Biography

Khytie Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at University of Texas-Austin. She is an ethnographer and scholar of African diaspora religions and African and African American studies. Her research broadly examines the intersections of religion, race, gender and sexual alterity, criminality, material culture, sensory epistemologies and social media practices among African diasporic religious practitioners in the Caribbean, Latin America and North America. In particular, her work focuses on Revival Zion religion, an understudied African-heritage, indigenized form of Christianity originating in Jamaica. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Afro-Queer Journeys: Spiritual Intimacies and Rituals of Becoming in Revival Zion Religion. The book examines Revival Zion religion as an indigenous Kongo-heritage religion, addressing transnational movements and migrations, colonial legacies of afrophobia and homophobia, and sensory hierarchies of difference in the making of marginalized religions in the Caribbean and Latin America, while foregrounding practitioners’ somatic practices as subversive world-building responses.Khytie holds a Ph.D. in African and African American studies from Harvard University with disciplinary foci in religion and anthropology.

Crossroads Community Stories Fellows Project

Crossing the Kalunga Line: A Cinematic Biography of a Revival Scientist

Crossing the Kalunga Line documents the contemporary textures, rhythms, voices, concerns, and lived realities of everyday Jamaican Revival Zion practitioners for whom Revivalism is the foundation of their meaning-making. The project is a multimedia exploration of the intimate relationships and rituals of Jamaican Revival Zion practitioners as they navigate themes of grief and mourning, life at the crossroads of transitions, and the innovative ways that Black religious practitioners, who inhabit marginalized positions, mobilize Africana spiritual resources to sustain life in the face of social, political, and economic hardship. The project entails a film and digital exhibition drawn from Dr. Brown’s and Dr. Dennis-Meade’s ethnographic research in Jamaica. The project foremost venerates the memory of Bishop Marrah—a noteworthy Revival Scientist whose passing inaugurated the creation of this film—by foregrounding the
testimonies of those whose lives he touched deeply through his healing and protective spiritual technologies and pastoral work. The film and exhibition offer a contemporary look at an indigenous tradition that continues to thrive in urban Jamaica as a community-sustaining practice despite societal stigma due to its deep reliance on African and African-heritage epistemologies and practice. In so doing, the project is a celebration of Revivalism and will also function as an educational tool to help demystify and deepen public understanding of this often misunderstood and culturally maligned tradition.