Amen Corner Research Articles

Preaching Without a Pulpit: Toward a Womanist Hermeneutic of Regeneration in Just Above My Head

In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois discusses the historical and cultural importance of the Black preacher as “a leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’… the centre of a group of men.” I propose we reimagine Du Bois’s Black preacher figure—in his words, “the most unique personality developed on American soil”—as a Black woman. Additionally, we should examine the sermon in African American literature as we focus on womanist preachers and spiritual figures such as Margaret Alexander in The Amen Corner, the sisters in Go Tell It on the Mountain, and most significantly, Julia in Just Above My Head. Coining the term, “womanist hermeneutic of regeneration,” this article demonstrates the affective power of examining blue note womanist preachers and spiritual figures in James Baldwin’s work.

Kimberley Rampersad: a conversation

St. Lawrence College faculty member Ian Simpson interviews Shaw Festival Associate Director Kimberley Rampersad and provides an overview of the background and career of this exciting new voice in Canadian theatre. She discusses her journey growing up in Winnipeg as a dancer, singer, and musical theatre performer, including her role as a dance and arts educator, building to her rapid rise to become one of Canada’s most promising and prominent young directors and choreographers. She talks about directing two of the biggest plays in the theatrical canon, “The Amen Corner" at the Shaw Festival, and “King Lear” at the Stratford Festival, both in 2023. She describes how her musical theatre background was critical in her development as a director, and the importance of mentorship and training a new generation of performers.

“Somebody Touched Me”: Disidentification, Conversion, and the Promise of Queer Transformation in James Baldwin’s Fiction

ABSTRACT Through an examination of The Amen Corner and Just Above My Head, this essay explores James Baldwin’s disidentification with Christian conversion. According to queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, to disidentify with an object is not to embrace (identify) or reject (counteridentify) a phenomenon, but it is a “working on, with, and against a cultural form.” In The Amen Corner Baldwin, to borrow the language of Muñoz, “transfigures” conversion from signifying the entry of a new convert into a life of faith, to reimagining conversion/salvation as the abandonment of Christian belief and the leaving of ecclesiastical community for the higher call of love. While in Just Above My Head, conversion is reinterpreted through the medium of queer sexual expression, which simultaneously sanctifies queer sexuality, while also utilizing the sex act as a fecund space for reimagining the sacred and salvation.

Making Experiences Our Own

The author reviews the 2021 production of James Baldwin’s play, The Amen Corner, as directed by Whitney White at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. After situating the experience of engaging with Baldwin’s art through a constructivist approach to art-based education and learning design, the piece turns to considering the impact of various interpretive materials and the director’s artistic vision in the production. White’s decision to include an epigraph in the production leaves a notable impact, particularly in conversation with Baldwin’s essays, “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare” and “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”

The Amen Corner by James Baldwin

The Amen Corner by James Baldwin

Set Thine House in Order: Black Feminism and the Sermon as Sonic Art in The Amen Corner

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois discusses the historical and cultural beginnings of the black preacher as “the most unique personality developed on American soil.” He writes, “[the black preacher] found his functions as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong…Thus as bard, physician, judge, and priest within the narrow limits allowed by the slave system rose the Negro preacher.” Far from being a monolith, the preacher figure embodies many complexities and variances on how the preached Word can be delivered. This begs the question, in what ways can we reimagine DuBois’s black preacher figure in his words, “the most unique personality developed on American soil,” as a black woman? What remains to be seen in scholarship of the mid-twentieth century is an articulation of the black woman preacher in African American literature. By reimagining and refiguring a response to DuBois’s assertion above, how is the role of the black woman preacher and impact of her sermons portrayed in African American literature? Using the art of the sermon, the intersection of music, and James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner as a central text, this article examines the black woman preacher in character and African American women’s spirituality in twentieth century literature. I argue that the way in which Margaret Alexander, as a black woman preacher in the text, creates sermonic spaces of healing and restoration (exegetically and eschatologically) for herself and others outside of the church becomes a new mode of social and cultural resistance. This article works to re-envision the black woman and reposition her in the center of religious discourse on our way to unearthing the modes of transfiguration black women preachers evoke in and out of the pulpit.

