247 p., Discusses the diasporic origins of Palo Mayombe, a Kongo-Cuban religious tradition, while seeking to analyze how it fulfills, in a new transplanted setting, the spiritual needs of a given segment of the Cuban immigrant population in the United States—designated here as the “strangers in a new land”—“serving not only as a healing mechanism but also a vehicle towards the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity.”
85 p., This thesis examines the practice of Obeah--an Afro-Caribbean system of healing, harming, and divination through the use of spiritual powers--within two slave communities in Berbice and Demerara (British Guiana). This study is based primarily on legal documents--including testimony from more than a dozen slaves--generated during the criminal trials of two men accused of practicing Obeah in 1819 and 1821-22. In contrast to most previous studies of Obeah, which have been based largely on descriptions provided by British observers, this project takes advantage of this complex, overlapping body of evidence to explore the social dynamics of Obeah as experienced by enslaved men and women themselves, including Obeah practitioners, their clients, and other witnesses. This study reveals that Obeah rituals could be extremely violent, that Obeah practitioners were feared as well as respected among their contemporaries, that the authority of Obeah practitioners was based on demonstrable success, and that slave communities in general were complex social worlds characterized by conflict and division as well as by support and unity--conclusions that combine to produce a fresh, humane vision of Afro-diasporan culture and community under slavery.
164 p., Traces the journey of blacks from the Middle Passage through urban migration northward in black fiction. Argues that the historical use of religious rhetoric is transcended in black writing of the 20th century in order to recast black victimization during slavery, counter the progress of turn-of-the-century white supremacy, and chronicle the rise of economic racism which created the 20th century black ghetto. The religious doctrines discussed in this study include Puritan missionizing and heretical purges in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem , the social work of the Catholic church in Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South , and the cultural intensity of the Pentecostal/Apostolic church in Go Tell It on the Mountain.
251 p., Analysis of characteristic traits of Afrodescendants in the Atabaque and the Conférence Haïtienne des Religieux et Religieuses research work. These publications are used to bring to light the Afro-Brazilian and Haitian theological reflection as an expression of their commitment to multicultural and mestizo Brazil as well as black Haiti. Based on the comparative study of the content of these theologies developed in Brazil and in Haiti, highlights two separate currents from 1986 to 2004 in theological databases. This delimitation corresponds to the phase of publication of results of three consultations about black theologies in Brazil in 1986, in 1995 and 2004. The CHR's works date from 1991 to 1999. This study aims to trace their practice of the Christian faith, as well as their development and their evolution.
196 p., Argues that practitioners of Palo Monte/Mayombe in the city of Santiago de Cuba construct a religious genealogy inclusive of spirits to affirm their sense of an "African" identity in contemporary Cuba. Demonstrates that these practitioners' sense of being African includes an understanding that they are the ritual descendants and stewards of the blended spiritual knowledge created by sixteenth and seventeenth century AmerIndian Taíno and Kongolese inhabitants of eastern/Oriente, Cuba.
301 p., Throughout the 20th century, various Cuban regimes have tried to eliminate the practice of religions of African origin by combining repressive legislation and coercive social practices that stigmatized practitioners as culturally backward, socially deviant, and mentally deficient. Religious practitioners, however, used the state apparatus to continue worshipping their African deities, sometimes challenging government officials' excessive application of the law or devising ways to evade their scrutiny. Through an analysis of archival documents, newspapers, works produced by practitioners, oral history interviews and published ethnographies, this dissertation examines the strategies practitioners of Ocha-Ifá - also known as Santería - employed as they continued practicing the religion of their ancestors and participating in the national projects of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period after the 1959 revolution, this dissertation argues that revolutionary policies that were designed to discourage the practice of religions of African origin actually facilitated its continued practice and development in unintended ways.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
330 p., Explores the impact of the great Orishas (Yoruba: "deities") of the crossroads, Eshu-Elegguá , on the thriving literary and visual arts of the African diaspora. Eshu-Elegguá are multiple figures who work between physical and spiritual realms, open possibilities, and embody unpredictability and chance. Analyzes the texts Mumbo Jumbo (Ismael Reed, 1972), Sortilégio: Mistério Negro (Abdias do Nasicmento, 1951), Chago de Guisa (Gerardo Fulleda León, 1988), Brown Girl in the Ring (Nalo Hopkinson, 1998), Midnight Robber (Nalo Hopkinson, 2000), and Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966). The objective is to explore the aesthetic codes and philosophies that the figures of Eshu-Elegguá carry into the texts; trace their voices across multiple forms of cultural expression; and navigate the dialogues that these intermediary figures open between a group of literary texts that have not yet been studied together.
109 p., Examines the local and global tensions which challenge inculturation in Jamaica, including the role African-derived religions play in that context. The history of Christianity in Jamaica, the development of the Roman Catholic Church's teachings with regards to culture, globalization and its impact on the local Church, and the appropriate method for doing inculturation in the Jamaica in an increasingly global context are examined.
