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WORK TITLE: A Luminous Brotherhood
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1984
WEBSITE: https://emilysuzanneclark.wordpress.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://religion.fsu.edu/documents/gs_CV_Clark.pdf * http://www.gonzaga.edu/academics/colleges-and-schools/college-of-arts-and-sciences/majors-programs/religious-studies/faculty.asp
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 4, 1984.
EDUCATION:Austin College, B.A.; University of Missouri, M.A.; Florida State University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, assistant professor, 2014–; Journal of Southern Religion, managing editor, 2010-14, associate editor.
AVOCATIONS:Reading, hiking, running, playing soccer.
AWARDS:Young Scholar of American Religion, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, 2016-17.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the Religion in American History blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Emily Suzanne Clark is a writer and educator. She works as an assistant professor at Gonzaga University. Clark holds a bachelor’s degree from Austin College, a master’s degree from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her research and writing is focused on religious studies in America and the connection between race and religion. Previously, Clark served as the managing editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. She is now associate editor of the publication.
In 2016, Clark released her first book, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans. In this volume, she profiles a group called the Circle Harmonique. In an interview with John Fea, contributor to the Way of Improvement Leads Home Web site, Clark explained: “A Luminous Brotherhood is a much-revised adaptation of my doctoral dissertation. … The Cercle Harmonique, the name the Afro-Creole Spiritualist community gave themselves, was only going to be a chapter of the project. They practiced Spiritualism from 1858 as the country was on the verge of a civil war through the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The dissertation I envisioned myself writing went beyond a group of men holding séances for nineteen years, but as I began to read their séance records I realized that they told a much bigger story.” Clark told Paul Harvey, writer on the Religion Dispatches Web site: “For about twenty years they held a couple of séances a week. They kept extensive records of these meetings, and those records span over thirty-five large register books. ‘Cercle Harmonique’ is French for Harmonic Circle, and their name reflects their cultural identity. The men of the Cercle Harmonique came from African, French and Spanish backgrounds, were educated, grew up Catholic, and hailed from economically successful families. Their families were free during the antebellum period, and they were politically active.” Clark continued: “Their séance records are utterly fascinating. Nearly all the communications were recorded in French, and messages arrived from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Brown, Montesquieu, Robert E. Lee, Confucius, Robespierre, George Washington, Jesus and Toussaint Louverture. And that’s an abbreviated list. While the Cercle Harmonique itself was small, they occupy a unique historical space. Their séance table was an intersection of southern religion, Catholicism, the Atlantic world, black politics and alternative religious practice.” Clark also stated: “The practice of the Afro-Creole Spiritualists interwove New Orleans society and politics, issues of national American identity, reverberations of the French Revolution, and conceptions of the cosmos. The Cercle Harmonique may have only been a small group, but they built an extensive spiritual and material network surrounding them.”
In the book, Clark offers historical information on the Cercle Harmonique and describes what life was like in New Orleans during the time the group was active. She explains that the group’s purpose was to work toward a three-pronged concept known as “the Idea.” It comprised egalitarianism, harmony, and brotherhood. Members of the Cercle Harmonique believed that spirits were not of any particular race. Rather, they were simple one type of being. Clark connects the group’s belief with political issues in New Orleans and beyond. She also notes that the Cercle Harmonique’s members believed in antimaterialism. Clark connects this aspect of their belief system to other religions, past and present. They believed that their journeys into the spiritual world could help alleviate problems they faced in their daily lives and could better the lives of all people.
A reviewer in Publishers Weekly offered a favorable assessment of A Luminous Brotherhood. The reviewer asserted: “The work will appeal to scholars of American race, religion, and Reconstruction and other dedicated readers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, July 11, 2016, review of A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, p. 61.
ONLINE
Emily Suzanne Clark Home Page, https://emilysuzanneclark.wordpress.com (April 4, 2017).
Gonzaga University Web site, http://www.gonzaga.edu/ (April 4, 2017), author faculty profile.
Religion Dispatches, http://religiondispatches.org/ (September 20, 2016), Paul Harvey, author interview.
Way of Improvement Leads Home, https://thewayofimprovement.com/ (October 31, 2016), John Fea, author interview.
