Frank Graziano, professor and expert on Latin American religious cultures, to speak about his new book on Feb. 15 – Connecticut College

“Poverty. Oppression. Desperation. Distrust in religious and political institutions.

This is reality for millions of Latin Americans, and helps explain the widespread devotion to folk saints – santos populares – who provide miraculous compensations when people have nowhere to turn. “Folk saints bring the needed miracles home,” said Frank Graziano, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. “They emerge in the interactions of desperation and hope, of vulnerability and resilience, and they offer a unique entry into the logic of faith by which most Latin Americans negotiate everyday life.”

Graziano, an expert on Latin American religious cultures, has published the first book in any language that provides an overview and comparative study of Hispanic saints who are not recognized by the Catholic Church. In the book, “Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America” Oxford University Press, 2007, Graziano offers in-depth studies concerning the beliefs, rituals, and devotions surrounding such prominent folk saints as Niño Fidencio, Difunta Correa, Gaucho Gil, and Sarita Colonia.

Graziano´s book draws upon site visits and extensive interviews with devotees, reinforced by archival material, media reports, documentaries, and previous scholarship. The result is a vivid portrait of folk devotions, the cultures in which they emerge, and their sometimes troubled relationship with orthodox Catholicism. The book is illustrated with several photographs taken at the sites of devotion, and the book´s website www.culturesofdevotion.com provides an additional 175 color photographs with captions.

Graziano will speak at the college in the Charles Chu Asian Art Reading Room in Shain Library on Feb. 15 at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture is built around slides that offer an inside view of these unique and often secret devotions. Graziano´s intriguing subject matter and dynamic lecturing style have attracted large audience to his previous lectures at institutions across the United States and Latin America.

Graziano is a veteran to the study of Latin American religion. His previous books include “Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality, and Radical Christianity in the Argentine ´Dirty War´” 1992, “The Millennial New World” 1999, and “Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of St. Rose of Lima” 2004.

Graziano´s research for “Cultures of Devotion” was supported by the John D. MacArthur Chair at Connecticut College and a joint fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A semester of research in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Program of the United States Department of Education.”

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