Archive of Haitian Religion and Culture

FAIN: RZ-51441-12

University of Florida (Gainesville, FL 32611-0001)
Benjamin Hebblethwaite (Project Director: December 2011 to December 2019)
Laurent Marc Dubois (Co Project Director: December 2011 to December 2019)

The collection and scholarly interpretation of materials relating to Vodou religious practice for an online archive containing texts, audiovisual materials, and interpretive essays. (36 months)

This collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, by interpreting what we collect, by expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and by diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library hosted within the existing Digital Library of the Caribbean. This project is part of a tradition of scholarly work stretching back to the early 20th century that has sought to counter reductionist and racist visions of the religion through ethnography, analysis of culture and music, and an exploration of the role of Vodou in Haiti’s founding revolution. The Vodou Archive is a first-of-its-kind digital library dedicated to curating and sharing the multimedia sources of Vodou.

Associated Products

Archive of Haitan and Religion Cultures (Web Resource)
Title: Archive of Haitan and Religion Cultures
Author: Benjamin Hebblewaite
Abstract: The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.dloc.com

Historical linguistic approaches to Haitian creole: Vodou rites, spirit names and songs: the founders' contributions to Asogwe Vodou (Book Section)
Title: Historical linguistic approaches to Haitian creole: Vodou rites, spirit names and songs: the founders' contributions to Asogwe Vodou
Author: Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Editor: Jessica Stefanie Barzen
Editor: Hanna Lene Geiger
Editor: Silke Jansen
Abstract: The chapter explores Haitian Creole Vodou rites, spirit names, and songs by means of a historical linguistic approach that is rooted in etymological research. That work in lexicology informs historical linguistic theory that aims to explain the forms displayed in the tradition of Asogwe Vodou.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/02/55/96/00001/Hebblethwaite_Spirit_Migration.pdf
Primary URL Description: Author's page on the University of Florida Libraries website.
Access Model: Chapter in a book
Publisher: Tubingen, Germany: Narr Verlag
Book Title: Hispaniola -- Island of Encounters
ISBN: 9783823369011

The Scapegoating of Haitian Vodou Religion: David Brooks's (2010) Claim that "Voodoo" is a "Progress-Resistant" Cultural Influence (Article)
Title: The Scapegoating of Haitian Vodou Religion: David Brooks's (2010) Claim that "Voodoo" is a "Progress-Resistant" Cultural Influence
Author: Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Abstract: Shortly after the catastrophic earthquake that crushed Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns on January 12, 2010, The New York Times published an article in which columnist David Brooks claimed that “voodoo” is a “progress-resistant” cultural influence because it spreads the message that “life is capricious and planning futile.” Alongside Brooks, many authors promote similar views, especially Christians. I argue that Vodou does not negatively affect progress in Haiti. Rather, there are historical, linguistic, and governmental policies that limit progress. In reality, Vodou practitioners enhance progress in their attention to the planning and giving of ceremonies, in the hierarchical organization they establish in communities, in their ritual and language, and in the education imparted through inheritance, teaching, and initiation. The scapegoating of Vodou by Brooks and others perpetuates a racist colonial legacy, and it betrays an ignorance of the community and the abundant research about it.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934714555186
Primary URL Description: Journal website
Access Model: Article in a journal, print and online
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Black Studies
Publisher: Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing

Trees in Vodou: An Arbori-Cultural Exploration (Article)
Title: Trees in Vodou: An Arbori-Cultural Exploration
Author: Andrew Tarter
Abstract: Trees are an important dwelling place for the spirits of the Vodou pantheon. I describe arboreal rituals dedicated to the veneration of tree-residing spirits, taboos against cutting sacred trees, conflicting taboos against planting certain trees, and a ceremony for removing a spirit from one tree and placing it in another. After discussing common folk beliefs about particular tree species, and examining associations between these species and individual spirits, I suggest that a rapid decrease of trees in Haiti mandated the ceremony for removing a spirit from a tree and placing it somewhere else. Consequently, as tree diversity dwindled into the handful of primary species utilized in rural Haiti today, a large pantheon of spirits had to be funneled into an increasingly limited number of trees. Accordingly, Vodou practitioners had to facilitate spirit flexibility with regard to which trees they inhabit.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JSRNC/article/view/19582
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Access Model: Journal article
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
Publisher: Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing LTD

A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou: Rasin Figuier, Rasin Bwa Kayiman, and the Rada and Gede Rites (Book)
Title: A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou: Rasin Figuier, Rasin Bwa Kayiman, and the Rada and Gede Rites
Author: Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Abstract: A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou focuses on the influence of the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada and Hueda in the emergence of central rites in Haitian Vodou. Connecting four centuries of political, social and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, this book analyzes Haitian Vodou’s African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti. The African chapters focus on history, economics and culture in Dahomey, Allada and Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting tensions. The political, military and slave trading histories of the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages and cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits, rituals, and music of the region’s religions sheds light on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public and private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement. At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, Aja, Fon and Yoruba people deeply shaped the emergence of Haiti’s creolized culture. The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou’s Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the songs of Rasin Figuier’s Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman’s Guede, rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor’s Miami label, “Mass Kompa Records.” All the Vodou songs on the discs are analyzed with a method dubbed “Vodou hermeneutics” that harnesses history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou songs.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/A-Transatlantic-History-of-Haitian-Vodou
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781496835611
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas (Book)
Title: Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas
Editor: Silke Jansen
Editor: Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Abstract: Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas explores spirit-based religious traditions across vast geographical and cultural expanses, including Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Using interdisciplinary research methods, this collection of original perspectives breaks new ground by examining these traditions as typologically and historically related. This curated selection of the traditions allows readers to compare and highlight convergences, while the description and comparison of the traditions challenges colonial erasures and expands knowledge about endangered cultures. The inclusion of spirit-based traditions from a broad geographical area emphasizes the typology of religion over ethnic compartmentalization. The individuals and communities studied in this collection serve spirits through rituals, song, instruments, initiation, embodiment via possession or trance, veneration of nature, and, among some Indigenous people, the consumption of ritual psychoactive entheogens. Indigenous and African diaspora practices focused on service to ancestors and spirits reflect ancient substrates of religiosity. The rationale to separate them on disciplinary, ethnic, linguistic, geographical, or historical grounds evaporates in our interconnected world. Shared cultural, historical, and structural features of American indigenous and African diaspora spirit-based traditions mutually deserve our attention since the analyses and dialogues give way to discoveries about deep commonalities and divergences among religions and philosophies. Still struggling against the effects of colonialism, enslavement, and extinction, the practitioners of these spirit-based religious traditions hold on to important but vulnerable parts of humanity’s cultural heritage. These readings make possible journeys of recognition as well as discovery.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496235732/
Publisher: The University of Nebraska Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9781496236074
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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