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Joel Nathan Rosen, assistant professor of sociology at Moravian College, will present his lecture “No Devils Here: The Religious Undergirdings of the African American Blues Tradition” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17, in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights room 104.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Rosen’s research focuses primarily on the relationship between human activity and stratification using cultural idioms such as sports and most specifically the music of the rural African-American South most commonly referred to as “the Blues.”
“While some have taken great pains to view the Blues as the bastion of ne’er-do-wells and scoundrels, going so far as to designate it ‘the Devil’s music,’ this sobriquet is both wholly inaccurate and steeped in the prevailing racism of the time that serves to deny that Africans of varying ethnic heritages had their own religious customs from which to draw spiritual potency. Thus, by repositioning the Blues as part of a larger set of African-derived cultural models, I will attempt to flesh out the more religious nature of this tradition that is often either discounted or overlooked altogether,” Rosen says.
As the lecture is sponsored by the department of religious studies, the Africana Studies program, and the department of music, Eric Ziolkowski, Dana Professor and head of religious studies, believes it showcases Lafayette’s ongoing commitment to cross-campus, inter-departmental cooperation.
“In combining a number of different perspectives, including the sociological, the musical, and the cultural-critical, Professor Rosen’s lecture will display precisely the sort of commitment to interdisciplinary relationships in which Lafayette prides itself,” he says.
Ziolkowski also stresses the importance of maintaining relations within the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges (LVAIC).
“It is also always nice when one member institution of the LVAIC hosts a guest speaker from another member institution, as we are doing in this case,” he says. “After all, the LVAIC comprises a considerable brain trust, one in which we should all take pride.”