# Event Details

- **Event Name**: Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica
- **Event Start and End Date**: Tue, 06 Oct, 2026 at 12:00 pm (-05:00)
- **Event Description**: Anderson Student Center, North Woulfe Alumni Hall North (Room 378N) 
University of St. Thomas 2115 Summit Ave., St. Paul, MN
Free and open to the public
click here for more info:https://tommielink.stthomas.edu/event/11929556
 
What happens when a spiritual healing tradition practiced by enslaved Africans is suddenly recast as a crime by colonial authorities? In eighteenth-century Jamaica, Obeah – an Afro-Caribbean practice involving healing, spiritual protection, and communication with the dead – became a flashpoint where fear, rebellion, and competing ways of knowing collided. In this presentation, Dr. Katharine Gerbner, drawing on her new book, will discuss how “archival irruptions” reveal African ways of understanding the world within colonial records and reshape our sense of religion and power in the Atlantic world.

Katharine Gerbner, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. A historian of religion, race, and freedom, she examines practices that fall outside traditional definitions of “religion” and uses multilingual archival research to recover overlooked histories. She is the author of Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2025) and Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). In addition to her books, she co-created Adga Tome: Damma’s World, a digital project translating the words of a formerly enslaved African woman, and has written on Quakers and slavery, race and religion, and archival ethics. Her current research investigates how changing labor systems and emerging technologies continue to shape ideas of religion and freedom.

Organized and sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies in collaboration with the History Department, the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Minor, the English Department, the American Culture and Difference program, the Department of Justice and Society Studies, the Master of Arts in Diversity Leadership, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies – all within the College of Arts and Sciences.
- **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/mendota/who-decides-what-counts-as-religion-obeah-slavery-and-the-making-of-religion-in-colonial-jamaica/200029504840342
- **Event Categories**: sports, art, business, fine-arts, literary-art, nonprofit
- **Interested Audience**: 
  - total_interested_count: 7

## Ticket Details


## Event venue details

- **city**: Mendota
- **state**: MN
- **country**: United States
- **location**: University of St. Thomas
- **lat**: 44.941095246069
- **long**: -93.189053891021
- **full address**: University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Ave,Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mendota, United States

## Event gallery

- **Alt text**: Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica
  - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events8/banners/6ac80ead58261ebcf2d74514c066c7f5348cca7a82593e68bd95d30fa9c01c2e-rimg-w1200-h1459-dcf6f4f1-gmir?v=1775144348

## FAQs

- **Q**: When and where is Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica being held?
  - **A:** Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica takes place on Tue, 06 Oct, 2026 at 12:00 pm to Tue, 06 Oct, 2026 at 12:00 pm at University of St. Thomas, 2115 Summit Ave,Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mendota, United States.
- **Q**: Who is organizing Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica?
  - **A:** Who Decides What Counts as Religion? Obeah, Slavery, and the Making of Religion in Colonial Jamaica is organized by Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at University of St Thomas.

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