Gather for the annual MLK, Jr. Celebration Convocation featuring Dr. Jalane Schmidt, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Jalane Schmidt’s research and teaching is focused upon African diaspora religions of the Caribbean and Latin America, and particularly festivity and ritual. Dr. Schmidt teaches courses which consider the effects of colonization and the slave trade upon religious practice in the Americas. In her book project on 20th c. Cubans’ devotion to their patron saint, she examines religious, racial, and cultural hybridity in the Americas by interpreting the national expansion of this popular cult. In her emerging research, she is investigating how the history of slavery is performed in spirit possession rituals and expressed in material culture. Particularly, she is concerned with how contemporary mediums describe heightened sensory perception as a means for navigating traumatic emotional terrain.

A drum circle follows this convocation program in Lehman Auditorium from 11:30 a.m.-Noon.

For a complete program schedule, see MLK, Jr. Day of Service and Learning.