Image “Destiny” by Deanna Oyafemi Lowman

MOYO ~ BIENVENIDOS ~ E KAABO ~ AKWABAA BYENVENI ~ BEM VINDOS ~ WELCOME

Welcome to the fourth conference of the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association! ADRSA was conceived during a forum of scholars and scholar-practitioners of African and Diasporic religions held at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School in October 2011 and the idea was solidified during the highly successful Sacred Healing and Wholeness in Africa and the Americas symposium held at Harvard in April 2012. Those present at the forum and the symposium agreed that, as with the other fields with which many of us are affiliated, the expansion of the discipline would be aided by the formation of an association that allows researchers to come together to forge relationships, share their work, and contribute to the growing body of scholarship on these rich traditions. We are proud to be the first US-based association dedicated exclusively to the study of African and Diasporic Religions and we look forward to continuing to build our network throughout the country and the world.

Although there has been definite improvement, Indigenous Religions of all varieties are still sorely underrepresented in the academic realms of Religious and Theological Studies. As a scholar-practitioner of such a tradition, I am eager to see that change. As of 2005, there were at least 400 million people practicing Indigenous Religions worldwide, making them the 5th most commonly practiced class of religions. Taken alone, practitioners of African and African Diasporic religions comprise the 8th largest religious grouping in the world, with approximately 100 million practitioners, and the number continues to grow. Despite their noted absence from Religious Studies in the past, more and more, the knowledge embedded in the rich traditions of Africa and the Americas is coming to the fore. The ADRSA is proud to be a part of that development.

African religions have always been dynamic and cosmopolitan, transcending spatial boundaries to blend and reform themselves in conjunction with neighboring traditions. Once introduced into the Americas, the pluralistic nature of these traditions lent to the development of unique African Diasporic religions that have grown, moved, and changed over time. The divination, ritual, song, dance, incantation, craft, festival, spirit possession, dreams, herbalism, acquisition of sacred knowledge and many other aspects of these traditions have traversed the African continent and the world to become formidable forces in the realm of world religions. Practitioners of the traditions represented here today exercise active agency and engage with the world on every level, using every one of their senses and sensibilities. They mend what is broken, balance what is askew and maintain equilibrium until the time comes to mend and rebalance again using a number of ancient and modern technologies from divination tools, to ceremonial dress, to processes for healing, invoking and communicating with spirit, and many others. As well, newer technological processes and items such as social media, smart phones, voice over internet protocol (VOIP) and the Internet itself have become actors in the practice of ADR and have affected the practice in both expected and unanticipated ways. It is all of these aspects that we look forward to exploring today. We pray that the connections we make and the conversations we begin will endure long after the conference has ended.

With best wishes and sincere gratitude,

Funlayo E. Wood

Founding Director, African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association

Doctoral Candidate, Department of African & African American Studies

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FEATURED ARTIST | DEANNA OYAFEMI LOWMAN Woman, Artist, Initiate. Deanna Oyafemi Lowman is an artist,

mother, educator, and initiate to Oya and Orunmila. She holds a

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Colorado

at Denver and during her course work she discovered the

photography of Albert Chong, whose work explored spirituality and

mysticism through self-portraits and images of offerings to spirits.

His work inspired her thesis show, Òrìṣà●Orixá●Orisha, for which

she took self-portraits dressed as various orisha. Of the portraits she

said, “I ventured to my innermost core that fosters my connection to

the divinities. I called upon them to

embody my flesh and present themselves through

my physical character.”

In addition to film and digital photography,

Deanna works in a number of media including

pen and ink, watercolor, and various metals with

which she crafts jewelry. She recently earned a

Masters of Arts in Teaching; Elementary

Education from the University of Northern

Colorado and is dedicated to bridging the

spirituality she practices with K-6 education to

increase children’s awareness of their spirits and

the spiritual world in which they live.

Deanna has been practicing nature-

based traditions for more than two

decades, a journey which began in high school when she did a book

report on Vodun a month before the movie Serpent and the Rainbow

debuted. Seeing parts of her book report come to life on the big screen

inspired her to research more indigenous African and Native American

spiritual systems. Some years passed before her search for spirituality

led her to the Lakota Sioux tradition where she regularly participated in

sweat lodges, and in 2012 she made her vision quest at Bear Butte, South

Dakota. In 1996, while reading Iyanla Vanzant’s Tapping the Power Within,

Deanna built the foundation for her connection to Ifa. From that book she

learned to set up an ancestral altar and work with the elements of nature; these

she would later learn were the orisha from the Ifa tradition of Nigeria. Initiated

to Oya in 2008, and to Orunmila in 2015, Deanna’s desire has been to inform,

inspire, and heal people through her artwork and presentations.

