Overview
In tandem with its companion volume, The Fugitive Blacksmith and Other Essential Writings by James W.C. Pennington, this collection of new essays seeks to recover and reappraise James W.C. Pennington (1808-1870), a truly remarkable figure of Black intellectual and political history who is unjustly overlooked today. Written by an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplines, these essays illuminate different parts of Pennington's life and career after escaping from slavery in 1827, discussing his role as reformer, political activist, and theologian. They discuss Pennington's major works including A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841) and his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), and explore Pennington's understanding of and fight for human rights, his selective engagement with Romantic ideas of historicism and culture, and his concept of Black perfectionism. Together the essays bring to life Pennington not just as a historical figure but as a thinker deeply relevant to contemporary conversations about, among other things, the entanglements of race and religion, human rights, democracy, and America's unfinished reconstruction.
Full Product Details
Author: Jan Stievermann (Professor of the History of Christianity in the U.S., Professor of the History of Christianity in the U.S., Heidelberg University) ,
Caitlin B. Smith (Assistant Professor of Early American Literature, Assistant Professor of Early American Literature, St. Bonaventure University) ,
Eddie S. Glaude (James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, Princeton University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 15.00cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.40cm
Weight: 0.431kg
ISBN: 9780197690710
ISBN 10: 0197690718
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 26 December 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Author Information
Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in the U.S. at Heidelberg University. He has written books and essays on a range of topics in the fields of American religious history and American literature, including Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (2016). Caitlin B. Smith is Assistant Professor of Early American Literature at St. Bonaventure University. She has published multiple journal articles on nineteenth-century American literature and religion, with a special focus on early freethinking societies and constructions of doubt. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University.
