I analyze the historical and cultural processes by which American racism is reproduced, approaching the issue through the lens of "imagined voodoo" (as distinct from Haitian Vodou). I posit that the American Marine occupation of Haiti (1915-34) was crucial in shaping the American racial imaginary. In film, television, and literature, imagined voodoo continues to serve as an outlet for white racist anxieties. Because it is usually found in low-brow entertainment (like horror) and rarely mentions race explicitly, voodoo is able to evade critique, disseminating racism within a culture that is now largely--albeit superficially--intolerant of overt racism. / African and African American Studies

The following study seek to examine how professionals within different organizations in Sweden work to deal with cases where Nigerian women have been forced into human trafficking through juju-rituals. The aim of the study is to examine how professionals relate to women’s beliefs, what opportunities women have for overcoming this spiritual control, and what strategies professionals use to try to undermine the spiritual control. The following study seeks to answer these questions through qualitative data based on five semi-structured interviews with professionals working in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), asylum agencies or as regional-coordinators. The result of the study indicate that the professionals constantly balance between efficiency and humanity in terms of trying to challenge Nigerian women’s perceived spiritual control. The professionals often perceive that there is a limit to how much the women’s beliefs can be called into dispute. Forcing Nigerian women to renounce their juju-faith is considered as a violation of women’s religious freedom.   Furthermore, the result of the study indicates that how professionals relate to Nigerian women’s fear of juju may differ depending on occupational category. The result indicates that law enforcement authorities are more likely to explain the link between human trafficking and the use of juju as brainwash, while other NGOs strive to develop a deeper understanding of Nigerian women’s fear of juju’s subsequent effects. In conclusion, the study's findings show that the professionals claim that Nigerian women have different capabilities for dealing with the situation they are in. That the professionals want the women themselves to be agents in their religious lives indicate a respect for women's right to practice their religion, even if their choices are not an effective solution to their problems.

(in English): The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyse the Dominican identity in the works of the Dominican author Marcio Veloz Maggiolo. At first, the thesis briefly summarizes the evolution of the Dominican literature and mentions its most significant figures. Secondly, it deals with the evolution of the dominicaness from the colonial period up to the present and explains the reasons of the rooted antihaitianism. The second part consists of a detailed analysis of the novels The Diffuse Biography of Sombra Castañeda and The Accordion Man by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, emphasizing the symbols of the official government's discourse, and also a more opened perspective of the dominicaness.

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.

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Where the Dead Remain is a murder mystery set in a Post-Katrina New Orleans where the gods, magic and monsters of various world mythologies actually exist. The story follows a week in the life of Jude Duboisson, a once magician who is struggling with the loss of his magic and the life he had known in the wake of the storm, as he is pulled out of his torpor and into the affairs of the mighty once again. He is tasked with discovering who murdered Dodge Renaud, the fortune god of New Orleans. What he discovers, though, are some surprising truths about the fundamental nature of things: about loss, about New Orleans, and about himself.

<p>Jag har undersökt Hollywoodfilmernas bild av Voodoon kontra den egentliga religionen. Jag har tittat på religionens grunder, myterna kring till exempel zombies och Voodoodockor samt vilken utbredning Voodoon har idag. Med hjälp av litteraturstudier och Internet har jag fått fram mycket intressant material.</p><p>Voodoo är en komplicerad religion som är omgiven av mycket mystik och där anhängarna har en personlig kontakt med sina gudar. Idag har Voodoon omkring 50-60 miljoner anhängare världen över.</p> / Examensarbete på Barn- och ungdomspedagogiska programmet vt 1997. Uppsatsförfattaren har senare bytt efternamn till "Miguel".

Jag har undersökt Hollywoodfilmernas bild av Voodoon kontra den egentliga religionen. Jag har tittat på religionens grunder, myterna kring till exempel zombies och Voodoodockor samt vilken utbredning Voodoon har idag. Med hjälp av litteraturstudier och Internet har jag fått fram mycket intressant material. Voodoo är en komplicerad religion som är omgiven av mycket mystik och där anhängarna har en personlig kontakt med sina gudar. Idag har Voodoon omkring 50-60 miljoner anhängare världen över. / Examensarbete på Barn- och ungdomspedagogiska programmet vt 1997. Uppsatsförfattaren har senare bytt efternamn till "Miguel".

