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Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús joined the HDS faculty as Assistant Professor of African American
Religions in July 2009.
Her hands-on research with Santería practitioners has taken her to, among other places, Miami, San Francisco, New York City,
and Havana, Cuba,
where she studied travel, religious tourism, return dynamics, and the uses, practices, circulation, and consumption of
religious media. In 2003,
she spent four months in San Jose, California, with Latina women who were recovering substance abusers enrolled in the
Women's Wellness Substance Abuse Program.
Her dissertation, "Becoming Santería: A Transnational Study of Cultural
Politics, Media and Religion
in Cuba and the United States," examines the interrelated cultural politics by which Santería and Ifá religious practices
are reinvented, circulated, and
transformed through transnational processes, travel, tourism, consumption, and media between the United States and Cuba.
For nearly 16 years, she has been
active in numerous community service efforts and is a frequent public speaker, advocating education and nonviolence for
youth. Some of her areas of teaching and research include: Africana and the African Diaspora;
anthropology of the Caribbean and Latin America; postcolonial theory; studies and ethnography of the Internet; and
commodification of culture.
courses:
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