Solimar Otero is Associate Professor of English and a Folklorist at Louisiana State University. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography. She is the author of Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World, (University of Rochester Press in 2010). She is also the co-editor of Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas (SUNY, in press).  Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant (2013); a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program, (2009 to 2010); and a Fulbright award (2001).She is currently working on a book, Coming Home: Nation, Gender, and Diaspora in Afro-Cuban Religion, which investigates how the representation and expression of gender, race, and sexuality in Afro-Cuban religions affects Cuban transnationalism.