May 17 : Damola Osinulu

Damola Osinulu
Searching for God on the City's Edge: A Journey through Lagos's Pentecostal Spaces.
May 17, 2011
12pm Kaufman room 160

There are few developments at the intersection of religious practice and public life in post-independence Nigeria more striking than the advent, over the past three decades, of Pentecostal Christianity. In this presentation, viewers will be invited on a journey through three Pentecostal sites in and around the city of Lagos' Redemption Camp, Canaanland, and Mountain of Fire and Miracles. How are we to understand these sites in relationship to the city? Are they a Utopian alternative to the often-difficult conditions in the city or are they a continuation of the city, acting to perpetuate existing social orders? What is it that draws so many "at least half a million in one gathering" to these sites?  At the core of the arguments I will be presenting is the idea of a Pentecostal Imaginary that subsumes existing cosmologies, incorporates notions of global continuity, and provides appealing explanatory frameworks for believers' lived experiences.

Damola is a PhD candidate in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures, from where he also obtained an MA in Culture and Performance.  In addition he holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston. After practicing architecture for five years in Houston, Boston and New York, he returned to graduate school in 2005 to fully pursue his interest in the study of culture.  His present work investigates three Pentecostal sites in and around the Nigerian city of Lagos as venues where complex cultural identities are negotiated and resolved.  More generally, he is interested in contemporary African identity and how that comes to be expressed through and in space. He recently concluded his dissertation fieldwork research as a Social Science Research Council Fellow and is completing his dissertation based on that research.