Description: Excavating Exodus examines adaptations of Moses' story in novels, newspapers, and speeches from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights era. By asking how Moses became a touchstone for notions of race loyalty, Excavating Exodus traces how Black intellectuals reinvented the Mosaic model of charismatic male leadership.
Brief description: J. Laurence Cohen is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in English from Emory University. His book, Excavating Exodus: Biblical Typology and Racial Solidarity in African American Literature, shows how Moses evolved from an icon of race loyalty to an avatar of authoritarianism. He is the author of "Exodus and Typological Plasticity in Delany, Melville, and Stowe" published in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture and "Shining Inward: The Blind Seer, Fanny Crosby, and Education for the Blind" published in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.
Review Quotes:
'Cohen displays an impressive range of engagements with the Exodus story, across many genres and perspectives, with particular emphasis on historical and political context... the book's clarity and originality make an important contribution to scholarship on African American racial identity and biblical reception.' Brian Britt, American Religion