Books

The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract. Cambridge University Press, in print January 2023.
Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, & the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, a “signature book” in the New York University Press North American Religions series, February 2016.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Why Coloniality Forgets but the Colon Remembers: The Gut as Site of Memory in Afro-Diasporic Religions,” Harvard Theological Review, forthcoming 2025.
“A Subjective Response to ‘Transitional Phenomena’ and Case Study of Chinoiseries in ‘Afro-Cuban’ Religions,” Religion, forthcoming 2025.
“‘Unique, Divine, Unrepeatable’: S.F. Makalani-Mahee & the Black Trans Christian Archive,” QTR: A Journal of Queer & Transgender Studies in Religion 1, no. 2 (2024): 217–43.
“Sorry Cites: The Necropolitics of Citation in the Anthropology of Religion,” Studies in Religion/ Sciences Religieuses 53, no. 2 (2024): 185–206.
“Unpeeling the Banana Dance: The Fugitivity & Embodied Quare Critique of Joséphine Baker,” Journal of American Culture 46, no. 2 (2023): 161–168.
“The Black Atlantic Metaphysics of Azealia Banks: Brujx Womanism at the Kongo Crossroads,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2021): 519–46, special issue: “Conjure Feminism: Tracing the Genealogy of a Black Women's Intellectual Tradition.”
“‘I Got Voodoo, I Got Hoodoo’: Ethnography and Its Objects in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog,” Material Religion 17, no. 1 (2021): 56–80.
“‘You Were Gonna Leave Them Out?’: Locating Black Women in a Transfeminist Anthropology of Religion,” Journal of Feminist Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2020): 94–111.
“Toward an Inventory of Influence: Biography and Belonging in Sustained Dialogue with Black Atlantic Religion,” Journal of Africana Religions 6, no. 1 (2018): 104–13.
“The Ontology of Twerk: From ‘Sexy’ Black Movement Style to Afro-Diasporic Sacred Dance,” for African and Black Diaspora 9, no. 1 (2016): 16–31, special issue: “Sounds of Freedom Across the Black Atlantic.”
“Willful Spirits and Weakened Flesh: Historicizing the Initiation Narrative in Afro-Cuban Religions,” Journal of Africana Religions 1, no. 2 (2013): 151–93.
“Portable Portals: Transnational Rituals for the Head Across Globalizing Orisha Traditions,” Nova Religio 16, no. 4 (2013): 35–62, special issue: “Religion and the Transnational Imagination.”
“Staging Transformation: Spiritist Liturgies as Theatres of Conversion in Afro-Cuban Religious Practice,” Culture and Religion 13, no. 3 (2012): 372–400.
“Cooking for the Gods: Sensuous Ethnography, Sensory Knowledge, and the Kitchen in Lucumí Tradition,” Religion 41, no. 4 (2011): 665–83.
“Spiritist Mediumship as Historical Mediation: African-American Pasts, Black Ancestral Presence, and Afro-Cuban Religions,” Journal of Religion in Africa 41, no. 4 (2011): 330–65.
“The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-Cuban Women’s Experiences,” Journal of African-American History 95, no. 2 (2010): 202–28, special issue: “Explorations within the African Diaspora.”
“An All Too Present Absence: Fernando Ortiz’s Work on [the Afro-Cuban secret society] Abakuá in its Sociocultural Context,” co-written with Stephan Palmié, New West Indian Guide 79, nos. 3 & 4 (2005): 219–28.
“Yemayá, Regla, and the Fetish in Afro-Cuban Santería,” Chicago Art Journal (2002): 17–34.
“Artworks: The Midnight Buffet,” co-written with Andy Rotman, Public Culture: Society for Transnational Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2001): 329–31.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
“Body/Embodiment,” Keywords in African American Religious Studies, forthcoming 2025.
“Afro-Diasporic & Black Atlantic Traditions,” Palgrave Handbook on Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion, under contract with Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming 2025.
“Practice,” in the second edition of Critical Terms for Religious Studies, under contract with University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2025.
“Food,” in The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions, 491–503, edited by Michelle Gonzalez-Maldonado, Oxford, 2024.
“Reheating the Ajiaco: Fernando Ortiz’s Theorization of Sacred Cuisine,” in Fernando Ortiz: Caribbean & Mediterranean Counterpoints, 323–352, edited by Stephan Palmié, University of Chicago Press, 2023.