Images from Deanna’s Òrìṣà●Orixá●Orisha series, clockwise from the top left Deanna as two versions of Oya, Shango, Oshun, and Ogun. She styled and shot these images of herself and cut and used her own hair to create the beards she

wears as the male Orisha. This, she says, she did as an offering to the Orisha.

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T H E D I V I N E A N D T H E D I G I T A L African and Diasporic Ritual Technologies

Harvard University | Friday, April 8, 2016

8:00 am – 8:45 am Breakfast & Networking

9:00 – 9:30 am

Opening of the Day Funlayo E. Wood Doctoral Candidate, African and African American Studies & Religion, Harvard University & Founding Director, ADRSA

Libation Awo Oluwole Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede, Chief Priest, Ile Omo Ope, New York, NY

Welcome Francis X. Clooney, S. J., Director, Center for the Study of World Religions

9:30 – 10:00 am

Opening Plenary | Aisha Beliso-De Jesus Associate Professor of African American Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School

10:15 – 11:15 am

Panel 1 | Using the Digital in Service of the Divine: Skype, Social Justice, and Sèvis Lwa

Chair: Claudine Michel, PhD, Professor of Black Studies, UC Santa Barbara & KOSANBA

Ayodele Odiduro (Tulane University) Can Orunmila Talk via Skype? Babaláwo and Remote Divination in the 21st Century

N. Fadeke Castor, PhD (Texas A & M University) “Be a calabash! Be a vessel of service!” Social Justice and Spiritual Citizenship in Afro-Atlantic Religions

LeGrace Benson, PhD (Independent Scholar, Haitian Studies Association) Contact Vodou and Web Vodou

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Panel 2 | Mapping and Mathematics: Reading, Plotting, and Calculating the Divine

Chair: Khytie Brown, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University & ADRSA

Matthew Alpert (Independent Scholar) Internet Programmable Devices: Indigenous and Globalized

In the

Presence

of a

Tranquil

God by

Bernard

Hoyes

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Jaye Osunfunmike Nias, PhD (University of Maryland, Eastern Shore) The “plus one”: The Concept of Expansion in Ifa Religious Practice

Suzanne Preston Blier, PhD (Harvard University) Ancient Ife: Reading the Divine Spatially and Digitally

Lunch | 12:30 – 1:15 pm

1:30 pm Keynote Address | Robert Farris Thompson

Colonel John Trumbull Professor in the History of Art and Professor of African and African American Art, Yale University

Introduction by Kyrah M. Daniels, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University & ADRSA

2:30 – 3:15 pm

Panel 3 | Spiritual and Embodied Technologies in Dance, Literature, and Film

Chair: Lisa Osunleti Beckley-Roberts, PhD, Professor of Music, Jackson State University & ADRSA

Omilade Davis (Temple University) The Technology of Embodiment in Germaine Acogny’s Modern African Dance Technique

Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie, MFA, DA (Coppin State University) My Soul Looks Back and wonders How I Got Over: Sankofa, Bisimbi, and Spiritual Technology in Daughters of the Dust and Sankofa

3:30 – 4:50 pm

Artist Roundtable | Ritual, Spiritual, and Digital Technologies in Action

Moderator: Manolia Charlotin (The Media Consortium)

Panelists: Seyi Adebanjo (Metropolitan College of New York, Brooklyn College, Tengade Productions) Sabine Blaizin (Oyasound Productions) Ayinde Jean-Baptiste (Independent Artist-Scholar) Deanna Oyafemi Lowman (Independent Artist-Scholar) Arthea Perry (North Carolina A & T University)

4:50 pm – 5 pm

Closing Remarks

5:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Networking Reception featuring the sound stylings of DJ Sabine Blaizin

Saturday April 9, 11 am – 4 pm African and Diasporic Religions Film Festival

Featuring Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil

Followed by a discussion with producer/director Donna Roberts &

Oya! Something Happened on the Way to West Africa Followed by a discussion with producer/director Seyi Adebanjo

