Black Church Rumor

2022 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-143
Author(s):  
Ahmad Greene-Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Black Church ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Down Low ◽  
Black Queer Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Black Gospel Music

Abstract In 1992, Jet published “James Cleveland Infected L.A. Youth with HIV, $9 Mil. Lawsuit Claims,” which detailed how the Chicago-born gospel musician had not only allegedly sexually abused his foster son, Christopher B. Harris, but had also “[given] him the AIDS virus.” This article takes this incident of rumor or accusation as a critical opportunity to think about the archival reality of Black queer sexuality, on one hand, and sexual violence in Black gospel music history on the other. Using the legal documents from Christopher B. Harris v. Irwin Goldring as Special Administrator of the Estate of James Cleveland and commentary from Cleveland's contemporaries, it exhumes Cleveland from dusty church closets for consideration in the history of HIV and AIDS in African American Protestant church and gospel communities and in Black queer studies, ethnomusicology, and gender and sexuality studies. Further, it theorizes “Black church rumor” as a lens for Black queer religious studies and argues that Cleveland's perceived queer sexuality distracted from Harris's allegations of sexual abuse. Thus, it situates Cleveland—the person, the preacher, and the gospel legend—in the literature on “down low” sexuality and explicates the implications of Cleveland's legacy and role in Black gospel music production.

The Gospel According to the Gays

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Patrick Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Queer

This chapter traces the historical roots of gospel music and emphasizes myriad contributions made by black queer individuals throughout the genre’s history, including popular gospel music performers such as Rosetta Tharpe, James Cleveland, Clara Ward, and Sylvester. It also includes the voices of queer church members drawn from oral histories. In doing so, it sheds light on a willfully neglected aspect of the history of gospel music. Further, exposing gospel’s connection to blues and jazz, the discussion illustrates the connection between sacred and secular music. Closely reading how these singers use performance, it demonstrates how these individuals negotiated their sexuality and gender identity within the black church—a space known for its disavowal of sin, especially homosexuality—in covert or tacit ways that enabled them to maintain their credibility and influence while also authentically engaging both their sexuality and spirituality.

The inclusion of women, girls and gender equality in National Strategic Plans for HIV and AIDS in southern and eastern Africa

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 1120-1144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gibbs ◽  
Elizabeth Tyler Crone ◽  
Samantha Willan ◽  
Jenevieve Mannell
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Strategic Plans ◽  
And Gender

Falling Up

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-129
Author(s):  
Clinton McCallum
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Electronic Dance Music ◽  
Spiritual Transcendence ◽  
Modal Jazz ◽  
Musical Representations ◽  
Ring Shout ◽  
Black Gospel Music

This article investigates melodic figures and harmonic sequences that miraculously only step up to illuminate an aesthetic lineage that connects gospel to electronic dance music. It argues that the synth-risers and ever-opening filters of contemporary euphoric rave music like happy-hardcore and uplifting-trance find precedence in compositional devices that made their way into funk/soul and disco/garage from Black gospel music, and that these gospel inventions were derived from the Afro-diasporic ring-shout. Cognitive linguistic and psychoacoustic theories premise an analytical framework for musical representations of endless ascent. Through close readings of representative recordings—a 1927 Pentecostal sermon by Reverend Sister Mary Nelson, James Cleveland’s “Peace Be Still,” Chic’s “Le Freak,” Trussel’s “Love Injection,” and DJ Hixxy’s remix of Paradise's “I See the Light”—the article examines various historical intersections with parlour music, European art music, and modal jazz, and suggests that musical ascent has a non-causal but, nevertheless, objective relationship with a type of spiritual transcendence.

Photovoice as a Methodological Tool to Address HIV and AIDS and Gender Violence amongst Girls on the Street in Rwanda

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Umurungi ◽  
Claudia Mitchell ◽  
Myriam Gervais ◽  
Eliane Ubalijoro ◽  
Violet Kabarenzi
Keyword(s):  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
And Gender

Reverberations of the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus

Resonance ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-295
Author(s):  
Cathy Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Alternative Space

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a writer, poet, activist, and independent scholar whose experimental triptych (Spill, M Archive, Dub) offers both mundane and unearthly interventions for humanity’s struggles against histories of ecological extraction and Black feminist refusals. Sangodare is a multimedia artist, musician, and theologian drawing from Black feminist writings and African Diaspora wisdom. They are co-founders of several multi-platform undertakings such as the Mobile Homecoming Project that birthed the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus (BFBC). It is one of many online and in-person spaces supporting QPOC and Black feminist communities. The BFBC, in particular, blends theory, meditation, music, poetics, and Black church traditions. In this asynchronous mantra practice, hundreds of participants receive daily “ancestor” mantras via the Mobilehomecoming.org website. These mantras are shortened quotes from the diverse writings and speeches of figures such as Marsha P. Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. The social, juridical, and digital records of violence against women, POC, queer, and non-binary bodies and communities is not new. However, as consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have overlapped with conspicuous displays of anti-Black policing and asymmetric economies, the BFBC has provided an alternative space to rebuild and re-enchant social, political, and intellectual life through a remixed spiritual practice of amplifying voices. This interview highlights how race, gender, location, and time do not limit the quest for freedom. Thus, the primacy of Black queer positionality is instrumental in the chorus’s examination of both liberating and oppressive social hierarchies.

Smithing Queer Empiricism: Engaging Ethnomethodology for a Queer Social Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 073527512110263
Author(s):  
S. L. Crawley ◽  
MC Whitlock ◽  
Jennifer Earles
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Black Queer Studies ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Modernist Discourse

Is queer social science possible? Early queer theorists disparaged empiricism as a normalizing, modernist discourse. Nonetheless, LGBTQI+ social scientists have applied queer concepts in empirical projects. Rather than seek a queer method, we ask, Is there an empirical perspective that (ontologically) envisions social relations more queerly—attending to discursive and materialist productions of reality? Dorothy Smith’s work foregrounds people’s activities of engaging texts and satisfies Black queer studies’ and new materialisms’ critiques of early queer theory. Underutilized and often misread, especially its ethnomethodological sensibilities and its vision of actors as relational, practical actors, her work shows how my race is not mine, it is ours; your sexual orientation is not yours, it is ours; their gender is not theirs, it is ours. Smith offers an ontology without essence, grand theory, or normativity, facilitating a range of queer, interpretive projects—from the intersectional to the transnational to the embodied.

Black Queer Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
GerShun Avilez
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexual Meaning ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Black Queer

In this book, GerShun Avilez argues that queerness, here meaning same-sex desire and gender nonconformity, introduces the threat of injury and that artists throughout the Black diaspora use queer desire to negotiate spaces of injury. The space of injury does not necessarily pertain to a particular architecture or location; it concerns the perception and engagement of a body. Black queer bodies are perceived as social threats, and this perception results in threats (physical, psychological, socioeconomic) against these bodies. The space of injury describes the potential threat to queer bodies that lingers throughout the social world. Attending to such threats and challenging them constitute defining elements in Black queer artists’ work. In each of the two parts to the book, the author examines how perceptions of the Black queer body in different environments create uncertainty for that body and make it a contested space because of racial and sexual meaning. Part 1 focuses on movement through public space (through streets and across borders) and on how state-backed interruptions seek to inhibit queer bodies. Part 2 explores movement through institutional spaces (prisons and hospitals), which seek to expose the queer body to make it vulnerable to control. Ultimately, the book insists that desire and artistic production function as means to queer freedom when actual policies and legislation fail to ensure civic rights and social mobility.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document