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Copyright of Revista de Medicina y Cine / Journal of Medicine & Movies is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology is the property of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the beginning of his Creole opus The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable refers to Louisiana as "A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay". This anti-pastoral view of Louisiana as an ecosystem of horrific nature and the very human melancholy it breeds is one that has persisted in popular American culture to the present day. However, the literature of Louisiana itself is marked by its creativity in blending elements of folktales, fairy tales, and local color. This paper proposes to examine the transhuman, or the transcendence of the natural by means of supernatural transformation, in folk horror tales of Louisiana. As the locus where the fairy tale meets the burgeoning Southern Gothic, these tales revolve around a reworking of what Vladimir Propp refers to as transfiguration, the physical and metaphysical alteration of the human into something beyond the human. The focus of this paper will be on three recurring figures in Louisiana folk horror: yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil. Drawing upon works including Alcée Fortier's collection of Creole folktales Louisiana Folktales (1895), Dr. Alfred Mercier's "1878", and various newspaper tales of voodoo ceremonies from the ante- and post-bellum periods, this article brings together theorizations about the fairy tale from Vladimir Propp and Jack Zipes and historiological approaches to the Southern Gothic genre to demonstrate that Louisiana, in its multilingual literary traditions, serves as a nexus where both genres blend uncannily together to create tales that are both geographically specific and yet exist outside of the historical time of non-fantastic fiction. Each of these figures, yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil, challenges the expectations of what limits the human. Thus, this paper seeks to examine what will be termed the "Louisiana gothic", a particular blend of fairy-tale timelessness, local color, and the transfiguration of the human. Ultimately, the Louisiana gothic, as expressed in French, English, and Creole, tends toward a view of society in decay, mobilizing these elements of horror and of fairy tales to comment on a society that, after the revolution in Saint-Domingue, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Civil War, was seen as falling into inevitable decline. This commentary on societal decay, expressed through elements of folk horror, sets apart Louisiana gothic as a distinct subgenre that challenges conventions about the structures and functions of the fairy tale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The well-known narrative of zombies, the reanimated monsters of contemporary popular culture, can be traced back to the late 1960s, or more specifically to the release of the film Night of the Living Dead (1968) by American director George A. Romero. However, at the time of the film's inception the term zombie was already widely present in American popular culture: the cinematography of voodoo zombie, created in Haiti through magic and psychoactive substances, appeared in America in 1932, with the release of the film White Zombie, based on the travelogue The Magic Island (1929), by American missionary William Seabrooke. The paper initially points to the social and historical circumstances that led to the spread of zombies in Haiti: as the first independent nation of the Western Hemisphere, Haiti at the beginning of the twentieth century became the subject of American imperialist strategies and a threat to the maintenance of hegemony, therefore in the texts of colonial travel writers it was described as a nation of savagery, black magic, powerful voodoo cults, and the reanimated dead. Cultural and racist stereotypes that were transmitted to the United States justified the American "civilizing" mission, i.e. political and economic interventions. The role of zombies in Haiti was that of a slave, a profitable workforce, used by local urban elites, voodoo sorcerers, and colonial regimes since the eighteenth century. In this regard, my analysis highlights the ways in which White Zombie reproduces the established image of Haiti as an exotic place filled with mystery and dangers, adopts the dominant American viewpoints marked by discrimination and racism, and sets cultural norms of distinguishing between the civilized and the barbaric, whereby the white color of the skin reflects the norm of the civilized. To this end, the dialectic of slavery is emphasized in the film by the zombification of a young white woman, thus manifesting the tensions that existed between the imperialist powers and their "subjects" of enslavement, and emphasizing the unequal power relations between subordinate Haitian slaves and Westerners in high positions. Finally, the changes that have taken place over the decades of the zombie monster's development are highlighted: the zombie moves away from Haiti and approaches the modern world, and becomes a reanimated, highly infectious, cannibalistic monster of consumer society, that is, a monster of the global capitalist system.

