START: Thu, 29 Nov 2018 18:00:00
END: Thu, 29 Nov 2018 23:50:00
Dr. Cécile Fromont specializes in the visual, material, and religious cultures of Africa and Latin America, with an emphasis on the early modern period (ca. 1500–1800) and on the Portuguese-speaking Atlantic World. She is the author of the highly acclaimed book, The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo (University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, 2014), which was awarded the 2015 American Academy of Religion Best First Book in the History of Religions and the 2015 Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions, as well as an honorable mention for the 2015 Melville J. Herskovits Award. Her book publications also include her forthcoming collection of essays, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition, based on a conference she organized at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale’s Divinity School. Her essays on African and Latin American art have appeared, among other venues, in the Colonial Latin American Review, African Arts, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, as well as various edited volumes and exhibition catalogues. Her current research investigates areas of intersection between visual and material culture, religion, and knowledge creation in cross-cultural environments of early modern Africa and Latin America. Most recently, Dr. Fromont was the holder of the prestigious Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2017–18).