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The contributors to
Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and negotiation of social relationships and collective identities throughout the Black diaspora.
List of contents
Foreword / Jacob K. Olupona vii
Editors' Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Embodiment and Relationality in Religions of Africa and Its Diasporas / Yolanda Covington-Ward and Jeanette S. Jouili 1
Part I. Spiritual Memories and Ancestors
1. Spirited Choreographies: Embodied Memories and Domestic Enslavement in Togolese Mama Tchamba Rituals / Elyan Jeanine Hill 23
2. Alchemy of the
Fuqara: Spiritual Care, Memory, and the Black Muslim Body / Youssef Carter 49
3. Spiritual Ethnicity: Our Collective Ancestors in Ifá Devotion across the Americas / N. Fadeke Castor 70
Part II. Community, Religious Habitus, and the Senses
4. Faith Full: Sensuous Habitus, Everyday Affect, and Divergent Diaspora in the UCKG / Rachel Cantave 99
5. Covered Bodies, Moral Education, and the Embodiment of Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne 122
6. Embodied Worship in a Haitian Protestant Church in the Bahamas: Religious Habitus among Bahamians of Haitian Descent / Bertin M. Louis Jr. 152
Part III. Interrogating Sacredness in Performance
7. The Quest of Spiritual Purpose in a Secular Dance Community:
Bélé's Rebirth in Contemporary Martinique / Camee Maddox-Wingfield 175
8. Embodying Black Islam: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Afro-Diasporic Muslim Hip-Hop in Britain / Jeanette S. Jouili 197
9. Secular Affective Politics in a National Dance about AIDS in Mozambique / Aaron Montoya 222
Part IV. Religious Discipline and the Gendered and Sexual Body
10. Wrestling with Homosexuality: Kinesthesia as Resistance in Ghanaian Pentecostalism / Nathanael J. Homewood 253
11. Exceptional Healing: Gender, Materiality, Embodiment, and Prophetism in the Lower Congo / Yolanda Covington-Ward 273
12. Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals / Casey Golomski 297
Contributors 317
Index 321
About the author
Yolanda Covington-Ward is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of
Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo, also published by Duke University Press.
Jeanette S. Jouili is Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University and author of
Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe.
Summary
The contributors to Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and negotiation of social relationships and collective identities throughout the Black diaspora.
