Zoe Schwandt presents Duke University Press’s “The Weekly Read”: Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (2025) by Katharine Gerbner. As the book abstract explains, “Archival Irruptions tackles a fundamental question: What can we possibly learn about Africana religious history from archival documents produced by European missionaries and colonists? [. . .] While it is not possible to recover the full epistemic meaning of Obeah for its adherents in the eighteenth century, reading for Africana irruptions suggests that Obeah was a prophetic practice tied to healing modalities and death rites, and—crucially—formed a core component of an Africana ‘religio-nation.’”
In Archival Irruptions, Katharine Gerbner traces how British authorities in Jamaica came to criminalize Obeah, a practice that was variously seen as a healing method, an Africana religion, a science, and a form of witchcraft. Drawing on Moravian missionary archives, Gerbner’s search for archival irruptions, moments when Africana epistemologies break the narrative of a European-authored archival document, not only creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about Obeah; it provides a new methodology for all those conducting archival research. Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War writes, “This vital story captures the spirit of colonial Christianity. Reading through the selective observations and strategies of racial suppression employed to silence Africana religion, Katharine Gerbner’s engrossing narrative reveals how Black ways of knowing left indelible marks on the archive of Atlantic slavery. More than anything else I can remember, this book expands the way we must think about how authority, recognition, and disavowal shapes religious transformations.”
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of Minnesota. Learn more at the TOME website.
For original post, see https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/11/01/archival-irruptions-the-weekly-read/
For more information, see https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3577/Archival-IrruptionsConstructing-Religion-and and https://www.amazon.com/Archival-Irruptions-Constructing-Criminalizing-Eighteenth-Century/dp/147802903X
Zoe Schwandt presents Duke University Press’s “The Weekly Read”: Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (2025) by Katharine Gerbner. As the book abstract explains, “Archival Irruptions tackles a fundamental question: What can we possibly learn about Africana religious history from archival documents produced by European missionaries and colonists? [. . .] While it is