The Amen Corner by James Baldwin, and: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . by Carlyle Brown (review)

Reviewed by: The Amen Corner by James Baldwin, and: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . by Carlyle Brown Carra Martinez The Amen Corner. By James Baldwin. Directed by Lou Bellamy. Penumbra Theatre, Guthrie Wurtele Thrust Stage, Minneapolis. 5 May 2012. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been... By Carlyle Brown. Directed by Noël Raymond. Carlyle Brown and Company, Guthrie Dowling Studio, Minneapolis. 12 May 2012. Upon announcing its upcoming season this past spring, the Guthrie Theatre received a barrage of criticism for its show selections: a group of plays overwhelmingly white and male, in terms of both playwrights and directors. In particular, theatregoers from scholars like Jill Dolan to leading voices in the development of new work like Polly Carl critiqued the Guthrie’s selections as lacking the diversity necessary for the continual growth and development of American theatre. However, just as the Guthrie found itself at the center of this diversity debate, the theatre produced new work by two Twin Cities companies dedicated to broadening and enriching the scope of American theatre through the lens of the African American experience. In May, the Guthrie presented a Penumbra Theatre production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner (1954), while a smaller studio theatre hosted Carlyle Brown and Company’s new work Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . (2012), which explores Langston Hughes’s McCarthy hearing. Although vastly different in scale and style, the Penumbra and Carlyle Brown productions both portrayed American experiences indelibly molded by the forces of bigotry. In particular, The Amen Corner offered a story of not only black spiritual life, but also a narrative that specifically spoke to the intersection of black spirituality and female leadership within the church. Thus while the Guthrie’s next season will largely exclude reflections of America beyond mainstream white culture, this past spring the theatre center challenged its audience to engage with culturally specific theatre-making that spoke to often-silenced histories, as well as to the more expansive thinking of smaller theatre companies in the Twin Cities. The Amen Corner, Baldwin’s first play, crafts a complex landscape of black spirituality. Baldwin interweaves the day-to-day political machinations of a Harlem church with the secular materiality of neighborhood life surrounding the church, and in doing so contrasts the dogmatic power structures that allowed church leaders to develop incontestable voices with the spiritual and familial love very much alive in these same spaces. Given that Baldwin himself served as a Pentecostal youth pastor in Harlem, threads of autobiography undeniably run through the play. With this production, Penumbra [End Page 113] Click for larger view View full resolution Greta Oglesby (Sister Margaret Alexander) and Crystal Fox (Odessa) in The Amen Corner. (Photo: Michael Brosilow.) [End Page 114] artistic director Lou Bellamy presented his audience with a black spiritual celebration accompanied by the multifaceted, interpersonal dynamics that underscored such practices. Bellamy took the work of an inexperienced playwright and grounded it in the cultural specificity of mid-twentieth-century Harlem, creating a world full of spiritual, cultural, and familial tensions. Upon entering the expansive Wurtele Thrust Stage, The Amen Corner’s audience was presented with a moving and breathing slice of Harlem street life. Scenic designer Vicki Smith structured a three-tiered set anchored in back center stage with a storefront church, complete with long painted-glass windows and a red velvet chair awaiting its pastor. Below the heights of the church sat Pastor Margaret Alexander’s minimal kitchen—signaled by linoleum floors and a shiny new Frigidaire. Further downstage, Margaret’s son’s bedroom featured basic furniture and a record player. Smith ensconced these spaces with Harlem itself. Sidewalks book-ended stages left and right, and each led to a fully developed city streetscape that encircled the entire back wall of the space. In the street behind the church the audience could glimpse liquor stores, billiard halls, and the edges of rundown apartments. These spaces were filled with the life of the community: sailors, grifters, choir members, young girls in pigtails, boys in high-top converse sneakers, church ladies, cops, and drunkards. Even as the houselights slowly dimmed, Bellamy allowed this unscripted, everyday action to...

