24 Jan ADRSA 2025 CFP: Care and Community in Africana Religions
The African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association (ADRSA) proudly presents its thirteenth conference, “My Sibling’s Keeper: Comfort, Care, and Community in Africana Religions,” which will explore the diversity of practices, rituals, and ethics of care within Africana religious communities. The conference will be held in person with an accompanying live stream on Friday, April 11, 2025 in Charlotte, NC.
The oft-cited proverb, “When your sister does your hair, you need no mirror,” speaks to the soul-affirming qualities of connection, intimacy, care, and trust inherent to sibling relationships. Beyond the limits of biological relation, the proverb illuminates a more expansive sense of kinship cultivated through the ethics and rituals of care found within Africana religious traditions. Kinship terms such as mother, father, sister, brother, and sibling are used extensively within religious communities and the spiritual families created through rituals of initiation and other ceremonies heavily supplement – and sometimes even replace – natal families. Within the broader Africana community, Black folks have long understood themselves as belonging to an extended network of diverse relatives like “play cousins,” “aunties,” and “uncles.” Alongside spiritual parents and siblings, diviners, medicine people, and other supplicants, these spiritual family members form a web of care, mutual aid, comfort, and encouragement that helps to sustain the community through tumultuous times as well as provide a host of co-celebrants in jubilant times. Recognizing the importance of these sacred connections, this conference is dedicated to exploring them. View the full CFP and submit a proposal below.
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