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KEYNOTE SPEAKER |ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON Starting with an article on Afro-Cuban dance and music published in 1958, has devoted his life to the serious study of the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world. His first book, Black Gods and Kings, was a close iconographic reading of the art history of the forty million Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. He has published texts on the structure and meaning of African dance, African Art in Motion, and a reader on the art history of the Black Americas, Flash of the Spirit, which has remained in print since its publication in 1983. Thompson has published two books on the bark cloth art of the pygmies of the Ituri

Forest, plus the first international study of altars of the Black Atlantic world, Face of the Gods and most recently Tango: The Art History of Love. In addition, he has published an introduction to the diaries of Keith Haring, studies the art of José Bedia and Guillermo Kuitca and has been anthologized fifteen times. Certain of his works have been translated into French, German, Flemish and Portuguese.

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INVITED GUESTS

Babalawo Oluwole A. Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede, affectionately known as “the

Babalawo of Harlem” is the Chief Priest of Ile Omo Ope Temple in New York City. He is a

Traditional African Orisa Practitioner, professional performing artist, father, and master

chess player. Awo Ifakunle attended Hunter College, studying community health and

physical education and is the student of Professor Ogunwande Abimbola who is the Awise

Agbaye (spokesman of all babalawo in the World). His Oluwo (officiator of Ifa

ceremonies), and his master teacher is Chief Araba Malumo Ifatukemi Alagbede of Elejibo,

Lagos, Nigeria in whose compound Awo Ifakunle was initiated to Obatala and Ifa over 20

years ago. Additionally, the Awo has been tutored by Chief Priest Awise of Osogbo

Ifayemi Elebuibon on Ifa divination and chants of Ifa. Locally, Awo Ifakunle was the

Godchild and student of both Oba Oseijeman Ofuntola Adefunmi I (iba e), who was the

first King of Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina where he lived in for a time in the

1970s. Awo Ifakunle regularly lectures on Ifa-Orisa Tradition at Ile Eko Sango Oshun

Milosa shrine in Trinidad and Tobago, at High Schools in New York City and at Colleges

and Universities including Harvard University, New York University, and Sara Lawrence College.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, PhD is Associate Professor of African American Religions at

Harvard Divinity School. A cultural and social anthropologist, Dr. Beliso-De Jesús has

conducted ethnographic research with Santería practitioners in Cuba and the United States

since 2003. Her book, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational

Religion (Columbia University Press, 2015) details the transnational experience of Santería,

in which racialized and gendered spirits, deities, priests, and religious travelers remake local,

national, and political boundaries and actively reconfigure notions of technology and

transnationalism. Her publications include articles in American Ethnologist, Cultural

Anthropology, and Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is a member of

the Cuba Policy Committee at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, an

associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and a

Ford Foundation Fellow.

LeGrace Benson is Professor Emerita of SUNY-Empire State College, and

since 1991 Director of the Arts of Haiti Research Project. She is currently

Associate Editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies, President of the Haitian

Studies Association and Vice President of KOSANBA, a scholarly organization

dedicated to the study of Vodou and other African-rooted religions in the

Americas. She is author of Arts and Religions of Haiti; How the Sun Illuminates

Under Cover of Darkness, Ian Randle Publishers, 2015. She is author of

numerous other publications from 1986 to the present. Her interdisciplinary PhD

in Art History and Perceptual Psychology is from Cornell University; M.A. in art

and philosophy from the University of Georgia; A.B. in Art and English from

Meredith College.

Dj Sabine Blaizin's work focuses on the exposure and pleasures of

African Diasporic music. Brooklyn Mecca and Oyasound are a few

of her creative projects. Over the years, Dj Sabine's mainstay and

cultivation has been the monthly event Brooklyn Mecca which has

been coined the home of "Grassroots Dance Culture". Her

Oyasound Ep is currently in the works. Sabine worked for Ocha

Records label as a Brand Marketing Director/Producer and Bembe

NYC Party resident DJ. Dj Sabine spins Global Soul: House,

Afrotech, Afrobeat, Haitian Roots and other Diasporic tunes. She's

had the great opportunity to spin nationally in the US in NYC,

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Atlanta, St. Louis, Memphis, Chicago, Omaha, Boston, Miami, LA/Oakland, NJ, Washington DC, Dallas, Denver and

internationally in Montreal, Dakar, Haiti, & Cancun. She sits on several panel discussions for the well renown Caribbean

