LLAS 308 Spirit Possession
This course asks: what is the ghost, and when does it take hold of the world? Through a series of case studies focusing especially on Latin America and North America—ranging from classical scholarship on Haitian vodou and Brazilian Candomblé to contemporary work on alien abductions and Cuban Santería—this course examines the category of spirit possession. In it we will take a look at the ways in which spirits are understood to possess people, haunt places, and inhabit objects. We will consider different scholarly interpretations of spirit’s saturation of matter, asking how these phenomena relate to the historical traumas inflicted by chattel slavery, colonialism, and economic inequality. Finally, we will interrogate the category of “spirit possession” itself, asking how the category might relate to regimes of property ownership and serve as a foil for the construction of the autonomous (i.e., self-possessed) modern subject.
Cross Listed Courses
RELS 302