Kristina WirtzOffice: (269)
387-0408
Email:
Location
1016 Moore Hall
Education
Ph.D., Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, 2003
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
Bio
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."
