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Kenneth
Routon (Ph.D. sociocultural
anthropology) has research
interests which
include sociocultural anthropology; critical studies in culture, power
&
history; popular religion, healing, and sorcery; state fetishism;
phenomenology; Latin America and the Caribbean; Cuba. Kenneth
completed 17
months of fieldwork in Havana, Cuba over the
summer.
Currently funded by a Dissertation Research Award, he is well into the
writing
of his dissertation (tentatively titled, Fetishizing the
Revolution: Popular
Religion and the Politics of Late-Socialism in Cuba).
He has also completed revisions of a paper that will appear
in a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology
(Cuba’s
Alternative Geographies) in November 2005 entitled, “Unimaginable
Homelands? ‘Africa’ and the
Abakuá
Historical Imagination.” Another paper, “The ‘Letter of the Year’ and
the
Prophetics of Revolution,” will appear in Ariana Hernandez Reguant’s
edited
volume, NG Cuba: The Special Period and the
Culture of Late-Socialism in Cuba.
He is currently working on a book review essay for Identities:
Global Studies in Culture and Power called,
“Trance-Nationalism: Religious Imaginaries in the Black Atlantic,” and
revisions for two other papers, “Dirty Havana: Economies of Desire and
the
Magic of Transnational Romance,” and, “Maroon Nation: Bozal
Spirits and the Sorcery of History” Finally, he is planning
to co-organize a panel with Ariana Hernandez Reguant for the Cuban
Research
Institute’s annual conference in 2006 on “Fetishism and the Cuban
Revolution,”
at which he will present his paper, “The Comandante’s Nganga: Fantasies
of
Power and Auhority in Cuba.”
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