Course Description
An examination of the history of selected Caribbean religions from the European conquest to the twentieth century. Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería, Jamaican Rastafarianism, and Spiritism will receive special attention. An exploration of the cultural processes (creolization, syncretism, etc.) that brought these traditions into existence and account for their social and political impact.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
In addition to completing the reading and viewing the films
required of undergraduates, graduate students will be asked to:
(1) write two book reviews of the major texts used in the class;
(2) complete a 20-page research paper; and (3) present their
research as a lecture. Graduate students are also expected to
attend special discussion sections.
Athena Title
HIS CARIBBEAN RELIG
Prerequisite
2000-level HIST course
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students who complete this course will acquire the tools to approach religion from a scholarly vantage point, recognizing faith's rootedness in history and its import as a social, political and cultural force. Students will be challenged to think beyond the stereotypes about practices such as animal sacrifice, trance-possession, and other forms of worship that Westerners tend to deem superstitious. The course will show that prejudice and invidious categories of analysis have discernible histories, too. A principal objective of the course is to teach students to think critically for themselves about the relationships between the past and the present, to learn to ask questions of the past that enable them to understand the present and mold the future, and to become attuned to both the limitations and possibilities of change. The course seeks to acquaint students with the ways in which past societies and peoples have defined the relationships between community and individual needs and goals, and between ethical norms and decision-making. In general students will be expected to: 1. read a wide range of primary and secondary sources critically. 2. polish skills in critical thinking, including the ability to recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, and the ability to evaluate--and support or refute--arguments effectively. 3. write stylistically appropriate and mature papers and essays using processes that include discovering ideas and evidence, organizing that material, and revising, editing, and polishing the finished papers.
Topical Outline
1. Defining the Caribbean 2. Religions v. Caribbean Religions 3. Catholicism and the conquest of the Caribbean 4. Las Casas and the religious critique of the conquest 5. Vodou and the birth of Afro-Caribbean religions 6. Vodou and the Haitian Revolution 7. Vodou as a belief system 8. Understanding and theorizing possession 9. The origins of Cuban Santeria 10. Creolization and the Orishas 11. Santeria in the U.S. 12. Santeria and the arts 13. Spiritism and Modernization: Kardec in the Caribbean 14. Conflicts between religions: "Religion" v."Witchcraft" 15. Spiritism in Brazil: religion in a modernizing nation 16. Approaches to the study of millenarianism 17. Modernization as a millenarian crisis in Brazil 18. Rastafari and Jamaican politics 19. Marcus Garvey and black liberation 20. Rastafari music and iconography 21. Protestantism in the Caribbean and Brazil 22. Understanding religious conversions
Syllabus