At the beginning of his Creole opus The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable refers to Louisiana as “A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay”. This anti-pastoral view of Louisiana as an ecosystem of horrific nature and the very human melancholy it breeds is one that has persisted in popular American culture to the present day. However, the literature of Louisiana itself is marked by its creativity in blending elements of folktales, fairy tales, and local color. This paper proposes to examine the transhuman, or the transcendence of the natural by means of supernatural transformation, in folk horror tales of Louisiana. As the locus where the fairy tale meets the burgeoning Southern Gothic, these tales revolve around a reworking of what Vladimir Propp refers to as transfiguration, the physical and metaphysical alteration of the human into something beyond the human. The focus of this paper will be on three recurring figures in Louisiana folk horror: yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil. Drawing upon works including Alcée Fortier’s collection of Creole folktales Louisiana Folktales (1895), Dr. Alfred Mercier’s “1878”, and various newspaper tales of voodoo ceremonies from the ante- and post-bellum periods, this article brings together theorizations about the fairy tale from Vladimir Propp and Jack Zipes and historiological approaches to the Southern Gothic genre to demonstrate that Louisiana, in its multilingual literary traditions, serves as a nexus where both genres blend uncannily together to create tales that are both geographically specific and yet exist outside of the historical time of non-fantastic fiction. Each of these figures, yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil, challenges the expectations of what limits the human. Thus, this paper seeks to examine what will be termed the “Louisiana gothic”, a particular blend of fairy-tale timelessness, local color, and the transfiguration of the human. Ultimately, the Louisiana gothic, as expressed in French, English, and Creole, tends toward a view of society in decay, mobilizing these elements of horror and of fairy tales to comment on a society that, after the revolution in Saint-Domingue, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Civil War, was seen as falling into inevitable decline. This commentary on societal decay, expressed through elements of folk horror, sets apart Louisiana gothic as a distinct subgenre that challenges conventions about the structures and functions of the fairy tale.

The party system literature has generally paid little attention to whether traditional beliefs have any impact on voters' electoral behavior and the stability of party systems. The purpose of the present study shows that the stability of party systems and the pervasiveness of traditional beliefs go hand-in-hand. This article is expected to advance the scholarly understanding of the political consequences of traditional beliefs by showing that voters who hold traditional beliefs or engage in traditional practices are not simply less likely to have pro-democratic attitudes or have a greater appreciation of dictatorial rule, but also more likely to vote for ruling parties in elections. The evidence presented in the article sustains a basic claim; namely, that the pervasiveness of traditional beliefs in Togolese society should be regarded as one of the determinants of the party system's stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I present the case of Clementine Barnabet, an Afro-Creole teenager who was arrested in 1911 and convicted in 1912 for allegedly committing "Voodoo murders" in southwest Louisiana and Texas. The press, the police, and other Louisiana officials, along with an author employed by the Louisiana Writers' Project in the 1930s, used racialized and sexualized hyperbole to deem Barnabet a participant in a "Voodoo cult," purportedly called the Church of the Sacrifice. Moreover, in their quest for information about Barnabet and her beliefs, white Americans also imagined a monolithic Black religion--specifically, a sensationalized Voodoo religion--practiced by all people of African descent in the region regardless of their self-identification as Christians or practitioners of conjure, or both. Thus, I propose reviewing Barnabet's case not as an attempt to determine her guilt or innocence, but rather as a means of deconstructing white American eroticized racial fantasy in the production of a normative American Christian religion and the concurrent misrepresentation of Black religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo are African Diaspora religions brought to the Americas by devotees who survived the transatlantic slave trade. Both are suffused by philosophies of communicating with the divine and serving a pantheon of sacred