Culture Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), highlighting the power of spirituality in the arts and has been

honored as an emerging artist at the 27th Annual Women of Power Conference 2014: The Art of Being a Women on

Mar. 15th, 2014. Sabine has also made the Most Respected House DJ's List of 2014 by MediaServiceNyc for recognized

innovative djs. In June 2014, Sabine produced her 1st installment of her project Lakay Se Lakay: Home Is Home a

Haitian electronic artists conversation series & No Passport (NYC Edition) party in conjunction with Haiti Cultural

Exchange's 1st NYC Haitian Arts & Culture festival Selebrayson!. Most recently, Sabine was the featured Dj for the

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art's 50th Anniversary and completed her 2nd installment of Lakay Se Lakay:

Ancient Future Haitianist at her alma mater The New School.

Manolia Charlotin is a multimedia journalist and strategist who tells stories that feed the

spirit and amplifies voices that seek liberation. Currently, Manolia is the Director of Special

Projects at The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media that works to

redefine the political and cultural debate. There, she manages editorial collaborations among

member outlets, spearheads #TMCinColor and curates independent media coverage of the

movement for Black lives.

Manolia is the former managing editor at Feet in 2 Worlds, hosted and co-produced

Caribbean Spotlight on BK Live, served as editor-in-chief and publisher for The Haitian

Times, and as editor and business manager at the Boston Haitian Reporter. As a thought

leader in public policy, she has been a featured speaker on news programs and college

campuses, at international conferences and congressional briefings, gleaning from her

experiences on electoral and issue-based campaigns to provide analysis on the African

diaspora, social movements, advocacy, media diversity and politics.

Donna Roberts is producer, director and co-writer of the new

feature length documentary film, Yemanjá: Wisdom from the

African Heart of Brazil, narrated by Alice Walker, about the

Candomblé spiritual culture in Bahia, Brazil. Working as a

journalist and producer/director in the U.S. and Canada since the

late 1980s, Donna wrote and directed the Telly-Award winning

public television documentary, Sea of Uncertainty, about ecological

and economic consequences of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil

spill in the Gulf of Mexico (WGCU Public Media) and has written

and produced many other projects in countries including Canada

and Brazil. Donna has worked and conducted academic research

throughout Brazil, with a particular focus on women and Afro-

Brazilian culture. She also has an ongoing creative service

relationship with the Calafate Women’s Collective in Salvador da Bahia, which her ongoing work continues to support.

She holds an M.S. in Environmental Sciences from Florida Gulf Coast University, where she also taught Environmental

Humanities, and a B.A. in Journalism/Mass Communication from University of Georgia’s Henry W. Grady School of

Journalism. Donna is mother to 17-year-old Gabriel who is diagnosed with autism. She co-created a theatre course for

youth with autism in collaboration with the Florida Repertory Theatre in Fort Myers, FL. Known as Act Up!, the course

is still going strong!

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PANELISTS Seyi Adebanjo is a Queer gender-non-conforming

Nigerian MFA artist. Seyi is a media artist who raises

awareness around social issues through digital video,

multimedia photography and writings. Seyi’s work is the

intersection of art, media, imagination, ritual and politics.

Seyi has been an artist in resident with Allgo and is

exhibiting at the Longwood Art Gallery and previously

Skylight Gallery -Restoration Plaza Corporation, Bronx

Academy of Arts & Dance (BAAD!), MCNY, the Leslie-

Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art & Waterloo

Arts Gallery. Seyi is currently a fellow with AIM at the

Bronx Museum and has been a fellow with The

Laundromat Project, Queer/Art/Mentorship, Maysles Institute, IFP and City Lore Documentary Fellow. Seyi is the

recipient of the Best International Short Film Award -Sydney Transgender International Film Festival, Best

Documentary Short- Drama Baltimore International Black Film Festival, Pride of the Ocean LGBT Film Festival Award

and Hunter College’s Dean of Arts & Science Master’s Thesis Support Grant. Seyi has been a presenter with NYU,

UFVA Conference, AWP & Lambda Literary Foundation & the Brazilian Queering Paradigms Conference. Seyi’s work

has been published at Ọṣun State University, African Voices Magazine, Q-Zine, and the Mott Haven Herald. Seyi’s

powerful short Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles has screened on PBS Channel 13, Brooklyn Museum and

continues to screen globally including Official Selection at the 28th BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival, Black Star

Film Festival, Gender Reel Film Festival and Al Jazeera America. Other screenings include Brooklyn Film Festival,

Reel Sister of the Diaspora Film Festival, The Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival, and the Walker Art Center.

