Akin Ogundiran, chair of the Africana Studies Department, is the co-editor of the recent work “Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic,” published by Indiana University Press.
According to the publisher, the essays in this volume “look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.”