Yolanda Covington-Ward

Dr. Yolanda Covington-Ward is Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology and is currently President of the Association for Africanist Anthropology. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Brown University. Her research focuses on embodiment, identity, religion, performance, and politics, emphasizing the agency and creativity of people of African descent in transforming the worlds around them. Her first book Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo (Duke University Press, 2016) was awarded the 2016 Amaury Talbot Award for African Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the 2017 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. She has received a number of prestigious fellowships and awards including but not limited to the Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, and she is also a former Fulbright fellow.