Emma-Jayne Graham

Becoming persons, becoming ancestors. Personhood, memory and the corpse in Roman rituals of social remembrance

This article examines the role of social memory and the treatment of the corpse within the reconfiguration of personhood in the Roman world. Exploring the significance of ‘remembering and forgetting’, it emphasizes the importance of memory and the body as a context for the manipulation of post-mortem personhood and identity. An extraordinarily rich collection of archaeological and epigraphic evidence associated with the Augustan-period senator Marcus Nonius Balbus provides an almost unparalleled context in which to explore the significance of these observations. This particular example from Herculaneum demonstrates that the realignment of relationships during mortuary activities could produce a new sense of personhood for both the deceased and mourners that was constructed in the context of communal remembrance. Subsequent commemorative activities, focused on the material manifestation of these relationships and the ‘dividuality’ of the dead within the urban fabric, may consequently have acted to promote a new civic ancestor for the community of Herculaneum.

The making of infants in Hellenistic and early Roman Italy: a votive perspective

Votive deposits from Hellenistic and early Roman central Italy provide valuable evidence for the genuine concerns, fears and hopes of contemporary communities, including experiences and understandings of pregnancy, childbirth and infancy. This paper examines two types of terracotta votive – models of human uteri and swaddled infants – in order to elucidate the significance of the social and religious beginnings of life in ancient Italy. In particular, the study addresses the manner in which these states of being were perceived and produced by both parents and society at large through the treatment of the unborn/newborn body and its representation in the sanctuary.

Reviving Roman Religion: Sacred Trees in the Roman World

(44) to hip-hop (many progenitors of which were inspired by the consciousness-raising part of black Islam), to Muslim Cool (a black-identified way of being Muslim that requires consciousness of one’s self and social location in the service of resisting anti-black racism). For several of Khabeer’s interlocutors, consciousness-raising and interest in Islam initially came from hip-hop, the lyrics of which are replete with themes from the “big tent” of black Islamic traditions (48). Having turned to Islam, though, these interlocutors found that efforts to cultivate a pious self within communities dominated by Arab and South Asian Muslims also led to alienation, as in such communities blackness is frequently devalued, reflecting both the dominant racism of larger US society and the pervasive assumption that anything authentically Islamic comes from certain parts of South Asia and, especially, the Middle East. The exception to such devaluing is when black culture can be instrumentalized, such as when used in hip-hop performances at ISNA that are designed to appeal to lukewarm Muslim youth, the children of more recent immigrants. Muslim Cool, for Khabeer’s interlocutors (her “teachers”), is a way of reasserting the value of blackness while maintaining Islamic authenticity in such situations. But what happens to the attractive and activist alterity of Muslim Cool when the US government deploys bearers of it as emissaries to Muslims elsewhere as an example of US multicultural exceptionalism? Khabeer’s is a theoretically rich and nuanced account of traditions of sartorial signification—and much more besides—as they are embedded in the ever shifting dynamics of state power and empire on the one hand, and non-state intra-religious and interminority politics on the other. The book is so thoroughly immersed in the leading currents of critical race theory, anthropology (toward the sociological end of the spectrum), and American studies critique that it could serve as an anchoring case study in a course on any of those themes, as well as in courses it seems more obviously suited to from the title or cover, such as those on Islam, African-American studies or African-American religions, or the perpetually fraught “women and religion” offering that inevitably pops up in course catalogs. (The exclusion of black women from authority within hip-hop and within US Muslim communities is the primary reason for placing a ’hoodjabi on the cover of the book in the first place.) Helping undergraduates navigate various theoretical currents swirling between the book’s covers would be no small feat at times, but would be well worth the work for both students and professors. The abundance of pop culture references and the salience of issues discussed keep the narrative engaging, not least as it implicitly challenges the reader to locate her/himself amid the power dynamics identified. It is no wonder that so many reviewers of Khabeer’s work have called the book a “must read.”