Seyi’s current documentary Ọya: Something Happened On The Way To West Africa! is screening globally and on a

speaking tour.

Matthew Alpert completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard College in 2014 with a

self-designed curriculum and a minor in philosophy of science. Along with this minor, his

curriculum bridged topics in philosophy of computing and networks, metaphysics,

foundations of math and logic; anthropology and sociology of sciences and technologies,

critical decolonized research, and indigenous ritual technologies including Chinese Daoist

and west African. Matt completed several independent studies each: with a

mathematician/mathematical physicist, a cyberstudies/ethnoscience scholar, and an

artificial intelligence programmer—all three also engage with the fields of my curriculum.

My senior thesis used basic concepts from advanced math (subobject classifiers) to

describe formal models of process- and network- based notions of parthood (boundaries,

membership, belonging). He intermingled the other fields of my curriculum with these

parthood notions. He wrote an extra undergraduate thesis theorizing how to indigenize

computing, metaphysics and science and proposing a corresponding decolonized project of intercultural science

education and internet re-appropriation in northwest Ghana and Burkina Faso. This fall, he will travel to both countries

to implement this plan with the communities of three Dagara professors and will work closely with ritual experts both

for his own healing and to subject his work to the appropriate scrutiny and oversight.

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Suzanne Preston Blier (Ph.D. 1981 Columbia, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of

Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University) is an

historian of African art and architecture in both the History of Art and Architecture and

African and African American Studies Departments. She also is a member of

the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Her first book The Anatomy of

Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural

Expression (Cambridge University press; paperback, Chicago University Press, 1987)

won the Arnold Rubin Prize. Her second book, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and

Power (1995) received the Charles Rufus Morey Prize. Other books include: African

Royal Art: The Majesty ofForm (1998), Butabu: Adobe Architecture in West

Africa (2004 NY Times, Holiday Selection), and Art of the Senses: Masterpieces from

the William and Bertha Teel Collection (Editor 2004).Most recently she has

published: Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity c.1300 (1914

-Cambridge University Press) which received the 2015 Prose Prize in Art History and Criticism.

N. Fadeke Castor, PhD is currently an Assistant Professor in Africana Studies and

Anthropology at Texas A & M University. An initiate of Ifá, Obatala and Egbe, she

was first introduced to the Yoruba religion in 1993 in Oakland, California. Five

years later the ancestors lead her to graduate school in Chicago. Her PhD research

took her to Trinidad for three years, with generous support from Fulbright-Hays and

the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Alongside her ethnographic fieldwork on race, culture

and politics she engaged with her extended family and ancestral cultural practices,

including the Trinidad Orisha religion. After receiving her PhD in Cultural

Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2009) she fulfilled an ancestral

mission by initiating to Ifá at Ile Eko Sango Mil’osa/Irentegbe Temple in Trinidad.

Her Ifá studies continue under her Oloye, Solagbade Popoola, with recent study trips

to Nigeria. Her current research and teaching interests include religion, post-

colonialism, performance, decolonization, citizenship, identity and representation in popular/public culture in the

African Diaspora, specifically in the Caribbean and West Africa. In her written work she explores emerging forms of

cultural citizenship in the African Diaspora, with special attention to decolonizing practices. Dr. Castor’s book, Sacred

Imaginaries: Performing Africa, Decolonizing Blackness, (under contract with Duke University Press), argues that in

Trinidad Ifá/Orisha can be seen as a force of black liberation, informing local practices of decolonization while drawing

on spiritual epistemologies rooted in transnational networks. Out of this project, her article, “Shifting multicultural

citizenship: Trinidad Orisha opens the road,” was published in Cultural Anthropology.

