Books in the Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People series

The contributors to Affective Trajectories examine the mutual and highly complex entwinements between religion and affect in urban Africa in the early twenty-first century, tracing the myriad ways religious ideas, practices, and materialities interact with affect to configure life in urban African spaces.

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures along with the legacies of British colonial rule have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria.

Jalane D. Schmidt shows how the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, discovered in 1612 and known as Cachita, is a potent and contested symbol of Cuban national identity. She analyzes the five times over the last eighty years Cachita has been celebrated in Cuba's urban streets.

In Gesture and Power Yolanda Covington-Ward examines the everyday embodied practices and performances of the BisiKongo people of the lower Congo to show how their gestures, dances, and spirituality are critical in mobilizing social and political action.

In Hope Draped in Black Joseph R. Winters responds to the belief that America follows a constant trajectory of racial progress, using African American literature and film to construct an idea of hope that embraces melancholy in order to acknowledge and mourn America's traumatic history.

The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and mortuary rituals across the Caribbean, showing how racial, cultural and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.

The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and mortuary rituals across the Caribbean, showing how racial, cultural and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.

In this ethnography of female empowerment, Laura S. Grillo offers new perspectives on how elder West African women deploy an ancient ritual in which they dance naked and slap their genitals and bare breasts to protest abuses of state power, globalization, witchcraft, rape, and other social dangers.

The contributors to Spirit on the Move examine Pentecostalism's appeal to black women worldwide and the ways it provides them with a source of community, access to power, and way to challenge social inequalities.

The contributors to Spirit on the Move examine Pentecostalism's appeal to black women worldwide and the ways it provides them with a source of community, access to power, and way to challenge social inequalities.

Roberto Strongman examines three Afro-diasporic religions-Hatian Vodou, Cuban Lucumi/Santeria, and Brazilian Candomble-to demonstrate how the commingling of humans and the divine during trance possession produce subjectivities whose genders are unconstrained by biological sex.

Christopher Tounsel investigates the centrality of Christian worldviews to the ideological construction of South Sudan from the early twentieth century to the present.

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.

Todne Thomas explores the internal dynamics of community life among black evangelicals and the ways the create spiritual relationships through the practice of kincraft-the construction of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, partners in prayer, and spiritual mothers, fathers, and children.

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.