Dr. Kodi Roberts

Kodi Roberts is Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University. He was awarded undergraduate degrees in History and Religious Studies from LSU, a Masters in History from University of New Orleans, and a Ph.D. in History from University of Chicago. His work focuses on intersections of race and religion in African American History. His book Voodoo & Power: the Politics of Religion in New Orleans, 1881-1940 (LSU Press, 2015) looks at the racialization of Voodoo in Depression-era New Orleans and the parallel inculcation of contemporary local culture into the rituals of Voodoo practitioners.

Marie Laveau in Early 20th Century Voodoo

In this talk I seek to establish the lasting cultural impact of Voodoo on the city of New Orleans. Because of her influence on the culture of Voodoo in New Orleans as described by practitioners in the early twentieth century, this talk takes as a starting point the mythology surrounding Marie Laveau, the city's most famous "Voodoo Queen," and illustrates the importance of this nineteenth-century figure as the mytho-historic progenitor of the style of Voodoo practiced in twentieth-century New Orleans. Tied into this mythology are the complex notions of racial and gender identity and the practice of Voodoo as entrepreneurship, which helped to define not only the practice of Voodoo, but the broader culture of New Orleans in the early decades of the 1900s.