“Afro-Cuban Catholicisms,” in The Oxford Handbook of Latino Christianity, 68–86, edited by Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Oxford, 2022.
“Hail to the Chefs: Black Women’s Pedagogy, Kitchenspaces, and Afro-Diasporic Religions,” in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories: Across the Diaspora, From Ancient Times to the Present, 333–41, edited by Janell Hobson, 2021.
“Working Roots and Conjuring Traditions: Relocating ‘Cults and Sects’ in African American Religious History” in Esotericism, Gnosticism, and Mysticism in African American Religious Experience, 40–61, edited by Stephen C. Finley and Margarita Guillory, Brill, 2014.
“Crystallizing Subjectivities in the African Diaspora: Sugar, Honey, and the Gods of Afro-Cuban Santería,” in Religion, Food, and Eating in North America, 175–94, edited by Benjamin Zeller et al., Columbia University Press, 2014.
“Nobody’s Mammy: Yemayá as Fierce Foremother in Afro-Cuban Religions,” in Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas, 1–20, edited by Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola, SUNY Press, 2013.
Public Writing & Online Publications
“Finding the Metaphysicians in Black Metaphysical Religion, ft. Azealia Banks,” as part of a scholarly forum entitled, “Out There: Perspectives on the Significance of Black Metaphysical Religion” for The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, & the Public Sphere, a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) website, May 13, 2022, https://tif.ssrc.org/2022/05/13/finding-the-metaphysicians-in-black-metaphysical-religion-ft-azealia-banks/
“Catering to the Gods in Chicago (& Beyond),” The Chicago Foodcultura Clarion 3 (2021): 6–7 (special insert in The Chicago Reader).
“For All That Is Good and Holy: Reclaiming Religion for the Black and Latinx Victims of the #PulseOrlando Massacre,” for Marginalia/LA Review of Books, June 24, 2016, http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/good-holy-reclaiming-religion-black-latinx-victims-pulseorlando-massacre/
“Any Day Can Be Mama’s: Food and Mothering in the Lucumí Religion,” for Religious Studies News, May 4, 2016, http://rsn.aarweb.org/articles/any-day-can-be-mamas-food-and-mothering-lucum%C3%AD-religion
“The Gods of the Black Atlantic Are Hungry,” Religion in the Kitchen excerpt for Cosmologics Magazine, March 21, 2016, http://cosmologicsmagazine.com/elizabeth-perez-the-gods-of-the-black-atlantic-are-hungry/
“Color Beyond Race in an Afro-Cuban Religion,” for Sightings, a subscription-based electronic publication of the University of Chicago Martin Marty Center, April 27, 2006, https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/color-beyond-race-afro-cuban-religion-elizabeth-perez
Reviews
Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa, Stephan Palmié, Religion and Society, forthcoming 2025.
Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller, NWIG 86, nos. 1 & 2 (2012): 77–79.
Worldview, the Orichas, and Santeria: Africa to Cuba and Beyond, Mercedes Cros Sandoval, NWIG 83, nos. 3 & 4 (2009): 136–39.
Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule: Santería Ritual Practices and Their Gender Implications, Mary Ann Clark, NWIG 80, nos. 3 & 4 (2006): 303–05.
Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity, Edna M. Rodríguez-Mangual, Journal of Latin American Anthropology 11, no. 2 (2006): 480–85.
Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion, David H. Brown, History of Religions 45, no. 2 (2005): 185–88.
Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo, Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Journal of Religion 84, no. 4 (2004): 670–72.
Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Journal of Religion 84, no. 3 (2004): 500–02.
Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora, Elizabeth McAlister, Journal of Religion 84, no. 2 (2004): 336–38.
Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, J.D.Y. Peel, Journal of Religion 82, no. 3 (2002): 493–94.
“Triumph of a ‘Failed Medievalist’: [María Rosa] Menocal’s Fresh Perspective on the Middle Ages,” Scripta Mediterranea 19-20 (1998–99): 63–65.
Translation
“The Tragedy of the Ñáñigos: Genesis of an Unpublished Book” by María del Rosario Díaz, co-translated with Stephan Palmié, NWIG 79, nos. 3 & 4 (2005): 229–38.