LC control no.: no2015140525
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Clark, Emily Suzanne, 1984-
Birth date: 19840904
Field of activity: Religion Race--Religious aspects
Fuller form of name
Emily Suzanne
Affiliation: Gonzaga University
Profession or occupation:
College teachers
Special note: Not same as: Clark, Emily, 1954-
Found in: Clark, Emily. A luminous brotherhood, 2016: publisher ECIP
data (Emily Suzanne Clark)
Emily Suzanne Clark WWW site, October 16, 2015: CV (Emily
Suzanne Clark; Assistant Professor, Gonzaga University,
Department of Religious Studies, 2014-present) research
(scholarly interest lies in the intersections of
religion and race in Amiercan history and culture)
https://emilysuzanneclark.wordpress.com/
Email from UNC Press, October 19, 2015 (Emily Suzanne
Clark; born September 4, 1984)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
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Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
Emily Suzanne Clark is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University. She also serves as the Associate Editor of the *Journal of Southern Religion* and was selected as a Young Scholar of American Religion for the 2016-2017 class at the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture.
Her first book, *A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans* (UNC Press, 2016), explores the seance records of a remarkable group who received messages from the spirit world. This practice offered its members rich religious experiences as well as a forum for political activism inspired by republican ideals. In short, Spiritualism was never simply talking to the dead.
Hi! And welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University, where I teach classes on American religions. My main scholarly and teaching interests reside at the intersections of religion and race in the Americas. My full curriculum vitae is available here.
My first book, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, argues that Spiritualism provided a forum for criticizing the material world’s injustices and for formulating a corrective based on egalitarian republicanism. The book maps how religion mediated the city’s cultural, political, and social changes from the late antebellum period through Reconstruction. To achieve this, I focus on the practice of Afro-Creole Spiritualism and the twenty years of seance records of the Cercle Harmonique. A Luminous Brotherhood was published by University of North Carolina Press in the Fall 2016. For more on the project, check out my Research page.
For my next project, I plan on investigating the relationship between Catholicism and colonialism in America. One way to accomplish this is to dive into the archives of the Jesuits of the Oregon Province and exploring the intersections of Jesuit missions, Native American religions, and colonialism. In the meantime I also have an edited-volume in the works on material religion and digital humanities.
I serve as Associate Editor for the Journal of Southern Religion and was the journal’s managing editor from 2010-2014. This is the only journal devoted to the study of religion in the American South and publishes articles, forums, and book reviews. Additionally, I’m a member of the 2016-2017 class of Young Scholars of American Religion, a fellows program run by the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture at IUPUI.
You can also find my thoughts at the Religion in American History blog. I can be delinquent with updating my blog here, so check RiAH for my posts. You can also follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/clark_ems.
Feel free to contact me (clarke2@gonzaga.edu) about research, teaching, the Journal of Southern Religion, or any topic or idea raised in my blog posts.
The image in my website’s header is “Veüe et Perspective de la Nouvelle Orléans” by Jean-Pierre Lassus (1726).
Dr. Emily Clark
Visit My Website
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Gonzaga University
502 E. Boone Ave.
AD Box 57
Spokane, WA 99258-0057
Phone: 509-313-6781
Fax: 509-313-5718
Office Location
Robinson House 008
Office Hours
Monday 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Thursday 12:00-3:00 p.m.
clarke2@gonzaga.edu
Dr. Emily Clark specializes in race and religion in the Americas. She received a B.A. from Austin College, her M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in Religion from Florida State University. In addition to American religious studies and religion and race, her research and teaching interests include African American religions, American Catholic history, religious material culture, and Native American religions. Her first book, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), explores the racial and religious politics of talking to the dead. She is the co-director the Gonzaga Digital Humanities Initiative and serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Southern Religion. She was also recently selected as a fellow in the Young Scholars in American Religion program at the Center for Religion and American Culture for 2016-2017.
When not teaching, reading, or researching, she can be found hiking and running about the area and playing soccer in the local adult league.
CV: http://religion.fsu.edu/documents/gs_CV_Clark.pdf
QUOTED: "For about 20 years they held a couple of séances a week. They kept extensive records of these meetings, and those records span over 35 large register books. “Cercle Harmonique” is French for Harmonic Circle, and their name reflects their cultural identity. The men of the Cercle Harmonique came from African, French and Spanish backgrounds, were educated, grew up Catholic, and hailed from economically successful families. Their families were free during the antebellum period, and they were politically active."
"Their séance records are utterly fascinating. Nearly all the communications were recorded in French, and messages arrived from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Brown, Montesquieu, Robert E. Lee, Confucius, Robespierre, George Washington, Jesus and Toussaint Louverture. And that’s an abbreviated list. While the Cercle Harmonique itself was small, they occupy a unique historical space. Their séance table was an intersection of southern religion, Catholicism, the Atlantic world, black politics and alternative religious practice."
