J. Lorand Matory
· Lawrence Richardson Distinguished Professor of Cultural AnthropologyDuke University · Business Administration
Active 1991–2023
About
J. Lorand Matory is the Lawrence Richardson Distinguished Professor of Cultural Anthropology and the Director of the Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Project at Duke University. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago, and he has conducted over four decades of intensive research on the great religions of the Black Atlantic—West African Yoruba religion, West-Central African Kongo religion, Brazilian Candomblé, Cuban Santería/Ocha, and Haitian Vodou. Professor Matory's work focuses on anthropology of religion, ethnicity, education, social theory, and history, with particular emphasis on African and African-inspired religions around the Atlantic perimeter, ethnic diversity in the African-descended population of the US, and themes such as gender, religion, politics, transnationalism, spirit possession, and hierarchy in religion, politics, and eroticism. He is the author of four books and more than 50 articles and reviews, and has been recognized with numerous awards including the Herskovits Prize, the Distinguished Africanist Award from the American Anthropological Association, and the Alexander von Humboldt Prize. His research and publications explore the social and cultural dynamics of African-derived religions, the politics of metaphors and gender, and the transnational flows of religious practices and ideas.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Humanities
- Gender studies
- Philosophy
- Law
- Anthropology
- Art
- Linguistics
Selected publications
History of European Ideas · 2023-11-06
article1st authorCorrespondingClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1994); David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).2 William Pietz, The Problem of the Fetish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023), 1–2. Subsequent citations are to this edition, in parentheses, in the text.3 Joana Bahia, ‘“De Miguel Couto a Berlin”: A Presença do Candomblé em Terras Alemãs’, in Migração e globalização: Um olhar interdisciplinar, ed. Glória Maria Santiago Pereira and José de Ribamar Sousa Pereira (Curitiba, Brazil: Editora CRV, 2012), 223–41.4 J. Lorand Matory, The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2018).5 Robert Farris Thompson, The Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1983).
Berghahn Books · 2022-10-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingSex and the Empire That Is No More
Berghahn Books · 2022 · 33 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Sociology
- Political Science
J. Lorand Matory researches the trans-Atlantic comings and goings of Yoruba religion, as well as ethnic diversity in Black North America. With the support of the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, he has conducted extensive field research in Brazil, Nigeria, and the United States. Dr. Matory is also the author of Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton University Press). He is currently researching a book on the history and experience of Nigerians, Trinidadians, Ethiopians, black Indians, Louisiana Creoles and other ethnic groups that make up black North American society. It focuses on the creative coexistence of these groups at the United States' leading "historically Black university"—Howard University
5. Engendering Power: The Mythic and Iconic Foundations of Priestly Action
Berghahn Books · 2022-10-01
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding7. Conclusion: Dialogue, Debate, and the Chose du Texte
Berghahn Books · 2022-10-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingBerghahn Books · 2022
1st authorCorresponding- Linguistics
- Philosophy
Yoruba consonants are pronounced much like their English counterparts, with the exception of
CHAPTER TWO: The “Negro Slave” in Marx’s Labor Theory of Value
2020-09-15
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingCHAPTER ONE: The Afro-Atlantic Context of Historical Materialism
2020-09-15
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingCHAPTER FOUR: The Fetishes That Assimilated Jewish Men Make
2020-09-15
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingCHAPTER THREE: Marx’s Fetishization of People and Things
2020-09-15
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Rosalind I. J. Hackett
- 2 shared
Barrie Sharpe
- 2 shared
Funṣọ Afọlayan
University of New Hampshire at Manchester
- 1 shared
Haddon Willmer
University of Leeds
- 1 shared
Wyatt MacGaffey
Haverford College
- 1 shared
John Pemberton
- 1 shared
Betty J. Harris
University of Oklahoma
- 1 shared
Carolyn Martin Shaw
Awards & honors
- Herskovits Prize from the African Studies Association for th…
- Distinguished Africanist Award from the American Anthropolog…
- Alexander von Humboldt Prize (2013)
- Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture (2015)
- Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Analyti…
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