The Regent Park's three royal medical colleges

The Regent's Park is the home of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOph). Thomas Linacre (1460–1524) and a group of physicians petitioned King Henry VIII and were granted a charter on 23 September 1518 to found a College of Physicians. Henry VIII was the nominal founder and Linacre the first President. Until 1835, only Oxford or Cambridge doctors of medicine could become Fellows of the College. The original College was Linacre's own home near St Paul's from 1518 to 1614, the second at nearby Paternoster Row and Amen Corner (1614–72), then Warwick Lane (1672–1825), the fourth in Pall Mall East (1825–1964) and the present College from 1964 onwards in The Regent's Park. President Lord Platt was instrumental in choosing …

When the “Amen Corner” Comes to Class: An Examination of the Pedagogical and Cultural Impact of Call–Response Communication in the Black College Classroom

This research sought to examine the communicative impact of the Black English speech pattern, known as call–response, on African Americans within an educational environment. An ethnographic study of an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) classroom was conducted to ascertain the pedagogical and cultural meanings this speech event held for an African American instructor and her African American students. Detailed fieldnotes, videotapes of classroom interactions, participant observation, and in-depth interviews comprised the primary means of data collection for this study. Results of the study indicate that call–response did occur in the university classroom. Particularly, the study yielded data which revealed that call–response is initiated in the classroom through a variety of speaker techniques which are interpreted by the class members as “calls.” It was also found that the performance of Black speech acts in the classroom did not serve as a detriment to students, but that by engaging in call–response, the students and the instructor together forwarded deeply embedded African American cultural values of sharing and uniqueness.

Re-Viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen

Foreword by David Adams Leeming Introduction - D. Quentin Miller 1. What is in a Sound? Metaphysics and Politics of Music in Amen Corner - Saadi Simawe 2. Staying Out of the Temple: African American Church, and Amen Corner - Michael Lynch 3. An Irrevocable Condition' Constructions of Home and the Writing of Place in Giovanni's Room - Kathleen Drowne 4. Another Look at Another Country: Reconciling Baldwin's Racial and Sexual Politics - Susan Feldman 5. Black-Gay-Man Chaos in Another Country - Charles Toombs 6. Masculinity and (Im)maturity: The Man Child and Other Stories in James Baldwin's Gender Studies Enterprise - Yasmin DeGout 7. A Striking Addiction to Irreality Nothing Personal and the Legacy of the Photo/Text Genre - Joshua Miller 8. Black Boy Looks at the Silver Screen: Baldwin as Moviegoer and Witness - Cassandra Ellis 9. Manhood, Musicality, and Male Bonding in Just Above My Head - Warren Carson 10. James Baldwin, Poet - D. Quentin Miller About the Contributors

Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution by William R. Newman

758 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE that his Lectiones mathematicae figure so prominently in this account while the equally important Mathesis universalis ofJohn Wallis goes unmentioned. Furthermore, Dear’s reading of Barrow overlooks much ofwhat is most distinctive about his philosophy of mathemat­ ics, namely, his suspicion of the algebraic techniques of analytic ge­ ometry and his veneration for the “synthetic” procedures of the an­ cients. Finally, Dear seems reluctant to address the question of precisely why the role of experiment in natural-philosophical theo­ rizing should have changed as it did. Such quibbles aside, the book is an important contribution to the literature on 17th-century science, and it should find a wide audi­ ence among those with an interest in the subject. Douglas M. Jesseph Dr.Jesseph is associate professor ofphilosophy at North Carolina State University. His research interests are in the history and philosophy of mathematics, and he is completing a book on the mathematical controversy between Thomas Hobbes and John Wallis. GehennicalFire: The Lives ofGeorge Starkey, an American Alchemist in the ScientificRevolution. By William R. Newman. Cambridge, Massachu­ setts: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv+348; illustrations, appendices, notes, index. In 1650, an obscure New England alchemist called George Starkey emigrated to England, intent on making a name and reputation for himself. It was not for lack of fellow travelers in the arcane arts that Starkey chose to emigrate, for as William R. Newman points out in this impressive and well-crafted book, all over New England alchemi­ cal adepts labored away in devoted efforts to make the philosopher’s stone. Rather, it was his inability to obtain proper alchemical apparatus and rare chemicals that hindered Starkey’s progress. “Ob­ taining a reliable furnace in the mid-seventeenth century,” Newman observes, “could take on the appearance of a quest for the Holy Grail.” Shortly after his arrival in England, Starkey wrote to Robert Boyle, telling him of a New England “filius Hermetis” who had given him the secret of the philosopher’s stone, the agent of metallic transmu­ tation. The American alchemist was reputed to have performed mi­ raculous feats in New England, such as restoring the hair and teeth of an aged lady and causing a withered peach tree to produce new fruit. Soon Starkey was not only telling tales about the mysterious American adept but was actually circulating manuscripts attributed to him. Thus was born Eirenaeus Philalethes, one of the age’s most technology and culture Book Reviews 759 famous adepts, and one of the strangest alter egos in the history of science. Boyle took a liking to Starkey and supported the young Ameri­ can’s alchemical experiments. Meanwhile, Starkey continued to pen works under Philalethes’s name and stingily to dole out his alter ego’s remedies to the Boyle household, never telling the secret but dropping a hint here and there so that the industrious learner might inquire more deeply. Starkey’s professional career rocketed upon his creation of the illusive Eirenaeus Philalethes, and for a brief mo­ ment it seemed as if he was destined to take his place among the great natural philosophers of the age. If Boyle eventually grew angry over Philalethes’s secrecy, it was not because he opposed secrecy in principle, but because Philalethes was visiting Starkey rather than him. Starkey’s career, however, was cut short by his own profligacy. He exhausted his money on his experiments and bouts of drunkenness. Working in cramped rooms with charcoal and mercury ruined his health. More than once he found himselfin debtor’s prison. Empiric “pretenders” stole his recipes and peddled them on the streets un­ der different names, while the College of Physicians condemned him, along with other iatrochemists, as an unlettered empiric. When the Great Plague of 1665 arrived in London, Starkey and other chemical practitioners saw it as their chance to prove the effi­ cacy of their remedies over the regular physicians’. Traditionalist doctors fled the city, leaving their buildings at Amen Corner to be pillaged by thieves. By contrast, the followers of Paracelsus and Van Helmont continued their work among the people. Despite having contracted the plague himself, Starkey called upon his friend George Thomson...