"The practice of the Afro-Creole Spiritualists interwove New Orleans society and politics, issues of national American identity, reverberations of the French Revolution, and conceptions of the cosmos. The Cercle Harmonique may have only been a small group, but they built an extensive spiritual and material network surrounding them."
By Paul Harvey September 20, 2016
New History Finally Recognizes Afro-Creole Spiritualists
"Ladder of Progress," a drawing added to the archive of the Cercle Harmonique by René Grandjean, the circle's first archivist.
"Ladder of Progress," a drawing added to the archive of the Cercle Harmonique by René Grandjean, the circle's first archivist.
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Emily Clark’s new work, A Luminous Brotherhood, is an extensive study of a subject that has weirdly been neglected in scholarship: the career of the Afro-Creole Spiritualist Cercle Harmonique from 1858 to 1877. Religious studies scholar Clark has thoroughly mined the records of the Cercle, kept at the University of New Orleans, and produced one of the most important recent works I have seen in race and religion in American history.
By focusing on Afro-Creole Spiritualism in New Orleans, we get an extended, as well as intimate, look at how one very particular group, mostly men and free people of color, envisioned their ideal society through the voices of spirit mediums.
In doing so, they drew from French thinkers and historical experiences (including everyone from Rousseau, Robespierre, and Lamennais to the French and Haitian Revolutions), and applied those to the construction of what they referred to as “the Idea”—a republican society that would achieve liberty, equality and fraternity even in an American society burdened by slavery and racism since its birth.
I had a conversation with Clark, reflecting both on the book as well as on broader questions of race, religion and politics.
screen-shot-2016-09-08-at-6-30-06-pm
A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
Emily Suzanne Clark
UNC Press
September 2016
__________
Paul Harvey: Your book is about a group in mid-19th-century New Orleans called the Cercle Harmonique. Briefly, can you just explain who they were, and why we should care?
Emily Clark: The Cercle Harmonique was a group of Afro-Creoles, primarily men, in 19th-century New Orleans who believed they spoke with the spirits of the dead.
For about 20 years they held a couple of séances a week. They kept extensive records of these meetings, and those records span over 35 large register books. “Cercle Harmonique” is French for Harmonic Circle, and their name reflects their cultural identity. The men of the Cercle Harmonique came from African, French and Spanish backgrounds, were educated, grew up Catholic, and hailed from economically successful families. Their families were free during the antebellum period, and they were politically active.
Their séance records are utterly fascinating. Nearly all the communications were recorded in French, and messages arrived from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Brown, Montesquieu, Robert E. Lee, Confucius, Robespierre, George Washington, Jesus and Toussaint Louverture. And that’s an abbreviated list.
While the Cercle Harmonique itself was small, they occupy a unique historical space. Their séance table was an intersection of southern religion, Catholicism, the Atlantic world, black politics and alternative religious practice. When I initially started my dissertation research, the Cercle Harmonique was going to be just one chapter of a broader story (too broad, really). However, I realized that they were a bigger story than I initially thought. The practice of the Afro-Creole Spiritualists interwove New Orleans society and politics, issues of national American identity, reverberations of the French Revolution, and conceptions of the cosmos.
The Cercle Harmonique may have only been a small group, but they built an extensive spiritual and material network surrounding them.
The Cercle promoted something they called “the Idea.” What was that?
Neither the Cercle Harmonique nor the spirits they communicated with formally defined “the Idea,” but references to the Idea permeate their séance records. The Idea was a reformulation of the French revolutionary cry for liberté, égalité, fraternité. The Idea meant egalitarianism, equality and brotherhood. It was the central idea that organized the spirit world, and the spirit world was to be a model for the physical one. The spirit world, or spiritual republic, was a place of harmony because the Idea was its structural base.
The problems of the material world—its materialism, greed and inequality—could be solved if the Idea successfully took root in our world.
There are other good books about Spiritualism in the 19th century, including ones by Ann Braude, Bret Carroll and Molly McGarry. What makes your story different?
Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits, Bret Carroll’s Spiritualism in Antebellum America, and Molly McGarry’s Ghosts of Futures Past are all wonderful books that masterfully investigate Spiritualism, politics and gender. What’s missing from the historiography of American Spiritualism is a focus on race.
Unlike the subjects in previous books, the Spiritualists at the Cercle Harmonique’s table were Afro-Creole men. Their race shaped their practice in ways different from white Spiritualists in the Northeast U.S. While many Spiritualists were abolitionists, their whiteness and white privilege was an ever-present part of their religious practice.
