Take Me to the Water: Black Madonnas and the Initiation of Possibility
Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones
Boston College
Date:ÌýWednesday, March 26, 2025
Time:Ìý12 - 1pm
Location:Ìý24 Quincy Road, Conference Room
ÌýWAITLIST only
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For this colloquium, Dr. Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones will present work and discussion from her new monograph,ÌýImmaculate Misconceptions: A Black MariologyÌý(Oxford University Press, 2025).ÌýImmaculate MisconceptionsÌýbegins with the claim,ÌýMary is Black,Ìýto ground how Christian-colonial imaginaries of salvation and identity are challenged when we rethink assumptions about race, gender, and divine significance through the lens of the Virgin Mary, and specifically, through a return to the Black Madonna. Staged as a Black feminist and womanist theological conversation, the book offers a layered journey through art, church history, theological inquiry, and Black studies to consider a theologyÌýpartus sequitur ventrem—arisingÌýfromÌýthe condition of the Black Mother,ÌýfollowingÌýthe condition of the Black Madonna, andÌýforÌýthe consideration of all those who pursue justice and life at the spiritual intersections of the world. The book questions the ‘legislative doctrine’ around our perceptions of Mary as the Mother of God, and considers how Christian collusion with colonialism, capitalism, and anti-Blackness have worked theologically to deny Blackness from the realms of the sacred. Through the lens of the art and theology of the icon, the treatise thinks through Black women’s reproductive legacies theologically, and revisits the figure of the Black Madonna as fugitive, the womb as hush harbor, birth as liturgy, and Black life as holy.
Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones is assistant professor of theology and African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. She is author ofÌýImmaculate Misconceptions: A Black MariologyÌý(Oxford University Press, 2025).Ìý
Photo credits: Christopher Soldt, MTS