Candomblé and Sacred Earth Healing in the Rio de Janeiro Carnival

In this short piece on my participation in the 2012 symposium "Sacred Healing and Wholeness in Africa and the Americas" at Harvard University, I briefly problematize the various intellectual structures and categories our symposium challenges and argue that diaspora studies, and particularly Afro-Brazilian studies, remain largely underrepresented in North American academe. Next I summarize my translation and case study of an Afro-Brazilian presentation of Candomblé and earth healing in the 2009 Rio de Janeiro Carnival, and cite further research regarding Candomblé, religion, and ecology.