This course examines the use of magic and religion in the formation of collective memory, historical consciousness, and political community in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Using ethnographic studies and historical texts, this course will analyze the ways in which conquest, slavery and colonization, evangelization, nation-state formation, modernization, and recent global economic trends are refracted through magico-religious imagery and practices in various locales throughout Latin America. A wide range of beliefs, practices, and movements will be discussed, including indigenous religions and shamanisms, messianic and millennial movements, Afro-Creole sorcery and religious formations, folk Catholicism, and liberation theology. |