Peter Kerry Powers is currently in his tenth year of service as the Dean of the School of the Humanities at Messiah College. His leadership of the school has been characterized by three primary areas of concern: advocacy for global engagement and diversity, engagement of the humanities with the sciences and emerging technologies, and the integration of the humanities and the liberal arts with experiential learning and with professional programs. Prior to becoming Dean, Powers served the College as Department Chair of English for six years and Director of Writing for three years. He has published a book and numerous articles, presentations, and reviews, primarily in the area of U.S. ethnic literature and religion. A book on the Harlem Renaissance, masculinity and religion is forthcoming from the University of Tennessee Press, and he is working on a book manuscript concerning the liberal arts and contemporary culture.
The essays in this book focus on a wide and representative variety of Jewish American women write... more The essays in this book focus on a wide and representative variety of Jewish American women writers, including Cynthia Ozick, Anne Roiphe, Erica Jong, Pauline Kael, Allegra Goodman, Norma Rosen, Adrienne Rich, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and others. In every instance the contributors have tried to deal not only with the Jewish content of their work but also with its literary quality and other major themes.
As this review is being written, some Muslims around the world are ri oting in response to Pope B... more As this review is being written, some Muslims around the world are ri oting in response to Pope Benedict's declaration in a university lecture that violence in the name of God is irrational and so also incompatible with the nature of God.The pope cited as one example among others an exchange between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian scholar on the will ingness of Islam to use military power to spread the word of the prophet. It seems important here to say "some Muslims," given what seems to be the penchant of cultural critics and media pundits to use words like Christianity or Islam with the same unthinking aplomb that earlier cultural sophisticates manifested in using the terminology of race: "the blacks did this," "the whites do that," "the Indians are at it again." Indeed, popular cultural critics seem largely unconcerned with the political reach the pope could be commanding, given his own theological and religious context. If he means it, this critique applies not only to Islamists who drive ex plosive-laden trucks into buildings but also to a large swath of Roman Catholic history.To say nothing of the American president who confirms the direction of the war on terror, waterboarding and all, through personal conversations with the deity.The pope would seem to be making a serious political and theological statement that ought to make good Christians protecting our homeland security by any means necessary sit up and listen. At its furthest reach it is a refutation of the militant violence upon which modern nationalisms can be seen so readily to depend. Instead, critics and pundits have treated us to a sinkhole of shudder ing dismay at the pope's cultural insensitivity. The pope's great sin here seems to be his political incorrectness, or perhaps his lack of media savvy or political obtuseness. The irony of religionists rioting in anger over the suggestion that their religion has implicitly or explicitly endorsed violence goes unremarked.
The relationship between humans and their gods has always been a primary theme in literature. Unt... more The relationship between humans and their gods has always been a primary theme in literature. Until recently, however, books in the American literary canon have rarely been concerned with any supernatural beings other than the Judeo-Christian god. In this book Bonnie Winsbro moves beyond that narrow focus to examine the power of the supernatural in the works of six ethnic writers: Lee Smith's Oral History, Louise Erdrich's Tracks, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. By selecting these authors, Winsbro provides a multicultural perspective - Appalachian, Native American, African American, and Chinese American - on the internal turmoil experienced by ethnic individuals when their belief systems clash with those of family, community, or dominant culture. Although their responses to such conflicts differ, Winsbro argues, all six authors believe that personal power is acquired through self-definition, the process by which one constructs one's own reality as a foundation for living in one's own center rather than on another's margins. By analyzing works that treat seriously a belief in such supernatural figures as witches, healers, and ghosts, Winsbro seeks to show that the contemporary world is not defined by one reality - a rationalistic, scientific reality, for example, or a Judeo-Christian reality - but by many realities. Indeed, acknowledging the coexistence, collision, and coalescence of multiple realities is one of the distinguishing features of postmodern life.
... SUBJECT(S): Ireland; Intellectual life; American literature; English literature; Literature, ... more ... SUBJECT(S): Ireland; Intellectual life; American literature; English literature; Literature, Comparative; Language and culture; Afro-Americans; Group identity in literature; Mimesis inliterature; Harlem Renaissance; Afro-American authors; History and criticism; Irish authors ...
