Diverse Spiritualities: Embodiment and Relationality in Religions of Africa and its Diasporas

Symposium Schedule for Thursday, April 20th @ 630 William Pitt Union:
Pre-keynote Reception
5:00 – 6:00 PM

Welcome
6:00 – 6:15 PM

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Stephanie Mitchem (University of South Carolina): “The Embodied Power of Sankofa”
View the flyer online here or attached above.
6:15 – 7:30 PM
Q&A from 7:15 – 7:30 PM

Symposium Schedule for Friday, April 21st @ 630 William Pitt Union:
Pre-keynote Reception
4:00 – 5:00 PM

Keynote Lecture by Dr. Rudolph Ware (University of Michigan): “Seeing into the Unseen: Embodied Knowledge & Disembodied Spirits in Islamic West Africa”
View the flyer online here or attached above.
5:00 – 6:30 PM
Q&A from 6:15 – 6:30 PM

Symposium Schedule for Saturday, April 22nd @ 501 Cathedral of Learning:
Keynote Lecture by Dr. Jacob Olupona (Harvard University Divinity School): “Embodiment, Relationality, and Materiality in African Religion and the African Diaspora Traditions”
View the flyer online here or attached above.
2:00 – 3:30 PM
Q&A from 3:15 – 3:30 PM

Post-keynote Reception
3:30 – 4:15 PM

04/21 (114 O’Hara Student Center)

9:10 am – 11:00 am Session 1: Community, Religious Habitus and the Senses

Bertin Louis (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) – “Habitus in Haitian Protestant Church in the Bahamas”

Rachel Cantave (American University) – “Sensing Faith: Religious Influence and Faith-Based Community Service in Bahia”

Discussant: Brock Bahler (Department of Religious Studies, Univ. of Pittsburgh)

11:00 am – 12:45 pm Session 2: Interrogating Sacredness in Performance

Aaron Montoya (Stanford University) – “Going Beyond Dance, Going Beyond the Sacred: Dance and Resistance in Mozambique”

Camee Maddox-Wingfield (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) – “Authenticating Spiritual Continuity in a Secular Dance Community: Bele’s Rebirth in Contemporary Martinique”

Jeanette Jouili (University of Pittsburgh) - “Performing the Islamic Black Atlantic: Afro-Diasporic Muslim Hip-Hop Artists, Embodied Ethics, and the Redefinition of British Islam”

Discussant: Oronde Sharif (Department of Africana Studies, Univ. of Pittsburgh)

1: 45 – 3:45 pm Session 3: Gender, Sexuality, Healing and Death

Nathanael Homewood (Rice University) – “Wrestling with Homosexuality: Affect and Movement in Charismatic Deliverance”

Yolanda Covington-Ward (University of Pittsburgh) – “Exceptional Healing: Gender, Embodiment, and Prophetism in the Lower Congo”

Casey Golomski (University of New Hampshire) – “The Density of Contagion: Death Pollution in Southeastern Africa”

Discussant: Mari Webel (Department of History, Univ. of Pittsburgh)

04/22 (Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning)

9:00am – 11:00 am Session 4: Spiritual Memories and Ancestors

Elyan Hill (University of California, Los Angeles)– “Spirited Choreographies: Histories of the Slave Trade in Black Atlantic Literature and Ritual Performances in Togo”

Youssef Carter (University of California, Berkeley) – “Alchemy of the Fuqara: Embodiment, Reversion, and Spiritual Care in a Transatlantic Sufi Order”

Fadeke Castor (Texas A & M University – “Our Collective Ancestors: Spiritual Ethnicity in Ifá Devotion across the Americas”