Craig Womack, Baptists and Witches: Multiple Jurisdictions in a Muskogee Creek Story; Southern Spaces

Baptists and Witches: Multiple Jurisdictions in a Muskogee Creek Story

Craig Womack, University of Oklahoma

Overview:

Speaking at Emory University on December 5th, 2006, Dr. Womack examines Muskogee Creek culture through his reading of Durango Mendoza's short story "Summer Water and Shirley," and his discussion of jurisdictional spaces in the vicinity of the Thlewarle Indian Baptist Church.

Location of Thlewarle Baptist Indian Church

Presentation Sections:

Baptists and Witches | "Summer Water and Shirley" | The Baptist Indian Church | Recommended Resources

Baptists and Witches: Multiple Jurisdictions in a Muskogee Creek Story:

Part 1: Introduction (9:33 min.) RealMedia Windows Media QuickTime	Womack introduces the little-known, but remarkable short story (first published in 1966) "Summer Water and Shirley," and its author, the Creek-Mexican writer and visual artist Durango Mendoza. Surprisingly, the site of the story, the ceremonial grounds close by Thlewarle Indian Baptist Church in Oklahoma, is also explored in a detailed 1970 article by congregation member Sharon Fife, illustrated by her sister Jimmie Carole Fife. To set the mood, Womack sings a well known Creek hymn.
Part 2: "Summer Water and Shirley" (11:00 min.) RealMedia Windows Media QuickTime	Thlewarle Church (founded in 1858) is one of the many centers of the Creek world connecting historic events with everyday realities. Womack begins his interpretive reading of "Summer Water and Shirley," a story in which a child's playfulness in crossing boundaries leads to a life and death crisis.
Part 3: Fear and Kin in "Summer Water and Shirley" (13:09 min.) RealMedia Windows Media QuickTime	Why is the adults' medicine not effective? How to understand the story's witchery? Sonny, Shirley's brother, overcomes his fear and the adults' resignation as he tries to save his sister. One transgression of tradition deserves another.
Part 4: Conclusion (13:06 min.) RealMedia Windows Media QuickTime	Womack considers how Sharon Fife's article on Thlewarle describes activities taking place in the church and on the grounds during the time of "Summer Water and Shirley," and how Mendoza's story illuminates important tensions of spatial jurisdictions in Creek culture.

About Craig Womack:

Dr. Craig Womack is an Oklahoma Creek-Cherokee Native American literary scholar, writer, and teacher. He received an MA in English from South Dakota State University in 1991, and his PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 1995. He is the author of Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism (1999), Drowning in Fire (2001), and Reflections on Aesthetics (2008). He is co-author of American Indian Literary Nationalism (2007) and Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective (2008). At the time of this lecture, Prof. Womack taught Native American literatures and gay and lesbian literatures at the University of Oklahoma. He joined the English Department of Emory University in the fall of 2007.

For another video lecture by Womack, visit "Aestheticizing a Political Debate: Can the Creek Confederacy Be Sung Back Together?"

Presentation Sections:

Baptists and Witches | "Summer Water and Shirley" | The Baptist Indian Church | Recommended Resources