Exploring the way religion and politics are brought into focus through the writings of the Caribbean thinker Sylvia Wynter
Vincent Lloyd is a professor of theology and religious studies and director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity (2022), co-author of What Is Political Theology? (2025), and co-editor of Political Theology Reimagined (2025). Lloyd is editor-at-large of the journal Political Theology.
David Kline is Teaching Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of Racism and the Weakness of Christian Identity: Religious Autoimmunity (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion (Fordham, 2025). He is also a musician and video artist actively involved in the Knoxville music and arts scenes.
Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies with a focus on the Black Experience in the Americas in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. She specializes in Rastafari Studies, Black radical thought, Africana gender theory, Africana Religious Studies and decolonial research methods. Her current work on Africana women's radical epistemologies focuses on the ways Rastafari women use their livity to build Pan-African communities and combat anti-black gendered racism, religious discrimination and racial capitalism in Ghana and Jamaica. Her manuscript, Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women's Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World is the winner of the 2019 National Women's Association and the University of Illinois Press First Book Prize.
Rafael Vizcaíno is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University. His work focuses on Latin American and Caribbean philosophy, especially decolonial thought, and on theories of secularization and postsecularity. Winner of the American Philosophical Association’s Essay Prize in Latin American Thought, Rafael is currently working on two book-length manuscripts: an account of the modern dialectics of secularization from the perspective of Latin American and Caribbean thought, and an outline of a postsecular/decolonial philosophy of religion. Rafael’s publications can be found in the anthology Decolonising the University, and the journals Radical Philosophy Review, The CLR James Journal, and Political Theology. Forthcoming work is scheduled to appear in the journals Philosophy and Global Affairs, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World.
Symposium Essays
Sylvia Wynter and Religion
While Sylvia Wynter is not a scholar of religion, religion plays a significant role in her thinking, offering important lessons for political theology.