spirits. Both faiths have been misunderstood, with practitioners' beliefs denigrated and their rituals stereotyped as crude, misguided, malevolent, or even criminal. However, each of the four articles in this special edition of Nova Religio speaks to how practitioners of Vodou and Voodoo, across different locales, social environments, and historical time frames, have pushed back against marginalization and defended their identities and legacies, while building religious communities of remarkable resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When visiting New Orleans, it is easy to assume that Voodoo, as practiced by the likes of the nineteenth-century "Voodoo Queen of New Orleans" Marie Laveau, is alive and well, as evidenced by the Voodoo-inspired tourist shops, merchandise, and art that are ubiquitous in the French Quarter. Such is not quite the case. Following more than a century of suppression, the religion that throve into the late nineteenth century was struggling to survive by the 1940s and may have ceased to exist as a living faith shortly thereafter. While some scholars have suggested that the African American Spiritual churches of New Orleans are modern manifestations of Voodoo, these congregations lack key features of the historical Voodoo religion and have but a tenuous connection with it. The city's current practitioners of Voodoo, meanwhile, tend to be initiates of Haitian Vodou or West African Vodun. Ultimately, Lower Mississippi River Valley Voodoo, both in New Orleans and elsewhere, is best understood as a historical religion rather than a living tradition. Contemporary practitioners of "New Orleans Voodoo" are constructing an emerging religion from elements of African diasporic belief in a city deeply imbued with a legacy of Voodoo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 1980s, Catholic elements in Haitian culture tended to be interpreted exclusively in connection to the forced conversion of the enslaved population under French rule. This changed following John Thornton's groundbreaking research into the development of Christianity in early modern Africa—Kongo in particular—and the awareness that a significant number of enslaved Africans already identified as Christian before their arrival in Saint-Domingue. This article's goal is to go beyond Thornton's research by showing that we can acquire a better understanding of Catholic elements in Haitian culture if we start our analysis in late medieval Iberia. To illustrate this, the article focuses on one of Haiti's most enigmatic cultural traditions, known as Chariopié , Lwalwadi , or, most commonly, Rara. Although this performance has received abundant scholarly interest, questions relating to the origin of its Catholic elements have remained largely unanswered. This is regrettable considering that Rara parades follow the liturgical calendar of Lent and intensify in frequency during Holy Week. Moreover, a key element of Rara consists of the destruction of an effigy of Judas Iscariot, in accordance with the Biblical account of the Easter story. Using a comparative analysis, this article presents a number of remarkable parallels between Rara and late medieval Iberian Lent traditions. To explain these parallels, it claims that enslaved Africans who were familiar with Iberian practices prior to their arrival in the Caribbean established, by their own initiative, a network of mutual aid and burial societies modeled on Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques have continued to advance, which has led researchers and non specialists alike to regard this technique as infallible. However, at the end of 2008, a scientific controversy and the related media coverage called functional neuroimaging practices into question and cast doubt on the capacity of fMRI studies to produce reliable results. The purpose of this article is to retrace the history of this contemporary controversy and its treatment in the media. Then, the study stands at the intersection of the history of science, the epistemology of statistics, and the epistemology of science. Arguments involving actors (researchers, the media) and the chronology of events are presented. Finally, the article reveals that three groups fought through different arguments (false positives, statistical power, sample size, etc.), reaffirming the current scientific norms that separate the true from the false. Replication, forming this boundary, takes the place of the most persuasive argument. This is how the voodoo controversy joined the replication crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia y Sociedad (01218417) is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The average Nigerian seeks temporary or permanent stay abroad. Some Nigerian women migrate to Europe in search of work and a better life. Coming to Europe, Nigerian