Frederick Asbury Cullen was born c. 1868 in Somerset County, Maryland. He was educated in Somerse... more Frederick Asbury Cullen was born c. 1868 in Somerset County, Maryland. He was educated in Somerset County public schools and at Maryland State Normal School (later Towson University); he studied theology at Morgan College (1901). Cullen was converted to Christianity at Sharp Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1894; he was ordained as a minister in Delaware County, Maryland, in 1900. He served as minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Catlin, Maryland (1900 – 1902) and of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church (later Salem United Methodist) in Harlem (1902 – 1944). He served as president of the Harlem branch of the NAACP and helped organize the National Urban League (1910). Cullen died 25 May 1946
Despite the proliferation of criticism on the cultural work of the Harlem Renaissance over the co... more Despite the proliferation of criticism on the cultural work of the Harlem Renaissance over the course of the past two decades, surprisingly few critics have focused on the ways in which religious contexts shaped the works of New Negro writers and artists during that time. In Goodbye Christ? Christianity, Masculinity, and the New Negro Renaissance, Peter Kerry Powers fills this scholarly void, exploring how the intersection of race, religion, and gender during the Harlem Renaissance impacted the rhetoric and imagination of prominent African American writers of the early twentieth century. In order to best understand the secular academic thought that arose during the Harlem Renaissance period, Powers emphasizes that readers must first understand the religious contexts from which it grew. By illustrating how religion informed the New Negro movement, and through his analysis of a range of texts, Powers delineates the ways in which New Negro writers of the early twentieth century sought ...
I begin with a simple question for the class of 2018, though it is really a question for all of u... more I begin with a simple question for the class of 2018, though it is really a question for all of us: Why higher education? Why are you now in the place where you find yourselves, whether in the great urban universities of New York or Chicago, at my home institution of Messiah College, or perhaps Valparaiso University in Indiana, or in the shadow of mountains at Bennington in Vermont, where my son is attending this fall? Until very recently, a very small percentage of Americans chose to or even had the opportunity to attend a college. Only two or three generations ago, the large majority of Americans went to work after high school, or started families, or joined the military. To these generations, the question “Why go to college?” was real and urgent, and people who did so were considered unusual, if not strange. Now, going to college is for many, though certainly not all, nearly as common as owning a cellphone, as natural to our culture as breathing, such that collectively we hardly ...
In Recalling Religions, Peter Kerry Powers demonstrates the pervasive influence of religion in th... more In Recalling Religions, Peter Kerry Powers demonstrates the pervasive influence of religion in the literature produced by ethnic women writers in late-twentieth-century America. Through close readings of works by Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and ...
The essays in this book focus on a wide and representative variety of Jewish American women write... more The essays in this book focus on a wide and representative variety of Jewish American women writers, including Cynthia Ozick, Anne Roiphe, Erica Jong, Pauline Kael, Allegra Goodman, Norma Rosen, Adrienne Rich, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and others. In every instance the contributors have tried to deal not only with the Jewish content of their work but also with its literary quality and other major themes.
As this review is being written, some Muslims around the world are ri oting in response to Pope B... more As this review is being written, some Muslims around the world are ri oting in response to Pope Benedict's declaration in a university lecture that violence in the name of God is irrational and so also incompatible with the nature of God.The pope cited as one example among others an exchange between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian scholar on the will ingness of Islam to use military power to spread the word of the prophet. It seems important here to say "some Muslims," given what seems to be the penchant of cultural critics and media pundits to use words like Christianity or Islam with the same unthinking aplomb that earlier cultural sophisticates manifested in using the terminology of race: "the blacks did this," "the whites do that," "the Indians are at it again." Indeed, popular cultural critics seem largely unconcerned with the political reach the pope could be commanding, given his own theological and religious context. If he means it, this critique applies not only to Islamists who drive ex plosive-laden trucks into buildings but also to a large swath of Roman Catholic history.To say nothing of the American president who confirms the direction of the war on terror, waterboarding and all, through personal conversations with the deity.The pope would seem to be making a serious political and theological statement that ought to make good Christians protecting our homeland security by any means necessary sit up and listen. At its furthest reach it is a refutation of the militant violence upon which modern nationalisms can be seen so readily to depend. Instead, critics and pundits have treated us to a sinkhole of shudder ing dismay at the pope's cultural insensitivity. The pope's great sin here seems to be his political incorrectness, or perhaps his lack of media savvy or political obtuseness. The irony of religionists rioting in anger over the suggestion that their religion has implicitly or explicitly endorsed violence goes unremarked.
