ETW - African Rel in Americas

Catalog description

This course will examine the products of interrelations between West African religions and Catholicism as they met via the slave trade and forced relocation of Africans to the New World. It will also view contemporary versions of those interrelations. We will discuss continuities and changes, syncretism, resistance, and divergence between and among African derived religious practice and the religious and cultural forms that people of African descent encountered in the New World. The main focus will be social-scientific. Among the topics to be considered: Mexican, Cuban, Haitian, Trinidadian, Brazilian, and U.S. traditions, including discussions of Catholic Saints, slave Baptisms, the Inquisition, folk Catholicism, sacred drumming, trance possession, and Santería.