Hemispheric Religiosities: Media and Performance
Presenter BIOS

Reverend Billy

Davíd Carrasco
is an historian of religions who works on "Cities as Symbols" and "Borders as Performance Spaces" in Mesoamerican and Mexican American cultures. Trained at the University of Chicago where he worked with Mircea Eliade and Victor Turner, he has published Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in Aztec Religion, Religions of Mesoamerica, The City of Sacrifice and is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. He also does research on the symbols and rituals of religious and racial hybridity in Latino cultures and is the Executive Co-Producer of the film, Alambrista: Director's Cut directed by Robert M. Young. He served as consultant in the production of the book, film and photo exhibition, Americanos: Latino Life in the US. Presently he is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard University.

Alyshia Galvez
is a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology and the certificate program in Culture and Media at New York University. She is currently conducting dissertation research among Mexican devotional and political organizations in New York City.

Linda Kintz
is Professor of English at the University of Oregon and is also affiliated with the Comparative Literature and Theatre Departments. Her books include The Subject's Tragedy: Political Poetics, Feminist Theory, and Drama (Michigan); Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America (Duke); and, with Julia Lesage, Media, Culture, and the Religious Right (Minnesota).

Gisela Canepa Koch
Ms. Koch is a Professor of Anthropology in the Social Studies Department at Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú where she also co-chairs the Taller de Antropologia Visual (Visual Anthropology Workshop). She received her Master's in Anthropology at the Pontificia Católica and her doctorate studies at the University of Chicago, Illinois. She was awarded with scholarships from Century Fellowship and Consejo Latino Americano de Ciencias Sociales-CLACSO. She is the author of Máscara, Transformación e Identidad en los Andes (Mask, Transformation and Identity in the Andes; Lima: PUC, 1998) and has edited Identidades Representadas: performance, experiencia y memoria en Los Andes (Acted Identities: performance, experience and memory in the Andes; Lima:PUC, 2001). She has also directed four documentaries for the series Video Etnográficos del Centro de Etnomusicologia Andina de la PUCP (Ethnographic Videos for the Andes Ethnomusicology Center at PUCP) and the CD-ROM Multimidia, musica y ritual en Los Andes peruanos (CD-ROM Multimedia, music and ritual in the Peruvian Andes; Lima: PUCP, 2001).

Zeca Ligiéro
is a Brazilian artist, author, theater director, and professor/scholar specializing in Afro-Brazilian culture. He teaches at the University of Rio de Janeiro where he founded the Graduate Theatre Department, and is currently a visiting fellow at Yale and New York University. He has written several books, many articles, and produced many plays in Brazil and U.S., and lectures widely.

Elizabeth McAlister
is Assistant Professor of Religion and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on Afro-Haitian religious culture and transnational migration. She is author of Rara! Vodou, Power and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 2001. She produced the audio CD called "Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou" on Smithsonian Folkways.

Kristin Norget
is associate professor of anthropology at McGill University. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and has published various writings on popular religion, liberation theology, and social movements in southern Mexico. She is currently finishing a book, Days of Death, Days of Life: Death and its ritualization in Oaxacan Popular Culture.

Robert Stam
Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. His many books include Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (1997); Brazilian Cinema, co-authored with Randal Johnson (1995); Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, with Ella Shohat (1994), which won the Catherine Singer Kovocs "Best Film Book Award"; Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (1992) and Film Theory: An Introduction. Unthinking Eurocentrism and Film Theory: An Introduction are both forthcoming in Spanish versions from Paidos Publishers.

Lourdes Celina Vázquez Parada