Caribbean and African Literature and Culture

Scholars working at the intersection of Caribbean and African religious and literary studies examine how communities shaped by colonial violence, forced migration, and the Atlantic slave trade have built and sustained distinct spiritual, artistic, and political worlds—with Haiti and its practice of Vodou standing as a particularly dense site of inquiry. The field draws on postcolonial theory, diaspora studies, and close literary reading to understand how writers, practitioners, and communities have negotiated identity, memory, and resistance across centuries of displacement and domination. Central questions driving current research include how Vodou has functioned simultaneously as a target of colonial suppression and a vehicle of collective survival, and how Haitian and Caribbean authors have constructed literary traditions that refuse the terms set by European metropoles. Ongoing debates press scholars to think carefully about whose voices and archives shape the field itself, and how diaspora communities in North America, Europe, and Africa continue to transform inherited cultural forms in the present.

Works

105,237

Total citations

69,511

Keywords

HaitiCaribbeanColonialismRaceDiasporaVodou