Books

The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract. Cambridge University Press, in print January 2023.

Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, & the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, a “signature book” in the New York University Press North American Religions series, February 2016.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Why Coloniality Forgets but the Colon Remembers: The Gut as Site of Memory in Afro-Diasporic Religions,” Harvard Theological Review, forthcoming 2025.

“A Subjective Response to ‘Transitional Phenomena’ and Case Study of Chinoiseries in ‘Afro-Cuban’ Religions,” Religion, forthcoming 2025.

“‘Unique, Divine, Unrepeatable’: S.F. Makalani-Mahee & the Black Trans Christian Archive,” QTR: A Journal of Queer & Transgender Studies in Religion 1, no. 2 (2024): 217–43.

“Sorry Cites: The Necropolitics of Citation in the Anthropology of Religion,” Studies in Religion/ Sciences Religieuses 53, no. 2 (2024): 185–206.

“Unpeeling the Banana Dance: The Fugitivity & Embodied Quare Critique of Joséphine Baker,” Journal of American Culture 46, no. 2 (2023): 161–168.

“The Black Atlantic Metaphysics of Azealia Banks: Brujx Womanism at the Kongo Crossroads,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2021): 519–46, special issue: “Conjure Feminism: Tracing the Genealogy of a Black Women's Intellectual Tradition.”

“‘I Got Voodoo, I Got Hoodoo’: Ethnography and Its Objects in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog,” Material Religion 17, no. 1 (2021): 56–80.

“‘You Were Gonna Leave Them Out?’: Locating Black Women in a Transfeminist Anthropology of Religion,” Journal of Feminist Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2020): 94–111.

“Toward an Inventory of Influence: Biography and Belonging in Sustained Dialogue with Black Atlantic Religion,” Journal of Africana Religions 6, no. 1 (2018): 104–13.

“The Ontology of Twerk: From ‘Sexy’ Black Movement Style to Afro-Diasporic Sacred Dance,” for African and Black Diaspora 9, no. 1 (2016): 16–31, special issue: “Sounds of Freedom Across the Black Atlantic.”

“Willful Spirits and Weakened Flesh: Historicizing the Initiation Narrative in Afro-Cuban Religions,” Journal of Africana Religions 1, no. 2 (2013): 151–93.

“Portable Portals: Transnational Rituals for the Head Across Globalizing Orisha Traditions,” Nova Religio 16, no. 4 (2013): 35–62, special issue: “Religion and the Transnational Imagination.”

“Staging Transformation: Spiritist Liturgies as Theatres of Conversion in Afro-Cuban Religious Practice,” Culture and Religion 13, no. 3 (2012): 372–400.

“Cooking for the Gods: Sensuous Ethnography, Sensory Knowledge, and the Kitchen in Lucumí Tradition,” Religion 41, no. 4 (2011): 665–83.

“Spiritist Mediumship as Historical Mediation: African-American Pasts, Black Ancestral Presence, and Afro-Cuban Religions,” Journal of Religion in Africa 41, no. 4 (2011): 330–65.

“The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-Cuban Women’s Experiences,” Journal of African-American History 95, no. 2 (2010): 202–28, special issue: “Explorations within the African Diaspora.”

“An All Too Present Absence: Fernando Ortiz’s Work on [the Afro-Cuban secret society] Abakuá in its Sociocultural Context,” co-written with Stephan Palmié, New West Indian Guide 79, nos. 3 & 4 (2005): 219–28.

“Yemayá, Regla, and the Fetish in Afro-Cuban Santería,” Chicago Art Journal (2002): 17–34.

“Artworks: The Midnight Buffet,” co-written with Andy Rotman, Public Culture: Society for Transnational Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2001): 329–31.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

“Body/Embodiment,” Keywords in African American Religious Studies, forthcoming 2025.

“Afro-Diasporic & Black Atlantic Traditions,” Palgrave Handbook on Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion, under contract with Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming 2025.

“Practice,” in the second edition of Critical Terms for Religious Studies, under contract with University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2025.

“Food,” in The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions, 491–503, edited by Michelle Gonzalez-Maldonado, Oxford, 2024.

