African Diaspora Religions Unit
Title: AI in Africa & African Diaspora religious and spiritual life: Ogun in the 21 Century
From Brooklyn to Dakar; New Orleans to Accra; Los Angeles to Abuja; Paris to Martinique; East London to Juba; Ghent to Daloa; as well as from Berlin to Kigali and between and beyond, African and African Diaspora traditional religion practitioners and their communities have been transforming their practices through the use of AI; and are themselves transforming AI. Contemplating questions such as, but not limited to: In what way is AI being used and/or called on to intervene in, entangle with, and/or lead spiritual and religious encounters? How are notions of AI reshaping and is being reshaped by the religious imagination of African and African Diaspora traditional religions practitioners and practice? Paying attention to and agitating tensions between and among concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), ('Artificial' Intelligence (AI), Ruha Benjamin's Ancestral Intelligence (AI), Augmented Intelligence (AI)), this session invites papers from scholars, artists, practitioners from across Africa and the African Diaspora, and from across diverse understandings and negotiations of AI, that explore, examine, redefine, and/or interrogate present and future crafting and application of AI in religious and spiritual life.
The African Diaspora Religions Unit aims to engage a wide range of disciplines and a variety of scholars who work on different aspects of African Diaspora religions. It considers the linguistic and cultural complexities of the African Diaspora, the importance of African traditional religions, Afro-Christianity, Afro-Islam, Afro-Asia, and Afro-Judaism, in the way they have and continue to inform an understanding of Africa, and also the way they have and continue to shape the religious landscape of the Americas, Europe, Asia and South Asia.
Our unit explores broad geographies, histories, and cultures of people of African descent and the way they shape the religious landscape, in the Caribbean and the Americas, Europe, and Asia. We define “Diaspora” as the spread and dispersal of people of African descent — both forced and voluntary — through the slave trade, imperial and colonial displacements, and postcolonial migrations. This Unit emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches and confluent/convergent [spiritual] belief systems which is central to its vision.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Carol Marie Webster, Fordham University | webstercm… | - | View |
| Scott Barton | sbarton3@nd.edu | - | View |