Elizabeth Perez | University of California, Santa Barbara (original) (raw)

Elizabeth Perez

I am a scholar of Afro-Atlantic religious formations. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in March, 2010. Courses I have taught include "Religion and American Culture," "Gender and Religion in the African Diaspora," "African Religions of the Americas," "Envisioning Vodoun: Haitian Popular Religion in Historical Perspective," and "The Virgin of Guadalupe: From Tilma to Tattoo." I also drew on my ethnographic experience and training as a historian of religions to teach two courses at Carleton College in Spring 2010: "Religion and Music in Cuba" and "Goddesses."

I spent 2010-2011 as a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, carrying out a research project entitled, “Between Bodies and Worlds: Women and ‘Trans’ People in the Lucumí/Santería Tradition." I am now an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I look forward to offering a variety of classes on Afro-Diasporic religions, among other subjects in my field.

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Papers by Elizabeth Perez

Research paper thumbnail of “Toward an Inventory of Influence: Biography and Belonging in Sustained Dialogue with Black Atlantic Religion,” Journal of Africana Religions 6, no. 1 (2018): 104-13.

This article assesses the empirical and conceptual contributions of J. Lorand Matory's Black Atla... more This article assesses the empirical and conceptual contributions of J. Lorand Matory's Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (BAR) and of his first monograph, Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Ọyọ-Yoruba Religion. The bearing of these texts on subsequent research in Afro-diasporic traditions is explored through an autoethnographic account that emphasizes the demand for a post-Eliadean style of comparativism, the disciplining function of the university, and social positionality as a condition for influence to manifest. The combination of these factors supports Matory's thesis in the present issue of this journal concerning the interplay of biography and belonging in the critical reception of BAR. The article concludes by asserting the inadequacy of debt (along with other economic metaphors) for the expression of intellectual impact, and casts the act of criticism as externalizing an intimate internal dialogical process.

Research paper thumbnail of Willful Spirits and Weakened Flesh: Historicizing the Initiation Narrative in Afro-Cuban Religions

Journal of Africana Religions, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of The Midnight Buffet

Research paper thumbnail of "The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-Cuban Women's Experiences"

Research paper thumbnail of "Cooking for the Gods: Sensuous Ethnography, Sensory Knowledge, and the Kitchen in Lucumí Tradition"

Research paper thumbnail of "Spiritist Mediumship as Historical Mediation: African-American Pasts, Black Ancestral Presence, and Afro-Cuban Religions"

The scholarship on Afro-Atlantic religions has tended to downplay the importance of Kardecist Esp... more The scholarship on Afro-Atlantic religions has tended to downplay the importance of Kardecist Espiritismo. In this article I explore the performance of Spiritist rituals among Black North American practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions, and examine its vital role in the development of their religious subjectivity. Drawing on several years of ethnographic research in a Chicago-based Lucumí community, I argue that through Spiritist ceremonies, African-American participants engaged in memory work and other transformative modes of collective historiographical praxis. I contend that by inserting gospel songs, church hymns, and spirituals into the musical repertoire of misas espirituales, my interlocutors introduced a new group of beings into an existing category of ethnically differentiated 'spirit guides'. Whether embodied in ritual contexts or cultivated privately through household altars, these spirits not only personify the ancestral dead; I demonstrate that they also mediate between African-American historical experience and the contemporary practice of Yorùbá-and Kongo-inspired religions.

Research paper thumbnail of "Staging Transformation: Spiritist Liturgies as Theatres of Conversion in Afro-Cuban Religious Practice"

Research paper thumbnail of "Portable Portals: Transnational Rituals..."

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Ontology of Twerk: From ‘Sexy’ Black Movement Style to Afro-Diasporic Sacred Dance"

African and Black Diaspora 9, no. 1 (2015): 1-16

Research paper thumbnail of “Toward an Inventory of Influence: Biography and Belonging in Sustained Dialogue with Black Atlantic Religion,” Journal of Africana Religions 6, no. 1 (2018): 104-13.

This article assesses the empirical and conceptual contributions of J. Lorand Matory's Black Atla... more This article assesses the empirical and conceptual contributions of J. Lorand Matory's Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (BAR) and of his first monograph, Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Ọyọ-Yoruba Religion. The bearing of these texts on subsequent research in Afro-diasporic traditions is explored through an autoethnographic account that emphasizes the demand for a post-Eliadean style of comparativism, the disciplining function of the university, and social positionality as a condition for influence to manifest. The combination of these factors supports Matory's thesis in the present issue of this journal concerning the interplay of biography and belonging in the critical reception of BAR. The article concludes by asserting the inadequacy of debt (along with other economic metaphors) for the expression of intellectual impact, and casts the act of criticism as externalizing an intimate internal dialogical process.

Research paper thumbnail of Willful Spirits and Weakened Flesh: Historicizing the Initiation Narrative in Afro-Cuban Religions

Journal of Africana Religions, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of The Midnight Buffet

Research paper thumbnail of "The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-Cuban Women's Experiences"

Research paper thumbnail of "Cooking for the Gods: Sensuous Ethnography, Sensory Knowledge, and the Kitchen in Lucumí Tradition"

Research paper thumbnail of "Spiritist Mediumship as Historical Mediation: African-American Pasts, Black Ancestral Presence, and Afro-Cuban Religions"

The scholarship on Afro-Atlantic religions has tended to downplay the importance of Kardecist Esp... more The scholarship on Afro-Atlantic religions has tended to downplay the importance of Kardecist Espiritismo. In this article I explore the performance of Spiritist rituals among Black North American practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions, and examine its vital role in the development of their religious subjectivity. Drawing on several years of ethnographic research in a Chicago-based Lucumí community, I argue that through Spiritist ceremonies, African-American participants engaged in memory work and other transformative modes of collective historiographical praxis. I contend that by inserting gospel songs, church hymns, and spirituals into the musical repertoire of misas espirituales, my interlocutors introduced a new group of beings into an existing category of ethnically differentiated 'spirit guides'. Whether embodied in ritual contexts or cultivated privately through household altars, these spirits not only personify the ancestral dead; I demonstrate that they also mediate between African-American historical experience and the contemporary practice of Yorùbá-and Kongo-inspired religions.

Research paper thumbnail of "Staging Transformation: Spiritist Liturgies as Theatres of Conversion in Afro-Cuban Religious Practice"

Research paper thumbnail of "Portable Portals: Transnational Rituals..."

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Ontology of Twerk: From ‘Sexy’ Black Movement Style to Afro-Diasporic Sacred Dance"

African and Black Diaspora 9, no. 1 (2015): 1-16

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