Charlotte Richard, Dartmouth College

Description

Alexander Bedward, the Jamaican preacher and healing prophet whose movement drew tens of thousands of followers at the turn of the twentieth century, has often been remembered through colonial caricatures of madness, fanaticism, and failed prophecy. This paper reads Bedward against those archives. Drawing on Jamaican newspapers, colonial records, sermons, oral traditions, and later Black religious memory, it argues that Bedwardism developed a theological language of liberation that challenged both white colonial authority and the racial hierarchies of Jamaican society. Particular attention is given to the story of Bedward’s promised “flight,” long used to ridicule him and discredit his followers. Rather than treating that story simply as evidence of delusion or failure, I examine how it became a contested site of memory and meaning. Recovering Bedward on these terms places him within a longer genealogy of Black religious radicalism linking postemancipation Jamaica to Garveyism, Rastafari, and wider traditions of diasporic Black liberation thought.

About the Presenter

Charlotte Richard is a Mellon Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Religion at Dartmouth College. She is a historian of the African diaspora whose work sits at the intersection of Black religious history, Caribbean history, and the modern Black freedom struggle. Her first book manuscript, Small Axe: Jamaica and the Making of the U.S. Black Freedom Struggle, examines Jamaica as a generator of Black political and religious thought that shaped the U.S. freedom struggle across the twentieth century. She is currently revising the manuscript following external peer review at the University of Rochester Press. Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Black Studies and Siyabonana: The Africana Studies Journal, and her current research on Alexander Bedward explores religion, colonial knowledge, and Black memory in Jamaica. Richard received her Ph.D. in History from the University of New Hampshire in 2024.

Registration

This event is free to all faculty, grad students, and interested members of the public, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.

Questions?

About the Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar Series

The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture broadly from interdisciplinary perspectives, including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. The seminar emphasizes how religious belief has affected society, rather than creedal or theological focused studies.

The Seminar’s co-organizers are Christopher Allison (Independent Scholar), James Krippner (Haveford College), Malachy McCarthy (Archival Resources for Catholic Collections), Kevin M. Schultz (University of Illinois), Shane Ulbrich (University of Notre Dame), and Michelle Nickerson (Loyola University Chicago).