Omi Davis is a PhD Dance student at Temple University, with a focus on the embodiment

of cultural knowledge in Germaine Acogny’s Modern African Dance Technique. She is

the first American to receive certification in the practice and pedagogy of Acogny

Technique, and she has performed and taught in West Africa and Brazil. Omi has

accomplished extensive professional dance training in Bamako, Mali and in Toubab

Dialaw, Senegal at the Ecole des Sables Centre International de Danses Traditionnelles et

Contemporaines d’Afrique. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Dance at the Arizona

State University School of Dance, and her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies

at Virginia Commonwealth University. Omi performed and studied for seven years with

Ezibu Muntu African Dance and Cultural Foundation in Richmond, Virginia. She has

taught as an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University Department of

Dance and Choreography and at University of Richmond Department of Theatre and

Dance. Omi is the creator of Movement to Meaning, a creative tool designed to facilitate

somatic awareness in dance.

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Ayinde Jean-Baptiste is a poet and keeper of memory, who sometimes commits acts of

journalism. Brooklyn-born but from several places -- his audio practice resonates with

the rhythm of the corner/crossroads. His ongoing project, DrumLanguage, is an

experi(m)ent(i)al audio trance-mission that incorporates archival sound, field recording,

original oral history, & black dialogue, drawing from Afro-diasporic expression to divine

glimpses of new futures.

Jaye Osunfunmike Nias, PhD (Osunfunmike Ifawemimo Egbeyemi) is a wife,

mother of two and currently serves as a Professor of Computer Science at the

University of Maryland, Eastern Shore in Maryland and a recent recipient of her

Doctor of Applied Science from Bowie State University. Her research areas

include Human Computer Interactions with Children, Culturally

Relevant/Culturally Responsive Technology and Computer Science Educational

practices. Additionally, Jaye also hold a Master’s degree in Computer Science

and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering with a concentration in

Environmental & Waste Management. In 2005 Jaye traveled to The Benin

Republic to receive initiation to Osun under Chief Odoniyi and Prince Labitan

Abdu Ojiji of the Iyoko, Sekete region receiving the name Osunfunmike. In 2009

she completed her priesthood training and graduated under the teaching and

support of Yeye Osun Baltimore, Chief Ifadoyin Aduke and in 2012 received Itefa

with the Oluwo of Oyo, Nigeria and initiation to Egbe Iyalode in Osogbo with Iya

Osunpidan Ifadera.

Ayo Odiduro is a 3rd year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at

Tulane University in New Orleans, under the direction of Professor Adeline

Masquelier. His dissertation is a study of social activism within the Babalawo

priesthood in the Diaspora. Ayo has performed extensive ethnographic

fieldwork in and around Havana, Cuba and he is well versed in many aspects of

Lucumí liturgy and theology. He is a Lucumí Babaláwo and ọmọ-Obatala. He

has an active practice helping clients connect with spirit to discover solutions for

their personal development. He is the leader of Ilé Aña Olofi, a non-profit

organization that produces the “Letter of the Year for the Sons and Daughters of

our African Forefathers,“ and advocates for increased environmental

engagement from Afro-Atlantic priesthoods. The “Letter of the Year” is a

globally focused annual reading that explores the spiritual factors influencing

Africa’s descendants in the Diaspora. Ayo holds Juris Doctor and MBA from

Case Western Reserve University and a BS in psychology from Tennessee State

University. He worked for nearly 15 years in a corporate finance capacity before returning to academia for the PhD.

Ayo’s research has received generous support from Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the

Tinker Foundation.

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Dr. K. Zauditu-Selassie, known to her students as, Mama

Koko, is professor of English in the Humanities

Department at Coppin State University. A 2009-2010

Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cocody in Abidjan,

Cote d’Ivoire, she has been a National Endowment for the

Humanities Dissertation fellow, an NEH seminar and

institute participant, a National Council for Black Studies

fellow at the University of Ghana, Legon, a Fulbright-Hays

fellow in Cairo, Egypt, a Fulbright-Hays seminar

participant in the Republic of South Africa, a New York

University Scholar-In Residence, a Mellon fellow at the

Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal, and a Fulbright- Hays

Scholar in the Republic of South Africa. Dr. Zauditu-

Selassie has lived, studied, lectured, and traveled

extensively throughout Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. At Coppin, she teaches, The Politics and Poetics of

Hip Hop, Afro-Futurism, and African American Literature. She is the author of, “I Got a Home in Dat Rock: Memory,

Orisa, and Yoruba Spiritual Identity in African American Literature” as wellas several journal articles including, “Step

and Fetch It: The Reclamation of African Ontology in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “Women

Who Know Things: African Epistemologies, Ecocriticism,and Female Spiritual Authority in the Novels of Toni

Morrison,” and“Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: Using Adinkra Symbols to Frame Critical Agenda in African Diasporic

Literature.” She is also the author of a book of critical essays titled, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni

Morrison, a 2009 publication of the University Press of Florida, which won the Toni Morrison Society’s 2010 award for

the best single-authored book. Her latest publication is a collection of short stories titled, At the End of Daybreak,

published by Middle-Passage Press. Her novel, The Second Line, is forthcoming.