women expect overseas work to transform their lives, make society work for them, and restore some sense of civility in their lives. Instead, getting to Italy to engage in sex work, their lives grew harder, their livelihood just as shattered, distant and terribly irrelevant as ever. This is thus a study in transnational participation - the simultaneous movements of people, information, monies across boundaries of Nigeria and Italy. It deals with the coordinated movements: of a segment of Nigerian women and girls; of information, including the export of creeds, philosophies, and dogmas; of physical objects, including personal properties; of monies through the face-to-face interactions between citizens of Nigeria and Italy. With a view to unpack the effects of gender entrapment on the economic opportunities of Nigerian women the study investigates the impacts of gender-based discrimination on the mobility and trafficking of Nigerian women to Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers de Littérature Orale is the property of INALCO: Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract Background Voodoo is a heterogeneous mixture of psychoactive substances that has recently grown in popularity among youth in Egypt. Patients can present with a variety of manifestations that may lead to death in some cases. This study assessed the acute toxic effects of voodoo among patients presented to the Poison Control Center of Ain Shams University Hospitals (PCC-ASUH) during a one year period. Methods This is a retrospective study of all patients presented with voodoo intoxication at the PCC-ASUH from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017. Clinical data, routine laboratory findings, and ECG results as well as duration of hospitalization and outcome were compiled from hospital records. Results Seventy-one voodoo intoxication cases meeting the inclusion criteria were analyzed (mean age: 25.19 ± 9.54 years, range: 15–50 years, 97.2 % male). Pulse, blood pressure, and respiratory rate were normal in more than half of all patients. Neurological abnormalities including agitation, hallucinations, disturbance of consciousness were the most frequent manifestations. Respiratory acidosis was the most common laboratory finding (54.9 %), followed by increased serum urea (43.6 %), hypokalemia (33.8 %), hyperglycemia (28.1 %), and leukocytosis (26.7 %). The most common ECG finding was sinus tachycardia (31 %), followed by QT prolongation (15.4 %). More than half of the studied patients (53.5 %) co-administered other illicit substances, most frequently cannabis and tramadol. Most patients recovered fully and were discharged, but death occurred in two cases. Conclusions Voodoo toxicity can manifest with many presentations, hampering timely diagnosis. Clinicians should consider possible voodoo poisoning in patients presenting with a history of drug use with neurological symptoms, and they should conduct follow-up arterial blood gases, electrolytes and ECG as voodoo may contain potentially fatal psychoactive substances.

Background: Novel psychoactive substances (NPSs) are relatively new substances in the illicit drug market, not previously listed in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC). Strox and Voodoo are considered some of the most popular blends of NPS in the Egyptian drug market. Objectives: The current study was conducted to assess NPS's use pattern: Voodoo and Strox among acutely intoxicated patients presented to the poison control center of Ain Shams University Hospitals (PCC- ASUH). Methods: A single center based cross-sectional study was carried out in the PCC-ASUH among acutely intoxicated patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) over four months (from January–April 2019. using a previously adopted and validated Fahmy and El-Sherbini socioeconomic scale (SES). Data were presented as mean, median and range as appropriate. Both smoking and crowding indexes were calculated and presented as previously reported. Results: Fifty-one patients were presented to the ED of PCC-ASUH during the study period. A total of 96.1% (n = 49) were males. The mean age was 25 ± 7.5 years. The most common NPS used was Strox: 54.9% (n = 28), followed by Voodoo: 27.4% (n = 14). Neurological and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms were the most frequent presentations. The most common motive behind NPS use was the desire to give a trial of new psychoactive substances. The mean SES score was 35.1 ± 13.17. Most patients have the preparatory as the highest education 36.0% (n = 18). Conclusions: NPS use is common among young males in preparatory education from different social classes, starting it most commonly as a means to experiencing a new high. Neurological and GI manifestations are the most common presenting symptoms of NPS intoxication.

