My dissertation titled "Mambos, Priestesses, and Goddesses: Spiritual Healing Through Vodou in Black Women's Narratives of Haiti and New Orleans" reclaims the practice of Vodou as an integral African spiritual tradition through fiction by black women writers. I discuss how the examination of Vodou necessitates the revision of colonial history, serves as an impetus for reevaluating the literary representation of the black female migrant subject, and gives voice to communities silenced by systemic oppression. I parallel novels by contemporary women writers such as Erna Brodber, Jewell Parker Rhodes and Edwidge Danticat with Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic research in the early twentieth century in order to examine how Vodou is utilized as a literary trope that challenges racist, stereotypical representations of African spirituality in American popular culture. It is also an examination of the shared socio-cultural history between Haiti and New Orleans that coincides with political and environmental changes. Although Vodou has been disparaged as primitive magic, my work demonstrates its profound social, cultural, and political significance; and its important transformations from a nineteenth-century practice to a twenty-first century strategy of survival.

The thesis aims to read Zora Neale Hurston¡¦s Their Eyes Were Watching God to discuss how and why the white male dominant society marginalizes and subordinates black women by means of silencing their voices, restricting their freedom to explore themselves and the world around them, and suppressing their recognition of their sexual desires and bodily needs. The black woman, or in a sense, the mule of the world, could not always do and act according to her own desire. Instead, they are required to keep silence whenever a community¡¦s voice (usually the male one) is generated and furthermore to play the secondary role as a good wife whose sole purpose in life is merely to meet her husbands¡¦ demands. On the one hand, black female body, which has always been brutally beaten, closely examined, and sexually exploited in the hands of white/black men, is the very site of white supremacy and male dominance. On the one hand, it also serves as an outlet for black men to vent the humiliation, anger and shame that they have suffered in the predominantly white America. The black woman, therefore, is doubly marginalized in terms of both her race and sex. In the first chapter of this thesis, I argue that Janie¡¦s disturbing silence is the inevitable result of her failure to find an ideal listener. In a male-centered society, not only is Janie denied a voice to articulate her desire, but she also fails to find an empathetic listener. Pheoby¡¦s ¡§hungry listening¡¨ unquestionably satisfies Janie¡¦s deep longing for self-revelation. Nonetheless, such a hungry audience is not always available even when a black woman chooses to voice her desire. Black female voice, in this respect, badly needs an ideal listener who is willing to keep his/her ears as well as heart open. The second chapter, moreover, engages with the major issues about why and how the heroine sets off on a quest for love and respect, freedom and possibilities. Janie, on the one hand, has to go to the far horizon not so much in time and space as in soul and spirit. That is, Janie must embark on a female quest to redefine herself aside from male definitions. On the other hand, Janie also brings back to the black community what she has experienced and learned in her self-fulfillment journey and thus enriches her community with her hard-won knowledge and discovery. Janie¡¦s journey from self-doubt to self-fulfillment, from silence to speech, I would like to suggest, will be continued by anyone who sincerely responds to her life story. The third chapter is concerned with the issues of black female body. In this chapter, I argue that black female body has always been the object of oppression and the target of male dominance and white supremacy. Nevertheless, if black female body could be the site on which the patriarchal law is inscribed, it could also be an agent to speak for what remains unspeakable; more crucially, it could also provide the female subject access to experience that which is both pleasured and pleasuring.

Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D. / Bibliogr. p. 127-135. Index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 234-240). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 262-279). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A..)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Jerrilyn McGregory, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English.. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Dec. 4, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 72 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

In its simplest form, storytelling is the passing of information from one person to the next. When storytelling illuminates time, place and purpose, it is then able to entertain, comfort and transport any listener. As the keeper of the imagination, the storyteller has inspired me as a performer. After reading Zora Neale Hurston‘s Every Tongue Got to Confess, I found my single-defining connection to the art of storytelling. Halimuhfack ultimately became my thesis performance piece inspired by the folk tales from Every Tongue Got To Confess. The new theatre piece shares Hurston‘s folk tale the way it may have once been told; in its natural dialect, with the same active physical involvement as if sharing stories with friends. Together, the research of the folk tale, Hurston‘s anthropological studies, folk songs and narrative from her autobiography aided in the development of the performance piece. In developing this work, I discovered that Hurston‘s tales were extremely action-oriented and were ideally suited to use in my making of Halimuhfack.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A presente dissertação possui dois objetivos principais. O primeiro, presente na parte I, é analisar a construção identitária feminina da personagem principal da obra Their Eyes Were Watching God, de Zora Neale Hurston. Sendo assim, a primeira parte desta dissertação é composta de quatro capítulos, sendo que ao longo dos três primeiros, antes da discussão propriamente dita, o trabalho busca aproximar o leitor da discussão. Para isso, os três capítulos iniciais têm o intuito de deixar o leitor familiarizado primeiro com a autora, depois com suas obras e, por último, com o momento histórico vivido pelos Estados Unidos no período do movimento cultural afro-americano conhecido como Harlem Renaissance. O segundo objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a tradução da obra, Seus Olhos Viam Deus, para o português e, se possível, fazer sugestões para as encruzilhadas e obstáculos tradutórios que porventura tenham sido enfrentados pelo tradutor. Esta dissertação visa com isso apresentar soluções que possam ser utilizadas em futuras traduções de obras de escritoras afro-americanas para o português do Brasil. Portanto, para isso, a segunda e a terceira parte deste trabalho, compostas de mais três capítulos, trazem uma revisão sobre as teorias tradutórias recentes e, em perspectiva inovadora, destacam pontos a serem abordados na discussão / The present dissertation has two main goals. The first, in part I, is to analyze the construction of the female identity of the main character of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. Therefore, four chapters compose the first part of this work. In the first three, before the discussion, the text tries to bring the readers closer to the discussion still to come. In order to do this, these initial chapters aim to make the reader more familiar with the author, then with her work, and, last but not least, with the historical moment in the United States during the period of the African-American cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. The second goal is to analyze the translation of the novel, Seus Olhos Viam Deus, to Portuguese and, if possible, to make suggestions for the translation crossroads and obstacles that the translator might have faced. By doing this, this dissertation aims to present solutions that may be used in future translations to Brazilian Portuguese of works by African-American writers. Therefore, the parts II and III of this work, which are composed by three more chapters, bring a literary review about recent translation theories and, through an innovative perspective, detach a few points which are going to be subsequently discussed.