Join Us Tomorrow!

African and Diasporic Religions Film Festival Saturday, April 9 | 11 a m – 4 pm

CGIS South – Tsai Auditorium – 1730 Cambridge Street

Films:

Oya! Something Happened on the Way to West Africa Featuring: Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil

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ABOUT THE ADRSA LEADERSHIP COUNCIL

Funlayo E. Wood (Director) is a doctoral candidate in African and

African American Studies with a primary field in Religion at Harvard

University and a lecturer in African American Studies at New York City

College of Technology (CUNY). Her dissertation entitled Objects and

Immortals: The Life of Obi in Ifa-Orisa Religion examines the

indispensable role of the kola nut in Ifa-Orisa practice employing

indigenous hermeneutics, viewing sacred narratives as an important

source of philosophical understanding, and foregrounding the

epistemologies inherent in learning and using the kola. Funlayo has had

her work published in the Journal of Africana Religions, CrossCurrents,

and the Review of Religious Research and has presented in academic and

public forums in the United States and Nigeria. An initiated priestess of Obatala and Iyanifa Funlayo has dedicated her

life to the Ifa-Orisa tradition and relishes in contributing her voice as a scholar-practitioner. A native of New York City,

Funlayo holds a BA in the African Diaspora in the Americas and an MA in history, both from the City University of

New York where she was a graduate fellow at the Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service, and an AM in

African Studies from Harvard.In addition to work with ADRSA, Funlayo serves as the Executive Director of the Orisa

Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization dedicated to community building, and was a 2011-

2012 Junior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Funlayo contributes to

and is a regional recruiting director for the popular religion blog State of Formation and is the creator of Ase Ire, an

inspirational, informational web space and resource center.

Lisa Òṣunlétí Beckley-Roberts, PhD (Assistant Director) was born in Holly

Springs, Mississippi and raised on the campus of Rust College. Classically

trained as a harpist from the age of nine, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Harp

Performance from Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. After getting

accepted to the College of Music at Florida State University she received a

Master’s degree in Harp Performance and played principal harpist in the Florida

State University Orchestra, Big Bend Community Orchestra, Valdosta Symphony

Orchestra, and the Central Florida Symphony Orchestra to name a few. However,

after taking a community African Drum and Dance Class she began pursuing an

interest in ethnomusicology and, soon after, received her Master’s degree in the

field and recently completed her PhD at Florida State University. The African

Drum and Dance class also opened the door to her spiritual community and

shortly after beginning dance classes she began investigating the oriṣa tradition.

Since 2000, Òṣunlétí has been studying the oriṣa tradition, becoming a member of

her current ile in 2005 and being initiated to the orisa Oṣun in 2010. Òṣunlétí is an

Associate Professor of music at Jackson State University and the founder of the JSU African Drum and Dance

Ensemble. A two-time Fulbright-Hays Scholar, she has conducted research on music associated with women and social

change in South Africa as well as engaged in intensive Yoruba language studies in Nigeria. Though she loves her work,

Òṣunlétí is most proud of her accomplishments in her family. As a mother, she seeks balance through her daily spiritual

practice and study, and through her unique relationship with music and dance.

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Khytie Brown (Leadership Council Member) is a third year doctoral student in the

department of African and African American Studies with a primary field in Religion.

Her research emphasis is on religious expression and cultural production in Jamaica and

Afro-Antillean Panama, among Revival Zion practitioners, with particular attention to

sensory epistemologies, disruptions of the sacred/profane binary, mediation, Afrophobia

and the interplay between private religious discourses and public space. Khytie received

her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Religion from Emory University in 2010

and her Master's degree, in Religion and the Social Sciences, from Harvard Divinity

School in 2013. Believing strongly in scholar-activism, Khytie serves as a mentor for the

Harvard Prison Education Project, steering committee member of the W.E.B. Du Bois

Graduate Society and leadership council member for the African and Diasporic Religious

Studies Association (ADRSA). She is also a doctoral fellow in the Science, Religion and

Culture program at Harvard Divinity School and editorial intern for the Transforming

Anthropology Journal.