Background: 'Voodoo' is a new substance of abuse that recently spread among youth in Egypt. It has numerous potentially dangerous effects on humans. However, to date the composition of the main constituents of this compound is unknown. Purpose: We sought to identify the active components of this unknown substance"voodoo". Methods: Three samples were collected and analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detector (HPLC-PAD), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), and ultra-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) using targeted multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). Results: HPLC-PAD analysis showed that samples 1 and 2 had some common major peaks, the same retention time, and similar spectra, whereas sample 3 showed different peaks. GC/MS analysis revealed the presence of various putatively identified bioactive compounds, including quinazolines, morphinan alkaloid, cannabinoids, penitrem A, and the well-known synthetic cannabinoid FUB-AMB (methyl(2S)-2-{[1-[(4-fluorophenyl)methyl]indazole-3-carbonyl]amino}-3 methylbutanoate). UPLC-MS/MS analysis revealed the presence of common compounds such as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), amphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine, tramadol, and oxazepam. Conclusion: We concluded that Voodoo is a mixture of substances of abuse at varying concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012 and 2014 the author was a consultant to law enforcement regarding crime scenes of a ritualistic nature in the American Southeast. These ritual activities were expressions of folk magic spells linked to certain West African traditions. These spells were used for magico-religious, curative, and ‘justice’ (i.e. revenge) practices known as hoodoo, conjure or rootwork.The ritual activities were conducted at gravesites in a public cemetery. When standard investigative police procedures failed to produce anything substantive with which to solve, prevent, or even understand the motive beyond one of ’vandalism,’ or ‘kids fooling around,’ the author was approached to contribute forensic archaeological and anthropological insights that had thus far proved elusive. This article is an examination of how cultural anthropological understanding and a forensic archaeological “eye” to an outdoor crime scene can re-define crime scene investigative methodology and interpretation.

Since the 1990s, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques have continued to advance, which has led researchers and non specialists alike to regard this technique as infallible. However, at the end of 2008, a scientific controversy and the related media coverage called functional neuroimaging practices into question and cast doubt on the capacity of fMRI studies to produce reliable results. The purpose of this article is to retrace the history of this contemporary controversy and its treatment in the media. Then, the study stands at the intersection of the history of science, the epistemology of statistics, and the epistemology of science. Arguments involving actors (researchers, the media) and the chronology of events are presented. Finally, the article reveals that three groups fought through different arguments (false positives, statistical power, sample size, etc.), reaffirming the current scientific norms that separate the true from the false. Replication, forming this boundary, takes the place of the most persuasive argument. This is how the voodoo controversy joined the replication crisis.

Background: Voodoo is a heterogeneous mixture of psychoactive substances that has recently grown in popularity among youth in Egypt. Patients can present with a variety of manifestations that may lead to death in some cases. This study assessed the acute toxic effects of voodoo among patients presented to the Poison Control Center of Ain Shams University Hospitals (PCC-ASUH) during a one year period. Methods: This is a retrospective study of all patients presented with voodoo intoxication at the PCC-ASUH from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017. Clinical data, routine laboratory findings, and ECG results as well as duration of hospitalization and outcome were compiled from hospital records. Results: Seventy-one voodoo intoxication cases meeting the inclusion criteria were analyzed (mean age: 25.19 ± 9.54 years, range: 15–50 years, 97.2 % male). Pulse, blood pressure, and respiratory rate were normal in more than half of all patients. Neurological abnormalities including agitation, hallucinations, disturbance of consciousness were the most frequent manifestations. Respiratory acidosis was the most common laboratory finding (54.9 %), followed by increased serum urea (43.6 %), hypokalemia (33.8 %), hyperglycemia (28.1 %), and leukocytosis (26.7 %). The most common ECG finding was sinus tachycardia (31 %), followed by QT prolongation (15.4 %). More than half of the studied patients (53.5 %) co-administered other illicit substances, most frequently cannabis and tramadol. Most patients recovered fully and were discharged, but death occurred in two cases. Conclusions: Voodoo toxicity can manifest with many presentations, hampering timely diagnosis. Clinicians should consider possible voodoo poisoning in patients presenting with a history of drug use with neurological symptoms, and they should conduct follow-up arterial blood gases, electrolytes and ECG as voodoo may contain potentially fatal psychoactive substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quaderns de l'Institut Català d'Antropologia is the property of Institut Catala d'Antropologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This contribution will apply the theory of Animal Studies, an inter-disciplinary field which encompasses, among many other areas, literary studies. In the African American conjure fiction written by Charles Chesnutt, the animal behavior, human-nonhuman animal interactions, anthropomorphic representations of animals and the expanding ethical considerations (beyond human dimensions) will be examined. Applying Animal Studies to literary texts means in effect synthesizing writing on animals and charting their connections to human consciousness and human action toward the nonhuman world. Charles Chesnutt’s fourteen conjure tales were written largely in dialect in the 1880s and 1890s and are set in a Southern plantation community. They include enslaved humans who undergo metamorphoses into various animals, some animals under the supernatural control of conjurers and finally the various animals to be consumed under ethically questionable circumstances within the slave community. The attempts at resolution to conflicts is said to reverberate in black culture well after slavery had ended, according to the black narrator.