This PhD “Film by Practice” sets out to question and explore the nature of film poetry. The poetry of the cinematic image is described by the filmmaker Jean Epstein as the “unveiling of the magic inherent in the visual object beyond the capacity of words to define” (Epstein, cited in Sitney, 1978: xxiii). This is a daunting task that the study interprets through the moving image with particular reference to the magical temporal art of trance possession, which is processed within the genre of experimental ethnographic documentary and intercultural film. This thesis is an experiment in form, taking the filmmaker Maya Deren’s notion of film as comprising of “narrative horizontals” and “poetic verticals” (Deren and Sitney, 1971: 178) explored through a practical investigation of movement and time in space both beyond and within the film frame, studied through the art installations Divine Horsemen (2005) and People Inbetween (2007). It is focused through a reading of Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonian philosophies of cinema as “movement-images” and “time-images” (Deleuze, 1989: xvi, xvii), exhibited as multi-screened video art installations that evolve within the space and hence exist in a perpetual state of “becoming”. Whether this is the sounds and images that change depending on where they are viewed, or the narrative theme of the works as “becoming other”. The themes of “in-betweenness” and the “mix” are investigated through these two video documentary artworks; first, by a third party restaging/remixing of the experimental ethnographic footage of Haitian Voodoo trance possession shot by Maya Deren, unfinished and posthumously released as Divine Horsemen the Voodoo Gods of Haiti (1985); and second, diaspora and the intercultural are explored through the first person personal. Intercultural documentary and experimental ethnography filtered through me with specific reference to my own triangular ethnicity, being British, Sri Lankan, though classified as Dutch Burgher, a “lost white tribe” (Orizio, 2000: 2): a journey into racial “becoming” as an “in-between” belonging to a diasporic community.

A travers une exploration filmique menée auprès d'une communauté religieuse de Port-au-Prince, l’analyse des images enregistrées avec les personnes filmées et l’expérience pratique de constructions audiovisuelles participatives, la recherche interroge le système de représentation des adeptes et le rapport qu'il entretient avec la notion de croyance. Elle étudie simultanément par ce biais la réception de formes audiovisuelles spécifiques et l’observation différée des enregistrements en tant qu’outil privilégié d'une anthropologie audiovisuelle appliquée à l'étude des systèmes symboliques de représentation et à leur dynamique évolutive. Cette recherche est marquée par trois étapes de réalisations concrètes selon des paradigmes audiovisuels définis : un multimédia interactif, un film d’observation descriptif chronologique, et un film linéaire poursuivant l’objectif d’une mise en scène de l’autoreprésentation des agents suivant les précédentes étapes collaboratives d’observations, d’interprétations et de constructions audiovisuelles participatives qui forment l’enquête. L’image, sous ses multiples acceptions, est envisagée ici en tant qu’objet transactionnel agissant à différentes échelles sociales, depuis ses usages et fabrications à un niveau individuel jusqu’à ceux-ci à un niveau collectif et transnational. Cet aspect est analysé, d’abord, au moyen de la confrontation successive entre imagerie religieuse produite au sein de la confrérie et représentations audiovisuelles produites par la recherche elle-même et retournées aux agents, et ensuite, par confrontation avec l’iconographie religieuse et les représentations anciennes et contemporaines produites par des sources endogènes et exogènes à l’aire culturelle haïtienne. Le texte analyse ainsi la construction de représentations et leurs effets depuis les expériences pratiques menées avec les individus d’une communauté jusqu’à celles qui intègrent certains évènements sociohistoriques, certains clichés et certaines figures mythologiques d’inspirations vodou ayant intégrés la culture occidentale à travers, notamment, des représentations romanesques et hollywoodiennes ayant eu un fort succès et continuant à alimenter l’imaginaire occidental et haïtien aujourd’hui. / The Haitian voodoo presents a profusion of practices and perceptible representations, symbolic ones, as material as corporeal. He influences the arts and the literature of a whole culture, well beyond the circle of his followers. If it is plural from origin, it was also collected and represented in a multiple way by his outer observers. Forged during a tempestuous history and present, its representation system seems to present a character at the same time persistent and permeable, connected to the faith itself. Through the analysis of worship images, a cinematic exploration conducted within a religious community of Port-au-Prince, and finally through a participatory experience of confrontation of the recorded images with the agents and film construction according to three different modalities, the study attempts to question the representation system of the followers and the relationship which it maintains with the faith. The research also tries to examine restitutions forms and specific visual anthropology tools applied to the study of symbolic representation systems and their dynamics.