Spiritual Work, Memory Work

Revival and Recollection at Salem Camp Meeting

Bibliographic Data

ID2277438
AuthorsBradd Shore (Emory University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume36
Issue1
Pages98-119
Publication date2008-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1352.2008.00006.x
OpenAlexW2026514857
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited26

For over 175 years, Salem Campground, in north-central Georgia, has been the site of one of the oldest camp meetings in the United States. Camp meetings were originated by Methodist circuit riders on the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier at the end of the 18th century as religious revival meetings. Today, camp meeting remains one of the oldest distinctly American religious traditions. Camp meetings have become a mix of spiritual revival and family reunion, partly in response to the frequent dislocation of middle-class families. In the 19th century, much of this mobility was because of the settlement of the western states. Today, it is because of job-related relocations. In this article I look at camp meeting as a theater of family memory, and examine how social memory and identity updating for campers is enabled by the way camp meeting organizes time and space making possible a constant flow of family narrative. This ethnographically rich approach to camp meting offers a general framework for exploring conjunctures of individual and collective memory processes in other settings. [family, memory, religion, identity, revivalism

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Ethnology · Frontier · Identity (music) · Literature · Memory work · Narrative · Settlement (finance) · Sociology · Summer camp · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · History · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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