ABOUT THIS BOOK
The contributors to Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas investigate the complex intersections between the body, religious expression, and the construction and transformation of social relationships and political and economic power. Among other topics, the essays examine the dynamics of religious and racial identity among Brazilian Neo-Pentecostals; the significance of cloth coverings in Islamic practice in northern Nigeria; the ethics of socially engaged hip-hop lyrics by Black Muslim artists in Britain; ritual dance performances among Mama Tchamba devotees in Togo; and how Ifá practitioners from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, and the United States join together in a shared spiritual ethnicity. From possession and spirit-induced trembling to dance, the contributors outline how embodied religious practices are central to expressing and shaping interiority and spiritual lives, national and ethnic belonging, ways of knowing and techniques of healing, and sexual and gender politics. In this way, the body is a crucial site of religiously motivated social action for people of African descent.

Contributors. Rachel Cantave, Youssef Carter, N. Fadeke Castor, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Casey Golomski, Elyan Jeanine Hill, Nathanael J. Homewood, Jeanette S. Jouili, Bertin M. Louis Jr., Camee Maddox-Wingfield, Aaron Montoya, Jacob K. Olupona, Elisha P. Renne

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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.

REVIEWS

TABLE 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

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