Lunch and Roundtable Discussion
- Reverend Pamela Lightsey
- Rabbi Capers Funnye
- Imam Abdullah Faaruuq
- Moderator Linda Heywood
3:00 PM – 3:45- Closing remarks by Albert Raboteau
