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2016 Conference Program 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 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. T HE D IVINE AND THE D IGITAL | P AGE 3 In the Presence of a Tranquil God by Bernard T H E D IVINE AND THE D IGITAL Hoyes 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 T HE D IVINE AND THE D IGITAL | P AGE 4 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 T HE D IVINE AND THE D IGITAL | P AGE 5 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.
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