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In tandem with its companion volume,
The Fugitive Blacksmith and
Other Essential Writings by James W.C. Pennington, this collection of new essays seeks to recover and reappraise James W.C. Pennington (1808-1870), a truly remarkable figure of Black intellectual and political history who is unjustly overlooked today.
Written by an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, these essays illuminate different parts of Pennington's life and career after escaping from slavery in 1827, discussing his role as reformer, political activist, and theologian. They discuss Pennington's major works including
A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841) and his autobiography,
The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), and explore Pennington's understanding of and fight for human rights, his selective engagement with Romantic ideas of historicism and culture, and his concept of Black perfectionism. Together the essays bring to life Pennington not just as a historical figure but as a thinker deeply relevant to contemporary conversations about, among other things, the entanglements of race and religion, human rights, democracy, and America's unfinished reconstruction.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Jan Stievermann:
- "Rediscovering James W.C. Pennington: Black Reformed Minister, Intellectual, and Activist"
- I. Transatlantic Reform
- John Ernest:
- "Pennington, the Colored Conventions Movement, and the Struggle for Black
- Self-Determination"
- Manisha Sinha:
- "Reverend James W.C. Pennington's Transnational Abolitionist Mission"
- Sandra M. Gustafson:
- "James W.C. Pennington and the Peace Cause"
- Mischa Honeck:
- "Revolutionary Encounters: American Abolitionists and Europe's 1848ers"
- II. Philosophy and Politics
- John Witte Jr.:
- "James W.C. Pennington's Human Rights Campaign"
- Kenyon Gradert:
- "James W. C. Pennington's Romanticism"
- Eddie Glaude Jr.:
- "'To make me more efficient for good': Black Democratic Perfectionism and James W.C. Pennington"
- III. Religious Contexts, Theology, and Literary Ethics
- Jan Stievermann:
- "James W.C. Pennington and the New Divinity Tradition"
- Caitlin B. Smith:
- "'What is this but Infidelity?': James W.C. Pennington's Engagements with Skepticism"
- William L. Andrews:
- "Freedom vs. Family in the Pre-Emancipation African American Fugitive Slave Narrative: The Singular Case of James W. C. Pennington"
About the author
Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in the U.S. at Heidelberg University. He has written books and essays on a range of topics in the fields of American religious history and American literature, including
Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (2016).
Caitlin B. Smith is Assistant Professor of Early American Literature at St. Bonaventure University. She has published multiple journal articles on nineteenth-century American literature and religion, with a special focus on early freethinking societies and constructions of doubt.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University.
