NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The College of New Rochelle Office of Mission and Identity will present “The Color of Christ and the Politics of Race in Twentieth-Century America” a lecture by Dr. Edward J. Blum, Associate Professor, Department of History, San Diego State University on Thursday, February 28, 2013.
The lecture is free and open to the public. It will be held at 7:00 p.m. in Sweeny Student Center, Rooms B-C on the Main Campus of the College.
A frequent guest on NPR Radio, and Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and other national publications, Dr. Blum’s book, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (which he co-wrote with Paul Harvey), received universal praise when it was published in 2012. The Library Journal in its review called “a compelling study.” In its starred review of the book, Publishers Weekly wrote, “a powerful and groundbreaking book. . . . [the authors] masterfully probe how a sacred icon can be a tool at once of racial oppression and liberation. A must-read for those interested in American religious history, this book will forever change the way you look at images of Jesus.”
Christian Century wrote that “the authors have produced a rich and readable narrative that begins with the Puritans and concludes with Jesus in the age of Obama.”
Dr. Blum is a historian of race and religion in the United States. He has been awarded the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities by the Council of Graduate Schools for the best first book by a historian published between 2002 and 2009 (2009), the Peter Seaborg Award for the best book in Civil War Studies (2006), and the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in southern history (2004). Twice he has been recognized by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and in 2007 was named by the History News Network a “top young historian.” He has also been a fellow with the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The University of North Carolina Press, publisher of The Color of Christ, describes the book this way: “How is it that in America the image of Jesus Christ has been used both to justify the atrocities of white supremacy and to inspire the righteousness of civil rights crusades? In The Color of Christ, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey weave a tapestry of American dreams and visions–from witch hunts to web pages, Harlem to Hollywood, slave cabins to South Park, Mormon revelations to Indian reservations–to show how Americans remade the Son of God visually time and again into a sacred symbol of their greatest aspirations, deepest terrors, and mightiest strivings for racial power and justice.”
For more information, contact Dr. Joan Bailey, Vice President for Mission and Identity, at (914)-654-5547 or jbailey@cnr.edu.