James Padilioni Jr.

Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Religious Studies

Office:  Ladd 210
Phone:  (518) 580-5426
Email:jpadilionijr@skidmore.edu

EDUCATION:

• PhD, William and Mary, American Studies, Africana affiliated (2018)
• MA, William and Mary, American Studies (2014)
• BA, West Chester Univ., History and Music (2012)

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

James’ research and teaching foreground the legacies and memories of slavery that manifest across African Diasporic ancestral veneration and spirit liturgical traditions, including  Afro-Latine folk Catholicism and sainthood, Black Atlantic herbalism and pharmacopeia, celestial wonder and the religious experience of nature, planetary ethics and ecocritical healing justice movements.

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

• "Betting on Blackness: Afro-Cuban Bolita Play, Everyday Dignity, and Probabilistic Theologies of an Infinite Cosmos." In Teología Vivida: Reflections on Latine Christian Lived Theologies. Edited by Héctor M. Varela Rios and Raúl E. Zegarra. Westminster John Knox, forthcoming, 2027

• “Sacred Re-Creation: Black Women’s Cannabis Garden Encounters with the African Divine Feminine.” In Black Women’s Gardens as Art and Practice. Edited by Carlyn E. Ferrari and Thaïsa Way. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, forthcoming 2027.

• “Vision/s.” Material Religion 21, nos. 4-5: “Key Terms for Material Religion” (2025): 469-477.

• “How Does the Supernatural Matter to Our Study?” in “Building Catholic Studies Where We Are” forum discussion, Kathleen Holscher editor, American Catholic Studies 133, no. 3 (2022): 1-30.

• “A Flowering of Memory: Walking Zora Neale Hurston’s Cemetery Path to our Mothers’ Gardens.”Environment and Society 13, no. 1 (2022): 11-26.

• “The Cybernetics of Hoodoo Divination: Analog-Digital Technologies of the Self and Conversions of the Soul.”The Black Scholar 52, no. 3 (2022): 63-73.

• “What Makes Vodou an Indigenous Tradition?” and “Is Vodou (Voodoo) a Religion?” In Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes. Edited by Natalie M. Avalos and Molly Bassett. London: Equinox Publishing, 2022, 49-51 and 55-57.

• “A Miami Misterio: Sighting San Martín de Porres at the Crossroads of Catholicism and Vodú.”S. Catholic Historian 38, no. 2 (2020): 85-111.

• Issar, S. and J. Padilioni. “‘To Address Black Suffering is to Destroy the World.’ An Interview with Frank B. Wilderson, III on Afropessimism.”Interfere: Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics 1 (2020): 92-113.

 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP

• “The African Youth Living Pope Francis’ Dream.”Catholic Re-Visions, June 29, 2024

• “Prophetic blackness: The legendary tale of Alexander Bedward, ‘the flying preacher.’” In “‘Out there’: Perspectives on the Significance of Black Metaphysical Religion.”The Immanent Frame, April 22, 2022

• “Cosmological Queerness Across the Yoruba Diaspora.” Black Perspectives, February 5, 2017

• “The Signifyin(g) Saint: Encoding Homoerotic Intimacy in Black Harlem.” Black Perspectives, March 14, 2017

FELLOWSHIPS AND HONORS

American Council of Learned Society Fellowship in religious studies for research related to completing book manuscript, To Ask Infinity Some Questions, 2023-24

Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in religion, Swarthmore College, 2020-2022

Consortium for Faculty Diversity Dissertation Completion Fellowship in history, Lewis and Clark College, 2017-2018