REL 340
African Diaspora Religions in the Americas and the Caribbean Spring 2017
Division II
Cross-listed GBST 340 / AFR 340
This is not the current course catalog

Over the last century, historians, social scientists, and religionists have labored to discover the meaning of African dispersal beyond the African continent and its accompanying spiritual lineages. What did it mean to move from the African continent (as opposed to the Australian continent, for example)? What theories of encounter sufficiently adjudicate the synthetic religious cultures of African descended persons in North America, South America, and the Caribbean? What are the cross-disciplinary methodologies that scholars utilize to understand African religious cultures in the Western hemisphere? Firstly, this course will consider a brief historiography of Africana Religious Studies. This background will inform the second and primary objective of the course: privileging knowledge, place, and performance as central lenses for thematizing and exploring West and Central African religious traditions housed in the Americas. We will cover diverse African diasporic religious traditions including Conjure, Dagara, Kumina, New Orleans Voodoo, Spiritual Baptist, Winti, and Yoruba (Candomblé, Ifa, Lucumí, and “Orisha-Vodu”). We will also explore other African diasporic religious sensibilities that transgress regional and institutional boundaries.