Video: A video of this event is now online. Find it here.
Podcast: Listen to Professor Solimar Otero's episode on the Latin@ Stories podcast here.
Abstract: In this presentation, based on her book Archives of Conjure, Professor Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race in ethnography, archives, and literature.
Solimar Otero is Professor of Folklore in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology; the Director of the Folklore Institute; and the editor of the Journal of Folklore Research at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature, and ethnography. She is the author of Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures (Columbia University Press 2020); Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World, (University of Rochester Press, 2010); co-editor of Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas (SUNY Press 2013); and co-editor of Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethical Approaches (Indiana University Press, 2021). Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant; a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program; and a Fulbright award.
The lecture is free and open to the public, but we ask that all attendees pre-register, whether joining us in-person or through the Zoom live-stream.
For in-person registration, please visit https://religion.osu.edu/events/spring-2022-in-person-rsvp-form.
For Zoom registration, please go to https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApcuGqqDIpEtRpbKPMdFDtjpJy-Uuk_LCN.
The Zoom live-stream for this event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services for the live-stream or in-person attendance, or other accommodations, please contact either cfs@osu.edu or religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Effective Aug. 2, 2021, students, faculty, staff and visitors to all Ohio State campuses and medical facilities are required to wear masks indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. Masks continue to be required outdoors for unvaccinated individuals when they cannot maintain physical distancing. Vaccinated people are not required to mask outdoors.
Graduate Student Lunch Opportunity
Monday, January 31 | 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. | Faculty Club Main Dining Room (2nd floor)
Students are interested in having lunch with Dr. Otero are invited to contact CFS director Dr. Katey Borland (borland.19@osu.edu). We will make copies of chapters from Archives of Conjure available to the first five students who express interest. You do not need to be a folklorist to participate. Just bring your appetite and your ideas.