Zora Neale Hurston's best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), has become a major part of the African American as well as the American literary canon, though it had not always received a large readership. As a trained ethnologist (B.A., Columbia University, 1928), Hurston had conducted field work in the Southern states of the U.S. as well as in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Haiti, and published in scholarly journals as well as one book of collected folklore, Mules and Men (1935) before Their Eyes Were Watching God was written and published. This contribution attempts to show the impact and influence her cultural anthropology field work exerted on the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the role of nature in Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God and her anthropological piece Tell My Horse. To understand Hurston's self-identification with aspects of the natural world and her use of natural images to reveal the interiority of her characters, I analyze themes such as Janie's entwinement of self with the pear tree, the immense power of natural disasters, and the unpredictability of nature as reflected in gender roles. I argue that her anthropological research in Tell My Horse is the foundation for the development of Janie as a powerful black female protagonist and informs Hurston's understanding of herself as a black female author and anthropologist. Through the lens of Voodoo and other Caribbean practices, the emphasis on female deities as dominant over natural forces allows for forms of female liberation. Hurston offers an innovative understanding of black femininity as inseparable from the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution will apply the theory of Animal Studies, an inter-disciplinary field which encompasses, among many other areas, literary studies. In the African American conjure fiction written by Charles Chesnutt, the animal behavior, human-nonhuman animal interactions, anthropomorphic representations of animals and the expanding ethical considerations (beyond human dimensions) will be examined. Applying Animal Studies to literary texts means in effect synthesizing writing on animals and charting their connections to human consciousness and human action toward the nonhuman world. Charles Chesnutt’s fourteen conjure tales were written largely in dialect in the 1880s and 1890s and are set in a Southern plantation community. They include enslaved humans who undergo metamorphoses into various animals, some animals under the supernatural control of conjurers and finally the various animals to be consumed under ethically questionable circumstances within the slave community. The attempts at resolution to conflicts is said to reverberate in black culture well after slavery had ended, according to the black narrator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the theoretical and methodological innovations of Le vaudou haïtien, and its originality for the study of cults of African origin in the Americas. Métraux achieves several key theoretical and methodological innovations in this book: 1. the search for a kind of ritual syntax; 2. a focus on real practices instead of lettered formations of the cult; 3. an acknowledgement that voodoo is unmistakably Haitian and that its roots are European as much as African; 4. a rejection of the assumption that the Catholicism of voodoo adepts would be mere deception; 5. the identification of a narrative level where stories of the gods’ avatars are replaced by tales of their interventions in the life of humans. At the same time, it explores Alfred Métraux’s relationships with some scholars that preceded him on the matter, with researchers that studied voodoo as well, and with the intermediaries that facilitated his investigation.

