In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in Vodou En Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States (UNC Press, 2023), that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession. Nwokocha spent more than a decade observing Vodou ceremonies from Montreal and New York to Miami and Port-au-Prince. She engaged particularly with a Haitian practitioner and former fashion designer, Manbo Maude, who presided over Vodou temples in Mattapan, Massachusetts, and Jacmel, Haiti. With vivid description and nuanced analysis, Nwokocha shows how Manbo Maude's use of dress and her production of ritual garments are key to serving Black gods and illuminate a larger transnational economy of fashion and spiritual exchange.
Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha is assistant professor of religion at the University of Miami.
Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
Gary S. Cross, "Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal" (NYU Press, 2024)
Philipp Demgenski, "Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
Vaia Touna and Richard Newton, "Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion: Revisiting Classical Theorists" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Women’s Experiences of Workplace Gender-based Violence and Harassment in Cambodia’s Construction Industry
Ahmed M. Abozaid, "Undesired Revolution: The Arab Uprising in Egypt--A Three Level Analysis" (Brill, 2023)
Arsalan Khan, "The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Lorenza B. Fontana, "Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Bruce O'Neill, "Underground: Dreams and Degradations in Bucharest" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Elliott Prasse-Freeman, "Rights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Ieva Jusionyte, "Exit Wounds: How America's Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border" (U California Press, 2024)
Darren Wershler et al,, "The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
Jessica C. Robbins, "Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memory, Kinship, and Personhood" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
Grazia Ting Deng, "Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Seth D. Kaplan, "Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time" (Little, Brown Spark, 2023)
M. Cooper Minister and Sarah J. Bloesch, "Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Cristiana Strava, "Precarious Modernities: Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Miss Tibet: Representing Tibet through Beauty Pageants
Elizabeth Peterson, "Making Sense of 'Bad English': An Introduction to Language Attitudes and Ideologies" (Routledge, 2019)
Brooke Larson, "The Lettered Indian: Race, Nation, and Indigenous Education in Twentieth-Century Bolivia" (Duke UP, 2023)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
New Books in Philosophy
New Books in Psychoanalysis
New Books in Anthropology
New Books in African American Studies
New Books in Islamic Studies