Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas

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.

“This groundbreaking book provides insight into how religious communities use expressive practices to unify and find healing. It offers an epistemological shift, recognizing the relevance of corporeality in galvanizing communities while allowing for individualist expressions of relationships to the otherwordly. This volume will make a strong impact in the fields of religious studies, anthropology, performance studies, and African diaspora studies.” - Anita Gonzalez, author of (Afro-Mexico: Dancing between Myth and Reality) “This volume makes a unique and important contribution to the study of African diasporic religions giving priority---in our analysis-not to the theological nor necessarily the social but to the embodied and performative nature of religious practice. In this groundbreaking set of essays we learn the ways in which embodied practices inform ideas like empowerment, resistance and survival.” - Marla F. Frederick, author of (Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global) “The focus of this theoretically engaged and ethnographically rich book . . . is a body-centered perspective on continental and diasporic African religions, offering valuable insights into the body as a medium of communication that generates knowledge, and the role of the body in producing intersubjectivity and relationality.” - Susan Rasmussen (Journal of Anthropological Research) "This eloquent anthology takes the study of the Black body in renewed directions, weaving analytics of healing, bodily movement, materiality, energy, and collective knowledge and practices. This volume advances the field of anthropology with a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of African diaspora religion, culture, and society. . . . The book is also ideal for teaching undergraduates and graduate students. Undoubtedly, it ought to be of great interest to scholars of religion, particularly African and African diasporic religions, and other interdisciplinary areas within anthropology and beyond such as women, gender and sexuality studies, African and African diaspora studies, ethics, and performance studies." - Nessette Falu (American Ethnologist) "In their introduction, editors Yolanda Covington-Ward and Jeanette S. Jouili assert that Embodying Black Religions offers a 'substantial contribution' to the study of embodiment and religiosity in Africa and its diasporas. This claim rings modest given the superb quality of all the chapters featured in their beautifully crafted volume that pushes this rapidly changing field forward in several interesting ways, including an attention to relationality and intersubjectivity formed between human and non-human subjects. The contributions are fresh and engaging, and they communicate compelling ethnography on a range of topics that are both urgent and timely. ... A must-read for scholars interested in emergent trends in the study of African and African diasporic religions."- Seth Palmer (Canadian Journal of African Studies)

• Foreword / Jacob K. Olupona  viiEditors' Acknowledgments  xvIntroduction: Embodiment and Relationality in Religions of Africa and Its Diasporas / Yolanda Covington-Ward and Jeanette S. Jouili  1Part I. Spiritual Memories and Ancestors1. Spirited Choreographies: Embodied Memories and Domestic Enslavement in Togolese Mama Tchamba Rituals / Elyan Jeanine Hill 232. Alchemy of the Fuqara: Spiritual Care, Memory, and the Black Muslim Body / Youssef Carter  493. Spiritual Ethnicity: Our Collective Ancestors in IfÁ Devotion across the Americas / N. Fadeke Castor  70Part II. Community, Religious Habitus, and the Senses4. Faith Full: Sensuous Habitus, Everyday Affect, and Divergent Diaspora in the UCKG / Rachel Cantave  995. Covered Bodies, Moral Education, and the Embodiment of Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria / Elisha P. Renne  1226. Embodied Worship in a Haitian Protestant Church in the Bahamas: Religious Habitus among Bahamians of Haitian Descent / Bertin M. Louis Jr.  152Part III. Interrogating Sacredness in Performance7. The Quest of Spiritual Purpose in a Secular Dance Community: BÉlÉ's Rebirth in Contemporary Martinique / Camee Maddox-Wingfield  1758. Embodying Black Islam: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Afro-Diasporic Muslim Hip-Hop in Britain / Jeanette S. Jouili  1979. Secular Affective Politics in a National Dance about AIDS in Mozambique / Aaron Montoya  222Part IV. Religious Discipline and the Gendered and Sexual Body10. Wrestling with Homosexuality: Kinesthesia as Resistance in Ghanaian Pentecostalism / Nathanael J. Homewood  25311. Exceptional Healing: Gender, Materiality, Embodiment, and Prophetism in the Lower Congo / Yolanda Covington-Ward  27312. Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals / Casey Golomski  297Contributors  317Index  321