About
Prof. Landry is a socio-cultural anthropologist who works in the Afro-Atlantic world. He has worked with Vodún and orisa worshipers in coastal West Africa and with practitioners of Vodou in Haiti and in the United States. Through ethnographic research, Prof. Landry seeks to understand the ways in which autochthonous West African religions and their derivatives move around the globe.
In his current research project, Seeking Divine Power, Prof. Landry explores the ways in which the globalization of Vodún (Bénin) is encouraged by the formation of transnational religious-based markets, global media, and international spiritual tourism.
In the near future, Prof. Landry will build upon this research by focusing on the ways in which sorcery in Benin help us to understand what it means to be “ontologically alive.” Education
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013.
M.A. Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Houston, 2005.
B.S. Anthropology, University of Houston, 2001. Publications
2016. Incarnating Spirits, Composing Shrines, and Cooking Divine Power in Vodún. Journal of Material Religion. 12:1, pp 50-73.
2015. Vodún, Globalization, and the Creative Layering of Belief in Southern Bénin. Journal of Religion in Africa 45:1, pp 170-99.
2015. ‘Never Wholly Respectable:’ Divination, Death, and Humanism in Contemporary Anthropology. Anthropology and Humanism 40:1, pp. 177-181.
2010. “The Slave Route: Touring the Inaccurate and Experiencing the Authentic in Bénin, West Africa.” In Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion and Nationalism in a Globalized World. Helaine Silverman, ed. New York: Springer, pp 205-31.
2008. “Moving to Learn: Performance and Learning in Haitian Vodou.” Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 33, Issue 1/2, pp 53-65.
