Nineteenth-century stoneware by enslaved and free potters living in Edgefield, South Carolina, highlights the central role of Black artists in the region's long-standing pottery traditions Recentering the development of industrially scaled Southern pottery traditions around enslaved and free Black potters working in the mid-nineteenth century, this catalogue presents groundbreaking scholarship and new perspectives on stoneware made in and around Edgefield, South Carolina. Among the remarkable works included are a selection of regional face vessels as well as masterpieces by enslaved potter and poet David Drake, who signed, dated, and incised verses on many of his jars, even though literacy among enslaved people was criminalized at the time. Essays on the production, collection, dispersal, and reception of stoneware from Edgefield offer a critical look at what it means to collect, exhibit, and interpret objects made by enslaved artisans. Several featured contemporary works inspired by or related to Edgefield stoneware attest to the cultural and historical significance of this body of work, and an interview with acclaimed contemporary artist Simone Leigh illuminates its continued relevance. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 9, 2022-February 5, 2023) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6-July 9, 2023) University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023-January 7, 2024) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16-May 12, 2024)

In Rituals of Resistance Jason R. Young explores the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region of Georgia and South Carolina during the era of slavery. The choice of these two sites mirrors the historical trajectory of the transatlantic slave trade which, for centuries, transplanted Kongolese captives to the Lowcountry through the ports of Charleston and Savannah. Analyzing the historical exigencies of slavery and the slave trade that sent not only men and women but also cultural meanings, signs, symbols, and patterns across the Atlantic, Young argues that religion operated as a central form of resistance against slavery and the ideological underpinnings that supported it.

Through a series of comparative chapters on Christianity, ritual medicine, burial practices, and transmigration, Young details the manner in which Kongolese people, along with their contemporaries and their progeny who were enslaved in the Americas, utilized religious practices to resist the savagery of the slave trade and slavery itself. When slaves acted outside accepted parameters -- in transmigration, spirit possession, ritual internment, and conjure -- Young explains, they attacked not only the condition of being a slave, but also the systems of modernity and scientific rationalism that supported slavery. In effect, he argues, slave spirituality played a crucial role in the resocialization of the slave body and behavior away from the oppressions and brutalities of the master class. Young's work expands traditional scholarship on slavery to include both the extensive work done by African historians and current interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies, anthropology, and literature.

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources from both American and African archives, including slave autobiography, folktales, and material culture, Rituals of Resistance offers readers a nuanced understanding of the cultural and religious connections that linked blacks in Africa with their enslaved contemporaries in the Americas. Moreover, Young's groundbreaking work gestures toward broader themes and connections, using the case of the Kongo and the Lowcountry to articulate the development of a much larger African Atlantic space that connected peoples, cultures, languages, and lives on and across the ocean's waters.

This title presents new evaluations on the significance of Du Bois. ""The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois"" is a collection of articles that treat Du Bois on the subject of religion by reintroducing his life and work to an audience that may be familiar with his work generally but may never have seen analyses of his study of religion. Because the project includes articles that examine both Du Bois' personal religious life along with his examination of religion, the editors seek to add not only to our knowledge of Du Bois' scholarly contributions but also hope to shed light on his personal life and religiosity. Also, in treating the biography and career of a thinker whose work covers much of the twentieth century, the editors intend this work to address larger issues related to religion in the United States over the course of the century. Just as Du Bois' foresight predicted a century marred by racial violence, so his varied explorations into the role of religion in the modern world anticipated the rise of contemporary tensions borne of the global circulation of corporate capital and commerce, of religious fundamentalism and evangelical theology. Indeed, Du Bois identified the critical paradox and presumed contradiction between America's religious legacy built on morality, justice, and equality with the country's impending devotion to progress, modernity, and money. Throughout his life and writing, Du Bois explored the special tensions that erupted in a nation bowing before two gods. Unfortunately, scholarly treatment of both Du Bois' critical writings on religion as well as his own personal religious development has been relatively lacking. The soulful side of the man whose most-famous work was about the souls of black folk, in short, has been largely neglected.