Creating Ourselves

by Pinn, Anthony B.; Valentin, Benjamin

• ISBN13: 9780822345497
• ISBN10: 0822345498
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-11
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Creating Ourselvesis a unique effort to lay the cultural and theological groundwork for cross-cultural collaboration between the African and Latino/a American communities. In the introduction, the editors contend that given overlapping histories and interests of the two communities, they should work together to challenge social injustices. Acknowledging that dialogue is a necessary precursor to collaboration, they maintain that African and Latino/a Americans need to get into the habit of engaging "the other" in substantive conversation. Toward that end, they have brought together in this collection theologians and scholars of religion from both communities. The contributors offer broadly comparative exchanges about the religious and theological significance of various forms of African American and Latino/a popular culture, including representations of the body, literature, music, television, visual arts, and cooking. Corresponding to a particular form of popular culture, each section features two essays, one by an African American scholar and one by a Latino/a scholar, who each also provide short responses to the other's essay. The essays and responses are lively, varied, and often personal. One contributor puts forth a "brown" theology of hip hop that celebrates hybridity, contradiction, and cultural miscegenation. Another analyzes the content of the message transmitted by African American evangelical preachers who have become popular sensations through television broadcasts, video distribution, and Internet promotions. The other essays include a theological reading of the Latina body, a consideration of the "authenticity" of representations of Jesus as white, a theological account of the popularity of telenovelas, and a reading of African American ideas of paradise in one of Toni Morrison's novels.Creating Ourselveshelps to make popular culture available as a resource for theology and religious studies and for facilitating meaningful discussions across racial and ethnic boundaries.Contributors:Teresa Delgado; James H. Evans Jr.; Joseph De Leoacute;n; Cheryl Kirk-Duggan; Angel F. Meacute;ndez Montoya; Alexander Nava; Anthony B. Pinn; Mayra Rivera; Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia; Benjamin Valentin; Jonathan L. Walton; Traci C. West; Nancy Lynne Westfield; Sheila F. Winborne

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Thinking About Religion and Culture
Cultural Production and New Terrain: Theology, Popular Culture, and the Cartography of Religion	p. 13
Benjamín Valentín's Response	p. 34
Tracings: Sketching the Cultural Geographies of Latino/a Theology	p. 38
Anthony B. Pinn's Response	p. 62
Constructing Bodies and Representation
Memory of the Flesh: Theological Reflections on Word and Flesh	p. 69
Traci C. West's Response	p. 90
Using Women: Racist Representations and Cross-Racial Ethics	p. 95
Mayra Rivera's Response	p. 114
Literature and Religion
This Day in Paradise: The Search for Human Fulfillment in Toni Morrison's Paradise	p. 119
Teresa Delgado's Response	p. 133
Freedom Is Our Own: Toward a Puerto Rican Emancipation Theology	p. 138
James H. Evans Jr.'s Response	p. 173
Music and Religion
The Browning of Theological Thought in the Hip-Hop Generation	p. 181
Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan's Response	p. 199
The Theo-poetic Theological Ethics of Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur	p. 204
Alex Nava's Response	p. 224
Television and Religion
TV "Profits": The Electronic Church Phenomenon and Its Impact on Intellectual Activity within African American Religious Practices	p. 231
Joseph De León's Response	p. 249
Telenovelas and Transcendence: Social Dramas as Theological Theater	p. 253
Jonathan Walton's Response	p. 271
Visual arts and Religion
Theology as Imaginative Construction: An Analysis of the Work of Three Latina Artists	p. 277
Sheila F. Winborne's Response	p. 302
The Theological Significance of Normative Preferences in Visual Art Creation and Interpretation	p. 306
Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia's Response	p. 331
Food and Religion
She Put Her Foot in the Pot: Table Fellowship as a Practice of Political Activism	p. 339
Angel F. Méndez Montoya's Response	p. 356
The Making of Mexican Mole and Alimentary Theology in the Making	p. 360
Lynne Westfield's Response	p. 384
Bibliography	p. 387
Contributors	p. 405
Index	p. 409
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