Laura S. Grillo

–  IN PRESS  – My forthcoming contribution to an anthology in press, “Catching Bullets with Buttocks: the ‘obscene’ African power of Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons” traces the use of “Female Genital Power” in Caribbean history....

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions was finally published – after six long years in the works! My contribution is Chapter 22, “Divination in the Caribbean.” Divination is the pivot on which a number of critical religious practices hinge—initiation, healing and...

Many thanks to Anne-Marie Bouttieux for her fine translation of the Introduction of my book, An Intimate Rebuke. I posted this French version to Academia.edu. While I wish the entire book could be translated and published, especially so that it would be available to readers in Côte...

In her latest, monumental essay, “A Historical Overview of African Feminist Strands,” Minna Salami, founder of the award-winning blog, MsAfropolitan, draws on my book, “An Intimate Rebuke.” And, she cites me among a select group of scholars making “a rich...

I discovered an excellent review article on An Intimate Rebuke in French! This careful analysis is written by Michela Fusaschi, and was published in the Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 196, octobre-décembre 2021. I hope that this review will help Francophone scholars...

The Journal of Religion in Africa published an advanced, online version of my article on the work of Achille Mbembe, the renowned Cameroonian philosopher and scholar of African history, literature, and postcolonial studies. It points to the phenomenon of “Female Genital...

    On April 28, 2021, The Center for African Studies & The Stanford Humanities Center hosted a virtual conference focusing on the phenomenon that in my book I call “Female Genital Power.” Stanford described the event as “a conversation between scholars...

Dr. Elisa Prosperetti interviewed me for the New Books Network Podcast about An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa. A historian specializing in modern African with particular knowledge of Côte d’Ivoire, Elisa was a keen and informed...

The online platform of the Centre for Religion and Public Life (CRPL) based at the University of Leeds (UK) includes a series that addresses the theme, “Faith and Activism.” But does this classic Christian posture apply to contemporary African indigenous religions? I...

The University of Notre Dame featured a symposium on Faith in Flux, by Devaka Premawardhana on its blog, “Contending Modernities.” Premawardhana “examines practices of conversion among the Makhuwa of northern Mozambique. The Makhuwa, he argues, are an existentially...

Discovering this recent announcement that my book was among the finalists for the Albert J Raboteau Prize for Best Book in Africana Religions was very exciting. This recognition was itself a great honor. I congratulate Professor Bruce D. Haynes for winning the award for his book, The...

It will be a pleasure to serve on the Editorial Advisory Committee of Religious Studies Review, a quarterly publication that publishes review essays and critical notes on over 1,000 titles per year across all domains of the discipline.  The June 2019 issue (vol 45 no 2, pictured...

UPDATE: In order to attend to critical family situation I voluntarily withdrew from the Board in August 2020. I’m pleased to join the Editorial Board as a co-editor of the “African Religions” section of the path-breaking online journal Religion Compass. I look...

I won an award in the 2019 Ethnographic Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Writing Competition, sponsored by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). The honored work, “The Boiling Cauldron” is an excerpt from my MEMOIR. It is...

I was invited to submit a review essay of J. Lorand Matory’s new book, The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make (Duke UP, 2018) for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol 87, no 3 (2019) 911-915. J. Lorand Matory’s The Fetish Revisited is a...

  My essay, “The Disenchantment of Civil Society in the New Global Postcolony,” was just published in global-e, the online journal of the Global Dynamics Initiative based at the The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at the University of California...

After years of exclusive focus on academic writing, I’m returning to work on my memoir, “Ask for the Road.” I’m grateful to have been awarded a Writer’s Residency Fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. It is such a privilege to be...

It was a privilege to be invited to a colloquium at Harvard to share my thoughts on Female Genital Power as a critical example of “Religion in Public Space in Côte d’Ivoire“  

I was delighted to discover that my book was selected by Women in Academia Report among books on “a wide variety of subjects [that] present many different points of view” that should be of interest to its readers.   To read more, go to: Recent Books of Interest to...

I’m delighted to share the FIRST BOOK REVIEW! “groundbreaking strengths,” “utterly exquisite,” “The work is inimitable—Grillo is sensitive, sensible, and devotes attention to detail,” “this work significantly stands out for its selflessness.” To...

I was delighted to see that my book was headlined on the website of the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus (Recent Member Publications):

The African Religions Unit of the American Academy of Religions sponsored a Roundtable discussion of my book, An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa, at the annual meeting in Denver this past November. In this forum, a distinguished panel of...

I was among the speakers at a stimulating international conference on “Sexual and Gendered Moralities,” sponsored by the International Association for the study of Religion and Gender (IARG), in Ghent/Brussels, Belgium. It was held from November 26-27 2018. My talk drew...

I spoke at a colloquium of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill on December 5th.  The talk was entitled, “Spectacular Recollections: Women’s naked protest against African State Amnesia.” I am grateful to Professor Samba Camera for the invitation, and...