Book Review: Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones

Book Review: Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones

"Come-to-Jesus Stuff" in James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain and The Amen Corner

"Come-to-Jesus Stuff" in James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain and The Amen Corner

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Laughter in the Amen Corner: The Life of Evangelist Sam Jones.

Black talk: words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner

Black talk: words and phrases from the hood to the amen corner

The power of appreciation

My heart is filled with a double helping of loving appreciation on this occasion. First, there is the appreciation I feel for the award itself. It affords a rare opportunity for me to celebrate the happy circumstances that have made it possible over so many years to engage with colleagues such as yourselves in the exciting enterprise of practice and discovery in Community Psychology. Second, there is the appreciation I feel for the loving labor that Jim Kelly invested in his introduction of me. He has treated it in the way he always approaches his work -wi th delight, excitement, devotion, and creativity. Through the use of his own Power of Appreciation he has given me a gift that few people ever e n j o y t h e privilege of hearing from so many dear friends, family members, and colleagues about how they experience me and my work. This occasion, including Jim's beautiful overture, is itself a demonstration of my topic, the Power of Appreciation. So much so, in fact, that I am tempted simply to say, QED and sit down. Since I first came across it in high school geometry, the expression QED has fascinated me. At long last I have an opportunity to use it. Quod erat demonstrandum; Thus it has been demonstrated. It has a lovely flourish, does it not, worthy of the Amen corner of any congregation. Though I recall little of the substance of high school geometry, the artistry of QED remains firmly implanted in my mind: a carefully reasoned set of propositions followed by the triumphant: QED, Quod erat demonstrandum. I have been deeply touched by being a recipient of my colleagues award for my work in Community Psychology. In response to this expression of

The Divine Banquet of the Brain — Medical Evidence — Edward Jenner's Homes

WHEN he rose to give the Harveian oration at the Royal College of Physicians Dr. Macdonald Critchley reminded those present that it was the two hundred and fifty-eighth time that fellows of the College had met in amity to commemmorate William Harvey. Explaining why he had chosen to speak on the Divine Banquet of the Brain, he recalled that this was the topic of Harvey's third Lumleian Lecture given to the College three hundred and fifty years ago. Harvey was then thirty-seven years of age, and the College met in its second home at Amen Corner, which had been leased . . .

Some Aspects of Ancient Arabic Poetry, as illustrated by a little-known Anthology. By SirCharles J. Lyall, K.C.S.I., D.Litt. Published for the British Academy by H. Milford, Oxford University Press, Amen Corner. 1s. 6d. net.

Some Aspects of Ancient Arabic Poetry, as illustrated by a little-known Anthology. By SirCharles J. Lyall, K.C.S.I., D.Litt. Published for the British Academy by H. Milford, Oxford University Press, Amen Corner. 1<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. net.