“Reheating the Ajiaco: Fernando Ortiz’s Theorization of Sacred Cuisine,” in Fernando Ortiz: Caribbean & Mediterranean Counterpoints, 323–352, edited by Stephan Palmié, University of Chicago Press, 2023.

“Afro-Cuban Catholicisms,” in The Oxford Handbook of Latino Christianity, 68–86, edited by Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Oxford, 2022.

“Hail to the Chefs: Black Women’s Pedagogy, Kitchenspaces, and Afro-Diasporic Religions,” in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories: Across the Diaspora, From Ancient Times to the Present, 333–41, edited by Janell Hobson, 2021.

“Working Roots and Conjuring Traditions: Relocating ‘Cults and Sects’ in African American Religious History” in Esotericism, Gnosticism, and Mysticism in African American Religious Experience, 40–61, edited by Stephen C. Finley and Margarita Guillory, Brill, 2014.

“Crystallizing Subjectivities in the African Diaspora: Sugar, Honey, and the Gods of Afro-Cuban Santería,” in Religion, Food, and Eating in North America, 175–94, edited by Benjamin Zeller et al., Columbia University Press, 2014.

“Nobody’s Mammy: Yemayá as Fierce Foremother in Afro-Cuban Religions,” in Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas, 1–20, edited by Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola, SUNY Press, 2013.

Public Writing & Online Publications

“Catering to the Gods in Chicago (& Beyond),” The Chicago Foodcultura Clarion 3 (2021): 6–7 (special insert in The Chicago Reader).

“For All That Is Good and Holy: Reclaiming Religion for the Black and Latinx Victims of the #PulseOrlando Massacre,” for Marginalia/LA Review of Books, June 24, 2016, http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/good-holy-reclaiming-religion-black-latinx-victims-pulseorlando-massacre/

“Any Day Can Be Mama’s: Food and Mothering in the Lucumí Religion,” for Religious Studies News, May 4, 2016, http://rsn.aarweb.org/articles/any-day-can-be-mamas-food-and-mothering-lucum%C3%AD-religion

“The Gods of the Black Atlantic Are Hungry,” Religion in the Kitchen excerpt for Cosmologics Magazine, March 21, 2016, http://cosmologicsmagazine.com/elizabeth-perez-the-gods-of-the-black-atlantic-are-hungry/

“Color Beyond Race in an Afro-Cuban Religion,” for Sightings, a subscription-based electronic publication of the University of Chicago Martin Marty Center, April 27, 2006, https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/color-beyond-race-afro-cuban-religion-elizabeth-perez

Reviews

Thinking with Ngangas: What Afro-Cuban Ritual Can Tell Us about Scientific Practice and Vice Versa, Stephan Palmié, Religion and Society, forthcoming 2025.

Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller, NWIG 86, nos. 1 & 2 (2012): 77–79.

Worldview, the Orichas, and Santeria: Africa to Cuba and Beyond, Mercedes Cros Sandoval, NWIG 83, nos. 3 & 4 (2009): 136–39.

Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule: Santería Ritual Practices and Their Gender Implications, Mary Ann Clark, NWIG 80, nos. 3 & 4 (2006): 303–05.

Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity, Edna M. Rodríguez-Mangual, Journal of Latin American Anthropology 11, no. 2 (2006): 480–85.

Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion, David H. Brown, History of Religions 45, no. 2 (2005): 185–88.

Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo, Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Journal of Religion 84, no. 4 (2004): 670–72.

Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Journal of Religion 84, no. 3 (2004): 500–02.

Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora, Elizabeth McAlister, Journal of Religion 84, no. 2 (2004): 336–38.

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, J.D.Y. Peel, Journal of Religion 82, no. 3 (2002): 493–94.

“Triumph of a ‘Failed Medievalist’: [María Rosa] Menocal’s Fresh Perspective on the Middle Ages,” Scripta Mediterranea 19-20 (1998–99): 63–65.

Translation

“The Tragedy of the Ñáñigos: Genesis of an Unpublished Book” by María del Rosario Díaz, co-translated with Stephan Palmié, NWIG 79, nos. 3 & 4 (2005): 229–38.

Elizabeth Pérez