Dr. Abegunde will talk about the pleasures of serving Osun, and the power that comes from loving oneself fiercely, deeply, and especially when laughing and dancing. We will use the books Pleasure Activism and We Do This ‘Till We Free Us as starting points to guide our discussion, which may include the body as a site of trauma and healing, the power of pleasure to transform and transmigrate us into different states of being.

Dr. Maria (Osunbimpe) Hamilton Abegunde is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest and devotee of the orisa Osun; she is also a healer and full-spectrum community doula. Her most recent works can be found in the journals Obsidian and North Meridian Review; and the books Trouble the Waters: Tales of the Deep Blue, ASHE: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expression, Black Joy Unbound, SO WE CAN KNOW: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, and Trigger Warnings. She is the ritualist and commissioned poet for the Ancestral Masquerade Series, Be/Coming, Keeper of My Mothers’ Dreams, and Sister Song: The Requiem. Dr. Abegunde is a Black Earth Institute, Cave Canem, Sacatar, Ragdale, and NEH summer fellow. She is also the co-director of the 2024 NEH Summer Institute, “Content Warning: Engaging Trauma and Controversy in Research Collections.”

Zoom link available here.