Attached Paper In-person November Annual Meeting 2025

The Birth of a Nation: Christian Eschatology and Black Disappearance

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

 

This paper explores Christian eschatology as orienting American society towards the disappearance of black persons from public life. Probing the iconic white supremacist film, The Birth of A Nation (1915), we will uncover how a racialized version of Christian eschatology is facilitated through this film. This paper argues that the expression of this Christian eschatology in The Birth of A Nation informs the disappearance of black persons from American life in the 20th century as a mode by which constitutes the organization of the United States as a racial project. I call this process a “theo-politics of disappearance;” which describes the intersection of Christian eschatology and anti-blackness as facilitating the removal of black persons from American life. This paper explores black removal as most notably expressed in the mass incarceration of black persons in America’s jails and prisons in the latter half of the 20th century.