{"id":193,"date":"2007-02-22T12:23:26","date_gmt":"2007-02-22T16:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/?p=193"},"modified":"2013-07-26T13:27:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T17:27:10","slug":"modernitys-usable-pasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/2007\/02\/22\/modernitys-usable-pasts\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cModernity\u2019s Usable Pasts: James Weldon Johnson, Aaron Douglas,  and Charles B. Falls\u2019s God\u2019s Trombones\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/aha.missouri.edu\/people\/schwain.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kristin Schwain<\/a>, Luce Visiting Assistant Professor in Scripture and Visual Arts,<br \/>\nDepartment of Religion, Boston University<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1927, the African American author, diplomat, and songwriter James Weldon Johnson published a series of poems intended to preserve the sermons of \u201cold-time Negro preacher[s]\u201d before they vanished from the American scene. The opening prayer and seven sermons were accompanied by images produced by one of the foremost visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas, and lettering fashioned by one of nation\u2019s leading illustrators, Charles B. Falls. This lecture showed how the interplay between and among Johnson\u2019s poems, Douglas\u2019s illustrations, and Falls\u2019s typography is central to achieving the writer\u2019s explicit goal of reenacting the antebellum sermon, as well as his implicit aims of constructing a usable past and celebrating an African American spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kristin Schwain, Luce Visiting Assistant Professor in Scripture and Visual Arts, Department of Religion, Boston University In 1927, the African American author, diplomat, and songwriter James Weldon Johnson published a series of poems intended to preserve the sermons of \u201cold-time Negro preacher[s]\u201d before they vanished from the American scene. The opening prayer and seven sermons [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6862,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6862"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}