American politics and society based their hierarchies in part on racial difference, but the spirits communicating with the Cercle Harmonique denied the ontology of race. Though many of their Spiritualist contemporaries believed that one’s race remained with a person in the spiritual spheres, the messages received by the Cercle Harmonique identified a spirit world without race. They were alone in the belief that bright spirits would replace raced bodies.
Members of the Cercle had, to say the least, a conflicted relationship with Catholicism. They were Catholics, but they blasted the Church constantly. Why?
The members of the Cercle Harmonique came from Catholic families, and Catholicism was a big part of their community identity. During the antebellum period New Orleans Catholicism could be a pretty liberal space: some priests recommended mesmeric healers, and many priests crossed the color line. Catholic churches were racially integrated, places of education, and some clerics baptized the illegitimate offspring of interracial parentage (though this was discouraged by the hierarchy). These priests were their allies. But New Orleans priests and nuns owned slaves. During the Civil War, the archdiocese proved to be a big supporter of the Confederacy.
Members of the Cercle Harmonique viewed the priests of their childhood as friends but the priests of their adulthood as greedy manipulators. The spirits compared priests to vampires and cockroaches even as the spirits of beloved clerics (the priests of their childhood and Saint Vincent de Paul) regularly guided the Cercle Harmonique from the spirit world. The Afro-Creole Spiritualists pushed Catholicism away while still keeping the aspects of the institution they liked.
Who is the intended audience for A Luminous Brotherhood?
I wrote the book with a wide audience in mind. I avoided jargon with the intent that my students, my advisors, and my family could all read and enjoy the book. In addition to academics, the book will appeal to anyone interested in Reconstruction-era politics and culture, the widespread belief in ghosts and spirits in America, the politics of race, African American religions, and New Orleans and/or Atlantic world history.
I hope the book will be assigned in undergraduate and graduate classes, especially undergraduate. Beyond the academy and its classrooms, A Luminous Brotherhood will bring an academic analysis of Spiritualism to the popular audience.
A recent Harris poll reported that 42 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. Whether one believes in ghosts or not, Americans are fascinated by them. A century and a half before the popularity of ghost-hunter shows on the SyFy Network and NBC’s award-winning show “Medium,” belief in spirit communication was serious and widespread in the United States. New Orleans in particular is known for ghosts and spirits, and this book takes a serious approach to one manifestation of this regional theme.
Not surprisingly, New Orleans tourist shops are always full of accessible academic books on local history and culture. I hope A Luminous Brotherhood will find a home in their book displays as well as university libraries and college classrooms.
Since the Civil War era, a number of other black religious movements have used unorthodox belief systems to advance radical political, social or religious ideas. How might you compare the Cercle, for example, to the Moorish Science Temple, or the Nation of Islam, or contemporary movements or writers (such as Black Lives Matter or Ta-Nahesi Coates)?
By definition alternative religious movements push against the status quo of religion, society, culture or politics. They are a critique of dominant culture, and therefore provide an effective platform for advancing radical and alternative views. For unorthodox black religious movements like the Cercle Harmonique, the Moorish Science Temple and others, this critique of dominant culture includes racism. Before Stokely Carmichael called for black power during 1966’s March Against Fear, these religious movements spoke out against white supremacy and white privilege.
The Cercle Harmonique argued that race was an empty signifier. Bodies were merely temporary envelopes that encased the spirit. Spirits mattered, raced bodies shouldn’t. This was a strong critique of American racism and white supremacy.
The Afro-Creole Spiritualists sought to dismantle the U.S.’s racial hierarchy, while the Moorish Science Temple of the 1920s placed its members outside it. By claiming an identity other than “black,” “colored” or “Negro,” the Moorish Science Temple’s members attempted to side-step Jim Crow.
In the 1960s the Nation of Islam flipped white supremacy on its head and argued that blacks were the original creation of Allah. Black Lives Matter protestors have been filmed chanting, “This is what theology looks like.” All these groups take a critical stance on the dominance of white power and privilege, and their religious views encourage such political critique.
What are some of the major themes of the book with contemporary resonance for religion, race and politics?
The book may be about a small group of Afro-Creole men in 19th-century New Orleans, but the story it tells connects to much today. Religion, race and politics are closely intertwined in American history and culture today. This is not a new phenomenon. I often tell my students that when we talk about American religion, we’re also talking about politics. And when we talk about American politics, we’re also talking about race. Religion, politics and race are not unconnected and sitting in separate boxes.