Voodoo’s strong influence in the touristic past of Haiti and the revival of tourism in this country, with culture as its main icon, motivated us to study the new relationships of the binomial notions (tourism/voodoo). Based mainly on research carried out with voodoo practitioners in Souvenance (Gonaïves, Haiti), we argue that beyond the economic concerns of different Haitian governments, tourism is considered by certain groups in the country as a huge market, a golden mine and like a precious icon to enhance their community and to change and prettify the image of their cultural and religious expression.The new tourists we meet in the spaces of voodoo practices are mostly Haitians who have very little knowledge of voodoo, foreign visitors in search of "authentic" religious practices, first generation Haitian migrants and their descendants in search of their roots, animated by a quest of meaning as well as a personal, memorial and spiritual deep quest.

This paper seeks to historicize and demystify “Voodoo” religion in Africa and Haiti while also drawing comparisons and contrasts to concepts and themes related to “the gothic”. What is assumed to be “supernatural” or “paranormal” in Western and Gothic circles has long been a part of everyday reality for many peoples of African descent and devotees of Vodun in Western Africa and Vodou in Haiti. Tropes that are essential to realms of the gothic (supernatural characters, mystery, the macabre, spirits, and paranormal entities) — are also central to the cosmology and liturgy of so-called “Voodoo”. As “the gothic” undergoes a resurgence in academic and popular cultures, so too does “Voodoo” religion. And yet, both terms continue to be conflated by popular culture, and by equating “voodoo” with “the gothic”, the true spirt of both concepts become confounded. A certain racialized Eurocentric hegemony devalues one of the world’s least understood religions (“Voodoo”) by equating it with equally distorted concepts of “the gothic”. As globalization transforms society, and the neo-liberal order creates more uncertainty, the continued distortion of both terms continues. Vodun does more than just speak to the unknown, it is an ancient organizing principle and way of life for millions of followers. Vodou/Vodun are not cognates of the “American Zombie gothic”, but rather, are a mode of survival and offer a way of seeing and being in an unpredictable world.

In this article, I consider the representation of African-Caribbean religions in the early horror adventure film from a postcolonial perspective. I do so by zooming in on Ouanga (1935), Obeah (1935), and Devil’s Daughter (1939), three low-budget horror productions filmed on location in Jamaica during the 1930s (and the only films shot on the island throughout that decade). First, I discuss the emergence of depictions of African-Caribbean religious practices of voodoo and obeah in popular Euro-American literature, and show how the zombie figure entered Euro-American empire cinema in the 1930s as a colonial expression of tropical savagery and jungle terror. Then, combining historical newspaper research with content analyses of these films, I present my exploration into the three low-budget horror films in two parts. The first part contains a discussion of Ouanga, the first sound film ever made in Jamaica and allegedly the first zombie film ever shot on location in the Caribbean. In this early horror adventure, which was made in the final year of the U.S. occupation of Haiti, zombies were portrayed as products of evil supernatural powers to be oppressed by colonial rule. In the second part, I review Obeah and The Devil’s Daughter, two horror adventure movies that merely portrayed African-Caribbean religion as primitive superstition. While Obeah was disturbingly set on a tropical island in the South Seas infested by voodoo practices and native cannibals, The Devil’s Daughter was authorized by the British Board of Censors to show black populations in Jamaica and elsewhere in the colonial world that African-Caribbean religions were both fraudulent and dangerous. Taking into account both the production and content of these movies, I show that these 1930s horror adventure films shot on location in Jamaica were rooted in a long colonial tradition of demonizing and terrorizing African-Caribbean religions—a tradition that lasts until today.

