BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 X-WR-CALNAME;VALUE=TEXT:Hutchins Center: Author's Talk with Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús - Harvard Book Store PRODID:-//Harvard events data//EN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:event_527161_0 SUMMARY:Hutchins Center: Author's Talk with Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús - Harvard Book Store DESCRIPTION:

Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion

About the Author

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is associate professor of African American religions at Harvard Divinity School. A cultural and social anthropologist, she studies media, circulation, and religious travel of African diaspora religions from a transnational feminist approach.

Santería is an African-inspired, Cuban diaspora religion long stigmatized as witchcraft and often dismissed as superstition, yet its spirit- and possession-based practices are rapidly winning adherents across the world. Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús introduces the term "copresence" to capture the current transnational experience of Santería, in which racialized and gendered spirits, deities, priests, and religious travelers remake local, national, and political boundaries and reconfigure notions of technology and transnationalism.