A sympathetic history of Jonestown : the Moore family involvement in Peoples Temple (2024)

The apocalypse at Jonestown, ch. 1 of Apocalypse Observed [Routledge 2000]

Jonestown, Paradise Lost: An Investigation of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple

2013

Review Essay: Peoples Temple Revisited

Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 2006

The Erasure (and Re-Inscription) of African Americans from the Jonestown Narrative

2018

The Stigmatized Deaths in Jonestown: Finding a Locus for Grief

Death Studies, 2011

This paper considers the stigmatized deaths in Jonestown in 1978, in which more than 900 Americans died of mass murder and suicide, and how this led to the disenfranchisement of grief. It examines the rituals of exclusion by which bodies were handled and describes the experiences of Jonestown survivors. It then looks at the ways in which grief has been enfranchised through a memorial website which posts names, photographs, and eulogies of those who died. This website serves as the primary place for relatives to visit, since the names themselves have become signs of absent bodies.

The Narration of Collective Trauma: The “True Story” of Jasper, Texas

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2008

Apocalypse at Jonestown

Society, 1979

Is the Canon on Jonestown Closed?

Nova Religio, 2000

The question of canon—that is, whether we have a complete accounting as well as an accepted historical narrative of what happened in Jonestown, Guyana on 18 November 1978—emerged as I attempted to survey Peoples Temple literature of the past decade, picking up where Tom Robbins left off in 1989. My examination indicates that a wide gap exists between popular literature and scholarly analyses. Standard accounts continue to promote the deranged leader/brainwashed follower paradigm and to shape the prevailing understanding of Jonestown. Moreover, conflicting accounts of what happened in the first weeks after the tragedy, coupled with the failure of federal agencies to release classified information on the organization, gave rise to a body of conspiracy theories which provides alternatives to both popular and scholarly explanations of what happened. A popular canon thus appears to dominate common knowledge of Peoples Temple and Jonestown. This cannon seems impervious to critique either by scholarly analysts of conspiracy theorists. Its strength rests on the lack of consensus among its critics. This paper shows just how wide the disagreements are within and between these two groups of challengers. The general understanding of Peoples Temple that was more or less fixed within a year of the deaths in Jonestown therefore comprises a canon on Jonestown today. Whether or not this canon is complete or in need of revision is another question.

Massacre of the Missionaries

Reading Race, Collecting Cultures blog - The Roving Reader Files category, 2015

The Roving Reader Files category of blog posts is produced by Alison Newby (under the pseudonym The Roving Reader) in collaboration with Hannah Niblett (Collections Access Officer, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre). The former provides the text and the latter normally provides the images. The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is an open access University of Manchester facility, and The Roving Reader Files are designed as public engagement materials. The intention is to introduce research skills and terminology to the general user/reader in an entertaining yet informative manner by revealing hidden stories, making unusual connections and sharing insights into using the Centre's collection for research. The post "Massacre of the Missionaries" is part of a series exploring the links between items held by other institutions/collections and the race relations theme/holdings of the Centre. Here, I gained the permission of the archivist of Special Collections at Manchester Metropolitan University to reproduce images of two remarkable Baxter prints held in that archive, allowing me to discuss and contextualise their race-related subject matter. The two prints depict the murder of the missionary Reverend J Williams by indigenous people in the Pacific region in 1839. This caused an outcry in the western Christian world, and Williams' friend George Baxter used his skills in colour print production to present his own impressions of how the sad events might have unfolded. In doing so, he set the tone for innumerable later visual and media representations of so-called 'native savagery' which continue to influence our unconscious inherited attitudes to other cultures and peoples to this day. Other blog posts in this series are: "Day in, Day out: Reminiscence work in Monsall" ; "The Devil Man Springs to Life" ; "Tennyson Makiwane comes to London - but how?" ; "Meeting Daisy Makiwane..."

Changing Community, Retaining Community: Milwaukee Avenue Oral History project