Honoring Karen McCarthy Brown

The 1991 publication of Karen McCarthy Brown’s “Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn,” now in its third edition, was a watershed contribution to the field of religious studies and became a perennial favorite among assigned textbooks. Brown’s exemplary ethnographic treatment of the religious practices of a Haitian immigrant humanized the adepts of this much-maligned African diaspora religion, and made social science methodology accessible to religious studies, a field theretofore dominated by (and still largely defined by) textual studies. Brown’s feminist scholarship valued women’s accounts of their religious practices and life experiences as data for research, and provided a self-reflexive interpretation of the relationships she established with field subjects who became her own religious family. The panelists reflect upon the influence of Karen McCarthy Brown’s scholarship on their own research and teaching, and how her work marked, and helped to produce, the “ethnographic turn” in the study of religion. Following their discussion, Brown's students and colleagues in the audience share candid memories of their beloved teacher and friend. Panelists: Jalane D. Schmidt, University of Virginia, Presiding Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University Pamela Klassen, University of Toronto Aisha Beliso-De Jesus, Harvard University Claudine Michel, University of California, Santa Barbara with remarks by Linda E. Thomas, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Charles Selengut, County College of Morris Dorothy Austin, Harvard University Diana L. Eck, Harvard University Ennis Edmonds, Kenyon College Jack Hawley, Barnard College The session was recorded at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 22 in Atlanta, GA.

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