In A Luminous Brotherhood, we see religious practice and rhetoric make clear arguments for political equality. To be a Spiritualist in the Cercle Harmonique was to be political. Claiming equality and denying the ontology of race were inherently political arguments. Too often Americans think of the Civil Rights Movement as a unique point in time when religion, race and politics came together, but there is a much longer history to the convergence of these three themes.
What is the cover?
That is, for lack of a better term, a doodle. The séance records of the Cercle Harmonique were first kept by members, Henri Louis Rey and then François “Petit” Dubuclet. Petit handed the records onto his son-in-law René Grandjean, a French émigré and Spiritualist himself. Grandjean later donated the records to the special collections at the University of New Orleans.
Grandjean was an amateur historian and acted akin to the Cercle Harmonique’s first archivist. He organized the séance records, made notes in them based on conversations with his father-in-law, and translated a very small sampling of the messages into composition books. In one of these composition books, he also drew some depictions of the spirit and material world. The cover image is one such small drawing on the last page of one of his notebooks.
Grandjean also drew this amazing depiction of the “Ladder of Progress,” a visualization of the links between our world and the spirit world. The ladder connects a small seat at a séance table all the way up to what almost appears to be a picture of Jesus. This image [below] is one of my favorites. screen-shot-2016-09-20-at-9-41-13-am
You teach courses on African American religions. What are some of the main points you hope your students learn during the semester? Where can we go to see some of your work?
My course introduces students to the variety of African American religions that developed in the Americas during and after the Atlantic slave trade up to today. The class includes discussion of West African religions, the impact of the Atlantic slave trade, the role of politics, the construction of racial identities, and most importantly, the diversity of African American religions. But we don’t examine the diversity within African American religions just for the sake of religious variety. Within various forms of Christianity, Islam, and even hip hop, we examine the interplay between religion, race, colonialism and self-determination. And for one day every semester I get to introduce students to my work on the Cercle Harmonique. They read a small collection of the séance records I’ve translated, and in class we discuss the Spiritualists, the significance of their spirits guides, the messages they received, and their context.
QUOTED: "A Luminous Brotherhood is a much-revised adaptation of my doctoral dissertation. ... The Cercle Harmonique, the name the Afro-Creole Spiritualist community gave themselves, was only going to be a chapter of the project. They practiced Spiritualism from 1858 as the country was on the verge of a civil war through the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The dissertation I envisioned myself writing went beyond a group of men holding séances for 19 years, but as I began to read their séance records I realized that they told a much bigger story."
The Author’s Corner with Emily Clark
October 31, 2016 / ab1519
aluminousbrotherhoodEmily Clark is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University. This interview is based on her new book, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (The University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
JF: What led you to write A Luminous Brotherhood?
EC: A Luminous Brotherhood is a much-revised adaptation of my doctoral dissertation. Initially my dissertation was a huge (way too huge) telling of religion and race in New Orleans with a focus on Afro-Creole communities. New Orleans Afro-Creoles were primary Catholic, often bilingual (or even trilingual), often educated, and many of them were free during the antebellum period. The Cercle Harmonique, the name the Afro-Creole Spiritualist community gave themselves, was only going to be a chapter of the project. They practiced Spiritualism from 1858 as the country was on the verge of a civil war through the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The dissertation I envisioned myself writing went beyond a group of men holding séances for 19 years, but as I began to read their séance records I realized that they told a much bigger story.
The spirits communicating with the Cercle Harmonique included Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Brown, Voltaire, Toussaint Louverture, Robespierre, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Jesus, and Confucius to name just a few. Their messages covered issues of politics, gender, racism, equality, poverty, power, and social injustice. Messages responded to local massacres of black politicians, the death of beloved martyrs for black rights, and issues of religious corruption. The Spiritualism of the Cercle Harmonique situated their practice in their immediate world of New Orleans, the region of the American South, the nation-state of the U.S., the politics of the Atlantic world, and issues of cosmic proportion. Their séance table opened up a vast and complex world.
JF: In 2 sentences, what is the argument of A Luminous Brotherhood?
EC: This book contends that the Cercle Harmonique envisioned the proper social, political, and religious ordering of the material world through communication with a wise spirit world. Through their séances the Cercle Harmonique connected with an idealized society whose members provided the Afro-Creoles with a republican ideology to combat politically destructive forces on earth and create a more egalitarian world.
JF: Why do we need to read A Luminous Brotherhood?
