RELS 302 Spirit Possession

In this course, students will explore mediumship and exorcism practices in the Atlantic World from the early modern period to today. Through case studies—including Haitian Vodou in Brooklyn, Brazilian Umbanda and Candomblé, Cuban Palo Monte, Santería in Chicago, Yorùbá and Igbo traditions in West Africa, North American Spiritualism, and Catholic Exorcism in France—we will take a broad look at the different ritual practices that fall under the academic category of “spirit possession.” We will consider why practitioners channel the spirits of the dead and what it means to be possessed. We will read scholarly studies that analyze what spirit possession has to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Finally, we will interrogate contemporary western scholarship itself, asking: Why have outsiders commonly described the spirits’ presence in terms of “possession”—a term rarely used by practitioners themselves—and how does the trope of the possessed person serve as a foil for the construction of the autonomous (i.e., self-possessed) modern subject?