Anthropology

Kristina Wirtz

Ph.D. 2003 University of Pennsylvania

Assistant Professor
Cultural Anthropology

1016 Moore Hall
(269) 387-0408

Web site

Research interests: Language and culture, religion, ritual, semiotics, discourse analysis, race and nation, language ideologies, historical consciousness, religious community

Regional focus: Cuba, Caribbean, Latin America, African diaspora

Selected publications:
Wirtz, K. (2007) Ritual, Discourse, and Community in Cuban Santería: Speaking a Sacred World. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Wirtz, K. (2007) Divining the past: The linguistic reconstruction of 'African' roots in diasporic ritual registers and songs. Journal of Religion in Africa special issue: African diasporic religions. 27 (2): 240-272.

Wirtz, K. (2007) Deep language and diasporic culture: Learning to speak the 'tongue of the orichas' in Cuban Santería. American Ethnologist 34(1): 108-126.

A closer look: Kristina Wirtz is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist who works on Santería in contemporary Cuba. Her research and teaching interests encompass religion, discourse, ritual performance, and negotiations over identity and community (racial, religious, and national). Dr. Wirtz is especially intrigued by Santería’s esoteric ritual register, Lucumí, as an emblem of religiosity and of different strains of historical consciousness in Cuba and the African diaspora. Current projects include editing a journal special issue on the topic of ritual unintelligibility, writing about the commercialization of Afro-Cuban religion in Socialist Cuba, and researching the competing language ideologies that have shaped “racialized” ways of speaking in Cuba, including ritual registers like Lucumí and marginalized sociolects like "bozal."

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