EC: A Luminous Brotherhood weaves together a number of threads about the long nineteenth century in America: race, liberal religion, politics, anti-Catholicism, the Atlantic world’s age of revolutions, reform, utopian impulses, republican thought, slavery, and more. Though it focuses on a small group of Afro-Creoles, the story it tells is much bigger. The practice of the Cercle Harmonique allows us to sharpen our conclusions about those topics.
The Cercle Harmonique articulated a strong critique of racism and white supremacy that still has resonance today. They and the spirits they communicated with argued that racial identity had no real meaning. Bodies were only material envelopes that temporarily encased our spirits. Bodies only had meaning in the material world, whereas our spirits existed long after. One spirit even wondered if people would have followed Jesus had he been black. White supremacy was a real problem for the Cercle Harmonique and remains one today. The Afro-Creole Spiritualists I studied offer a rich example of the intersections between religion and race in America, and A Luminous Brotherhood provides a close look at how religion can provide strong critiques to societal norms and injustices. The book also reveals how religion simultaneously supports such societal norms and injustices. As I tell my students, American religion is complicated, and my book reflects that too.
Additionally, A Luminous Brotherhood is the first full-length study of the New Orleans Cercle Harmonique and one of the first academic texts on American Spiritualism to provide a close look at the practice and records of a nineteenth-century Spiritualist group. Previous works on American Spiritualism typically focus on major figures and ideas but fail to offer a deep look at the everyday practice of Spiritualism. Since much of the Cercle Harmonique’s séance records are intact, A Luminous Brotherhood looks at the spirits who communicated with the Cercle Harmonique, explores the significance of their presence, and situates them in the context surrounding their communication. The book examines what the spirits said and asks why.
JF: When and why did you decide to become an American historian?
EC: I’m not so sure that I decided to become an American historian but rather just became one. During my time as an undergraduate student at Austin College and then an M.A. student at the University of Missouri, I was drawn to the interplay between religion and culture but not from a historical perspective. It wasn’t until I started my doctoral work at Florida State University that I began to study American religious history proper. I describe myself as being haunted by the stories that archives hold and feel the need to tell them. I encourage my students to consider the historical context of every source we examine. Just about all my academic work and class materials examine people, trends, communities, practices, ideas, and conflicts from America’s past. Even now there are times that I think of myself as a historian—I am trained in historical methods, after all—but I also think of myself squarely in the field of religious studies. I’m not surprised that I’ve become an American historian, but I think of that as one element of my academic identity.
JF: What is your next project?
EC: I have a couple projects in the works. I’m working on two edited volumes, one on digital humanities and material religion and the other on race and new religious movements. I’m also in the early research stages of my next full-length monograph, Jesuits, Native Americans, and Colonialism in the Pacific Northwest. While the historiography on Jesuit missions typically focuses on the seventeenth-century evangelists in New France, this work will interrogate the interactions between Native Americans and Jesuits in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike those earlier Jesuits, the Italian Jesuits out west operated more systematically and as part of the federal push to “civilize” and evangelize Native tribes in this region.
JF: Thanks, Emily!
QUOTED: "The work will appeal to scholars of American race, religion, and Reconstruction and other dedicated readers."
A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
263.28 (July 11, 2016): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
Emily Suzanne Clark. Univ. of North Carolina, $34.95 (280p) ISBN 978-1-4696-2878-3
Clark challenges the assumption that spiritualism is a northern Protestant movement focused on deceased family members and removed from politics by focusing on New Orleans's Cercle Harmonique. This small group of Afro-Creole Catholics kept meticulous records of their seances during the early years of Reconstruction. Visited by local martyrs, national heroes (including Jefferson, Washington, and John Brown), and international figures (notably Robespierre and Napoleon), the group actively sought to bring about what they called "the Idea": brotherhood, harmony, and egalitarianism. A major step in progress towards that goal was the knowledge that spirits are not raced like bodies, as their spiritual visitors attested. Clark offers excellent context for understanding the social and political fights in New Orleans and fascinating details from their seance records to show how the group's concern fit into political projects from the local to the transatlantic. Her chapter on the Cercle's antimaterialist view offers stunning parallels to modern concerns for religious believers. The work will appeal to scholars of American race, religion, and Reconstruction and other dedicated readers interested in unusual and creative responses to the experience of being southern and black in the aftermath of the Civil War. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans." Publishers Weekly, 11 July 2016, p. 61+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA458915389&it=r&asid=43c200c117aaedd5661a9d88df10338c. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A458915389