How do scholars become fascinated by their subjects? What is it like when they make a new discovery? How do the processes of research, analysis, writing, and teaching change their perspectives of the world?

“Sorcery, Celebration, and Religious Life in Rural Cuba”
with Todd Ochoa: Associate Professor, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Todd Ochoa’s research focuses on African-inspired communities in Cuba. His first book, Society of the Dead, is an ethnography of a Cuban-Kongo society of affliction, and its healing-harming practices at the turn of the twenty-first century. Society of the Dead is an engagement with anthropology’s rendering of sorcery, and an exploration of sensation, transformation, and redemption in the African Diaspora. Professor Ochoa is currently working on his second book, about a community in rural central Cuba and the healing feasts held there, called bembés, which focus and intensify life among the town’s inhabitants. Please note that this talk will be in Meeting Room B.