Kyrah Malika Daniels (Leadership Council Member) is a doctoral candidate in African

& African American Studies with a primary field in Religion. Her research centers

on Black Atlantic religions, sacred art, and ritual healing traditions in Central Africa

and the Caribbean. She is currently conducting field research for her dissertation, a

comparative religion project based in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo that

focuses on ritual healing objects used to address spiritual and mental illness. Her

research ultimately examines how various African-derived religious communities in

the Caribbean and Central Africa ritually and holistically address illness on a

social, psychological, and spiritual level. Following the earthquake of 2010, Kyrah worked

in St. Raphael, Haiti with Lakou Soley (Community of Sun) Academic and Cultural

Arts Center, a grassroots organization that encourages the incorporation of art and

performance in classroom activities for students who experience enduring traumas. She

currently serves as a Graduate Student Associate at the David Rockefeller Center for

Latin American Studies, and her work has been published in the Journal of Africana

Studies and the Journal of Haitian Studies. A California native, Kyrah graduated from

Stanford University in 2009 with a B.A. in African & African American Studies, and

received her M.A. in Religion at Harvard in 2013.

T H E D I V I N E A N D T H E D I G I T A L | P A G E 16

SYMPOSIUM SPONSORS

The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (formerly the Du Bois

Institute) is the nation’s oldest research center dedicated to the study of the history, culture, and social

institutions of Africans and African Americans, broadly defined to cover the expanse of the African

Diaspora. The Hutchins Center’s research projects and visiting fellows form the vital nucleus around

which revolve a stimulating array of lecture series, art exhibitions, readings, conferences, and

archival and publication projects.

The mission of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School is: to

advance interdisciplinary, international, and interreligious exchange, learning, and research on the

world's religions; to bring together the rich intellectual resources of faculty and students at Harvard

Divinity School and at other Schools and departments of Harvard University with an international

scholarly network to explore issues of religion in today's complex, globalizing, and changing world;

and to build a deeper and broader understanding of the histories and contemporary patterns of the

world's religious communities by hosting scholars and practitioners at the Center as residents and

program participants.

Building on Harvard University’s longstanding scholarship and education on Africa, the Center for

African Studies fosters the creation and dissemination of knowledge about Africa and African

perspectives, across the University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Professional Schools. As a

University-wide entity, the Center works collaboratively with Harvard’s many loci of Africa-related

expertise to expand upon and create new opportunities and resources for education and research, and

to enhance connections among and between scholars, students, and groups focusing on Africa-related

knowledge at the University, in the broader community, and through partnerships on the continent.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University

works to increase knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment and contemporary

affairs of Latin America; to foster cooperation and understanding among the peoples of the Americas;

and to contribute to democracy, social progress and sustainable development throughout the

hemisphere.

The Congress of Santa Barbara (KOSANBA) is a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of

Haitian Vodou. Imbued by a sense of collective wisdom and aware of the long, difficult and constant

struggles and crises undergone by their homeland, the Founders—and others who might join them—

pledged to create a space where scholarship on Vodou can be augmented.

The Department of African and African American Studies dedicated to the passionate pursuit of

one of the great and inspiring missions of human letters: bringing forward in full measure, the depth,

richness, and complexity of the African and African American experience. In service of this

ambition we offer courses and conduct research that explores the contributions, challenges, strivings,

and achievements of those of African ancestry.

Since its formation in 1983, the W. E. B. Du Bois Graduate Society has worked to create a

conducive educational environment for historically underrepresented minorities in the Graduate

School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). It has acted as an umbrella organization to serve the needs of

African-American, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and Native American graduate students.

The Orisa Community Development Corporation is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to

promoting the economic, social and cultural development of the global Orisa Community. We will

fulfill our mission through providing strategic planning, programs and initiatives that build

sustainability, pride, and the perpetuation of traditional ways of life in the context of modern society.

Ase Ire is an inspirational, informational webspace and resource center which is aimed at “Promoting

the Power of Positivity” using African-centered principles and philosophies.