The relationship between humans and their gods has always been a primary theme in literature. Unt... more The relationship between humans and their gods has always been a primary theme in literature. Until recently, however, books in the American literary canon have rarely been concerned with any supernatural beings other than the Judeo-Christian god. In this book Bonnie Winsbro moves beyond that narrow focus to examine the power of the supernatural in the works of six ethnic writers: Lee Smith's Oral History, Louise Erdrich's Tracks, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. By selecting these authors, Winsbro provides a multicultural perspective - Appalachian, Native American, African American, and Chinese American - on the internal turmoil experienced by ethnic individuals when their belief systems clash with those of family, community, or dominant culture. Although their responses to such conflicts differ, Winsbro argues, all six authors believe that personal power is acquired through self-definition, the process by which one constructs one's own reality as a foundation for living in one's own center rather than on another's margins. By analyzing works that treat seriously a belief in such supernatural figures as witches, healers, and ghosts, Winsbro seeks to show that the contemporary world is not defined by one reality - a rationalistic, scientific reality, for example, or a Judeo-Christian reality - but by many realities. Indeed, acknowledging the coexistence, collision, and coalescence of multiple realities is one of the distinguishing features of postmodern life.
... SUBJECT(S): Ireland; Intellectual life; American literature; English literature; Literature, ... more ... SUBJECT(S): Ireland; Intellectual life; American literature; English literature; Literature, Comparative; Language and culture; Afro-Americans; Group identity in literature; Mimesis inliterature; Harlem Renaissance; Afro-American authors; History and criticism; Irish authors ...
Frederick Asbury Cullen was born c. 1868 in Somerset County, Maryland. He was educated in Somerse... more Frederick Asbury Cullen was born c. 1868 in Somerset County, Maryland. He was educated in Somerset County public schools and at Maryland State Normal School (later Towson University); he studied theology at Morgan College (1901). Cullen was converted to Christianity at Sharp Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1894; he was ordained as a minister in Delaware County, Maryland, in 1900. He served as minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Catlin, Maryland (1900 – 1902) and of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church (later Salem United Methodist) in Harlem (1902 – 1944). He served as president of the Harlem branch of the NAACP and helped organize the National Urban League (1910). Cullen died 25 May 1946
Despite the proliferation of criticism on the cultural work of the Harlem Renaissance over the co... more Despite the proliferation of criticism on the cultural work of the Harlem Renaissance over the course of the past two decades, surprisingly few critics have focused on the ways in which religious contexts shaped the works of New Negro writers and artists during that time. In Goodbye Christ? Christianity, Masculinity, and the New Negro Renaissance, Peter Kerry Powers fills this scholarly void, exploring how the intersection of race, religion, and gender during the Harlem Renaissance impacted the rhetoric and imagination of prominent African American writers of the early twentieth century. In order to best understand the secular academic thought that arose during the Harlem Renaissance period, Powers emphasizes that readers must first understand the religious contexts from which it grew. By illustrating how religion informed the New Negro movement, and through his analysis of a range of texts, Powers delineates the ways in which New Negro writers of the early twentieth century sought ...
I begin with a simple question for the class of 2018, though it is really a question for all of u... more I begin with a simple question for the class of 2018, though it is really a question for all of us: Why higher education? Why are you now in the place where you find yourselves, whether in the great urban universities of New York or Chicago, at my home institution of Messiah College, or perhaps Valparaiso University in Indiana, or in the shadow of mountains at Bennington in Vermont, where my son is attending this fall? Until very recently, a very small percentage of Americans chose to or even had the opportunity to attend a college. Only two or three generations ago, the large majority of Americans went to work after high school, or started families, or joined the military. To these generations, the question “Why go to college?” was real and urgent, and people who did so were considered unusual, if not strange. Now, going to college is for many, though certainly not all, nearly as common as owning a cellphone, as natural to our culture as breathing, such that collectively we hardly ...
In Recalling Religions, Peter Kerry Powers demonstrates the pervasive influence of religion in th... more In Recalling Religions, Peter Kerry Powers demonstrates the pervasive influence of religion in the literature produced by ethnic women writers in late-twentieth-century America. Through close readings of works by Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and ...
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