Final Project Proposal
I am interested in exploring spiritual/religious/magical practices of the peoples involved in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The nature of this project also allows for it to be done on a global scale and expand to other places with the presence of colonialism/imperialism. Given my workload for this semester, I think the project is too ambitious to realize by the end of the semester. Therefore, I could look into making it a research proposal or a potential lesson plan (syllabus). In good faith believing that this has not been done yet, a possibility I was contemplating was the creation of an interactive map chronologically showing the trends in religious practice across the three continents of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I would set the timeline to from the first arrival of Africans in the Americas[1] to today. I believe such a large span is justified given recent trends in returning to Indigenous and non-colonial practices of spirituality and religion.
The map would show where Indigenous/traditional practices were affected/eliminated by evangelism, where they have remained in practice. This can be analyzed for all three continents.
Look at whether/where syncretism manifested between Europe/The Americas, Africa/The Americas, Africa/Europe.
The project would also look to address the following:
- Can we draw any conclusions from places where a practice other than Christianity dominates as opposed to places where it does?
- Do we want to look at the role of other Abrahamic religions (Islam and Judaism) in relation to the slave trade?
- What would any one concentration of a practice tell us? What are the events behind the trends that we find? Can any correlations be made in the resistance to colonialism—e.g. the use of Vodou in the Haitian Revolution?
- I believe this has been done to show the spread/concentration of the different denominations of Christianity. Where does this type of project leave room for this to be done as it relates to diasporic and Indigenous practices?
[1] This date is contested and thus would require me to offer a more concrete date. This could also be narrowed down if I focus on the first arrival of Africans in what is the US today as opposed to all of the Americas. I acknowledge the mixing of contexts between the Americas and just the US. It might be best to just start with a US context and expand to other parts of the Americas.