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Video: Contesting the Local in the Global: African Christianities Within the Religious Cosmos

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On February 27, Afe Adogame, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society at Princeton Theological seminary and leading scholar of the African diaspora, delivered the Hackett Lecture in Global Christianity. This lecture examined how and to what...

Video: Your First Heart is Not in Your Chest: An African Indigenous Interrogation of the ‘Divine Feminine’

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The resurgence of the “divine feminine” as a discursive concept and framework in religious studies and in popular practice in Europe and the United States, raises the question of the salience of the concept in African Religions. Although the presence of...

Video: Black Tarot: African American Women and Divine Processes of Resilience

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On October 19, 2022, religious studies scholar and Black and biracial educator Marcelitte Failla (Emory University) discussed the practice of Tarot reading, Black witches, divination, resilience, and the meanings, limitations, and possibilities of being a...

Searching for the Golden Stool

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Myth and history are closely intertwined, as both provide significant insight into our beliefs, traditions, and practices. Any form of nation building involves mythmaking in the production of a revitalized past pertinent to the present. In Anthony D...

Sweetness, Spirits and the Senses: Mapping Revival Zion Religion

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On Wednesday, November 4, Khytie Brown, a doctoral student in the African and African-American Studies department and doctoral fellow in the Science, Religion and Culture program at Harvard, presented on the topic “Sweetness, Spirits and the Senses...

Universal Blackness among the Muridiyya and Its Artists

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Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. Francesco Piraino, Tenure-track Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Director of the Center for...

Video: Black Magic Matters: Hoodoo as Ancestral Religion

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Does Black Magic Matter? A brief discussion of the African American traditions known as Hoodoo, Conjure and Rootworking, and practices of divination, spiritual protection and healing. We will discuss the origins of magic in the specific context of slavery...

Video: Islam in Nigeria: A Conversation in Preparation for the Visit of the Sultan of Sokoto

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On October 3, 2011, His Eminence Alhaji Muhammadu Sa'adu Abubakar III, the 20th Sultan of Sokoto, will visit Harvard University. In preview of this distinguished visit, four experts discussed the historical, cultural, and religious significance of Islam...

Video: Making Space for Meditation—Reflections on Practice in an Academic Setting

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This panel discussion, the last of the semester in the CSWR series Intellectual Worlds of Meditation, featured four HDS students: Leslie Hubbard, a first year MTS Buddhist studies student, former Buddhist nun in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, and...

Video: Becoming the Beloved Community in the Midst of Domestic Terror

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This lecture by the Rev. Dr. Joan R. Harrell is a womanist critique of a longstanding racist campaign of domestic terror in the United States. It investigated the intersectionality of racism, in particular the racist acts condoned by religious communities...

Video: Gut and Other Knowledges in Religions of the African Diaspora

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Dr. Elizabeth Pérez discusses practices of embodied knowledge production and transmission in such Afro-Diasporic religions as Cuban Lucumí, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomblé. In conversation with CSWR Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani, she...

Ojo Rapheal

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Dr. Rapheal received his Ph.D. in Comparative Religious Studies from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria in 2023. He was a lecturer with the Department of Religion and African Culture, Adekunle Ajasin University, Ondo State, Nigeria for nine years and a...