Visiting Professor to discuss popular investment in voodoo

Haitian voodoo will be examined at a free University of Queensland public seminar this week.

Visiting Fellow, Associate Professor Ken Gelder, will discuss The Forest of Human Becoming: Haitian Voodoo, Culture and Counterculture on Wednesday, September 4 in the Social Sciences and Humanities Library Conference Room, St Lucia at 1pm.

The lecture is part of UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies’ (CCCS) 2002 seminar program and will examine western intellectual investments in Haiti and Haitian voodoo in the 1930s and 40s.

Dr Gelder will examine the configurations of Haiti and Haitian voodoo as culture, counterculture or cult and use examples from film to illustrate his discussion.

Dr Gelder is Head of the English Department and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the University of Melbourne.

His main research interests include genre studies and popular fiction, postcolonial studies, 19th century fiction, sub-cultural and popular cultural studies.

Media: For further information, contact Dr Gelder (telephone 03 8344 5485), Andrea Mitchell at UQ’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (telephone 07 3365 7182, email: a.mitchell@uq.edu.au) or Joanne van Zeeland at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2619 or email: communications@uq.edu.au).