García Márquez's final full length novel, Del amor y otros demonios (1994), presents various difficulties to the reader. The novel's layers of symbolism are readily identifiable with references in the novel to Roman Catholic hagiographies in juxtaposition to qualities and characteristics of the Orishas of the Yoruba Tradition. The period of the novel corresponds temporally with the formation of the syncretic religion known as Santería. The author's use of period techniques such as conceptismo emphasizes the baroque era on a structural level. Furthermore, conceptismo plays a major role in the evolution of themes in the novel, which on final analysis shows distinct parallels with one of the earliest hagiographies of the Roman Catholic corpus. At the same moment, the strings of metaphors and doubling of motifs may also point to extraliterary texts. Those points stated, the novel's African influences may be traced back to one of the author's first stories, "Nabo el negro que hizo esperar a los ángeles" (1951), not merely as a reiteration of themes but as a means of analyzing the earlier piece with a more complete view of the author's aesthetic trajectory. This leads to a clearer understanding of the place of Afro- Caribbean religion in García Márquez's works as well as the ultimate refinement of his technical abilities as a novelist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite public outrage from some quarters, claiming that the city's history was being erased, in 2015 the (white) Mayor of New Orleans, with the support of the black-majority City Council, voted to take down four Confederacy statues. Constructed between 1870 and 1910, these Confederate monuments disseminated the Myth of the Lost Cause—that Southern men had fought the American Civil War in defence of a distinctive way of life— thereby failing to acknowledge the Confederacy's role in the history of slavery. Despite more than a century of segregation and oppression, African Americans in New Orleans confronted the message of white supremacy and created counter-monuments that offered alternative histories to those erected to the Confederacy. This article concentrates on two examples of counter-monuments in New Orleans: the tomb of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and the Carnival dress of Black Indians. It demonstrates how these counter-monumental forms have historically rejected white entitlement, recalling an alternative vision of New Orleans history that centres on its black identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine intersecting representations of race, magic and religion in American Horror Story: Coven. Coven traces the presence of witchcraft and voodoo in New Orleans from the nineteenth century to the present day. The season presents two conflicting and racially divided modes of magic: the predominantly white coven who are descendants of the Salem witches and the African American voodooists, led by the most infamous voodoo queen in the United States, Marie Laveau. These two sects are sworn enemies who have competed for power in the city since the coven first arrived in New Orleans. Following a truce between the two groups, the city was divided and white and black spaces were created in which the two groups could practice their magic separately. This article will discuss the way in which Coven presents magic in the city as racially and physically segregated and will pay particular attention to the depiction of African American magical practices. This article will interrogate the ways in which Coven echoes historical accounts of Marie Laveau and how it presents the nature and function of voodoo in New Orleans. It will question in what ways Coven conforms to and deviates from established voodoo tropes, arguing that in some ways Coven perpetuates pejorative impressions of voodoo whilst disrupting others. It will argue that, through Murphy and Falchuk's depiction of ceremonies, rituals and the voodoo deity Papa Legba, Coven sensationalizes voodoo and presents its practices as spectacle. It proposes that this contemporary image of voodoo is part of a cultural tradition established through nineteenth and twentieth century treatments of African American magic that includes depictions of black culture based on the tradition of blackface minstrelsy, Harlem Renaissance recoveries of folk traditions and popular ethnographies of the city. It will suggest that in a similar way to these historical representations, Coven draws on racialized stereotypes of the primitive and the savage to present voodoo as dark and dangerous. Yet, primarily through the figure of Marie Laveau, it will also argue that Murphy and Falchuk depict voodoo as a symbol of resistance to racialized and gendered violence and oppression, and that in many ways Coven grants agency to voodoo women. Using voodoo as a lens, this paper will address broader debates around intersecting hierarchies of race and religion, the representation of race and the visibility of black culture in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to work after the Great Depression, and later employed over 10,000 people at its peak, financed one particularly original adaptation of Shakespeare: the “voodoo” Macbeth directed by Orson Welles in 1936. Debuting in Harlem with an all-black cast, the play’s setting resembled a Haiti-like island instead of ancient Scotland, and Welles also supplemented the witches with voodoo priestesses, sensing that the practice of voodoo was more relevant, if not more realistic, for a contemporary audience than early modern witchcraft. My essay will consider how the terms “national origins” and “originality” intersect in three distinct ways vis-a-vis this play: The Harlem locale for the premier, the Caribbean setting for the tragedy, and the federal funding for the production.