James Padilioni Jr.

James Padilioni is visiting assistant professor of religion and environmental studies at Swarthmore College. His research and teaching foreground African Diasporic spirit-ecstatic ritual performance, Black Atlantic sacred ecologies, and ontologies of personhood. His forthcoming book, To Ask Infinity Some Questions: San Martín de Porres and the Black Hagiographic Mysteries of Florida (Fordham Univ. Press), centers the figure of Afro-Peruvian mystic San Martín de Porres (1579-1639). The book explores how Florida’s Diasporic communities practice Black hagiographic consciousness as they invoke St. Martín’s presence in their everyday endeavors "to ask infinity some questions" about the sublime nature of Black being and becoming.