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Meet Keith Miller | Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic

01/13/2012 7:00 pm
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13
7pm | Meet Keith Miller | Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic

ASU Professor of English Keith Miller shares his newest book, Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic: His Final, Great Speech. In his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his support of African American garbage workers on strike in Memphis. The hour-long speech is known today for its concluding two minutes, wherein King compares himself to Moses and seems to predict his own assassination. Even though King cited and explicated the Bible in hundreds of speeches and sermons, Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic is the first book to analyze his approach to the Bible and its importance to his rhetoric and persuasiveness. Miller argues that King challenged the dominant view that Christianity replaces the inferior and preceeding Jewish sacraments in favor of a Christianity that affirms Judaism as its wellspring. In fact, he says that King implicitly but strongly argues that one can grasp Jesus only by first grasping Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Miller also traces the roots of the speech to its Pentecostal setting and to the Pentecostals in his audience, which made possible the unique connection between King and his audience on the night of his last speech.

ABOUT KEITH MILLER
Keith Miller is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. In his research, Keith Miller mainly focuses on the rhetoric and songs of the civil rights movement. He is the author of Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources, which was favorably reviewed in Washington Post and is widely cited. His essays on Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, C.L. Franklin, and Fannie Lou Hamer have appeared in many scholarly collections and in such leading journals as College English, College Composition, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Journal of American History. His essay "Second Isaiah Lands in Washington, D.C.: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' as Biblical Narrative and Biblical Hermeneutic" was awarded Best Essay of the Year in Rhetoric Review in 2007. More »

Martin Luther King's Biblical Epic: His Final, Great Speech (Hardcover)

By Keith D. Miller
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ISBN-13: 9781617031083
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: University Press of Mississippi, 11/2011
Other Editions of this Title
Location: 
Street:
6428 S McClintock Dr.
City:
Tempe
,
Province:
Arizona
Postal Code:
85283
Country:
United States
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