J. Lorand Matory is an American academic and Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University. Matory grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended Harvard College. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1991, and currently he is Chair of the African and African American Studies department at Duke University. He is the author of Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion ; and Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé.