Zwei Staaten unterschiedlicher sprachlicher und kultureller Prägung - Haiti und die Dominikanische Republik - teilen sich heute die Karibikinsel Hispaniola. In der Kolonialzeit war sie Schauplatz der ersten Begegnungen zwischen Indigenen und Spaniern und Spielball der Auseinandersetzungen zwischen europäischen Kolonialmächten. Plantagensystem und Sklaverei gelangten hier zu ihrer höchsten Blüte, bis die Haitianische Revolution und die Gründung des ersten unabhängigen Staats in Amerika das Kolonialsystem erschütterten. Die wechselvolle Geschichte der Insel spiegelt sich in vielschichtigen Sprach- und Kulturkontakten wider, die die karibische Sprachenlandschaft bis heute prägen und den Gegenstand des vorliegenden Bandes bilden. Die Beiträge beleuchten die frühesten indianisch-spanischen Sprachkontakte ebenso wie das Phänomen der Kreolisierung in Haiti, historische und aktuelle Austauschprozesse zwischen Spanisch und Kreol und die Weiterentwicklung dieser Sprachen in der Diaspora.

The volume is intended for classical philologists and a broad range of scholars working in the fields of theoretical, historical, and comparative linguistics with Ancient Greek, Latin, or Slavic languages as the primary evidence in their research. The contributions address topics ranging from issues of grammatography in a diachronic perspective to historical and comparative linguistics. They encompass both monothematic case studies and comprehensive analyses that capture a linguistic phenomenon in its entirety as well as within a broader context.

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.

Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou analyzes Haitian Vodou’s African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti. Split into two sections, 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, structure, 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, the people of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda 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, legendary rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor’s Miami label, Mass Konpa 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.

Africa and its Historical and Contemporary Diasporas edited by Tunde Adeleke and Arno Sonderegger is an interdisciplinary study of the changing and complex nature of the Africa-Black Diaspora relationship. The contributors highlight the problems and challenges of this relationship and provide strategies for developing a more functional and mutually beneficial engagement in a radically changing global environment. This book presents new methodological approaches and research to study the many dimensions and complexities of Africa and its Diasporas. Collectively, this book addresses three vital themes. First, it foregrounds new and emerging forces reshaping the Africa-Black Diaspora nexus. Second, it highlights new and interdisciplinary approaches to “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” (culture, religion, ideology, literature, philosophy, and epistemology). Third, it examines factors infusing the transformation in, and challenges of, African Diaspora and Pan-Africanist collaborations, and possible strategies of strengthening the relationship.

Herskovits's heritage -- Creolization and connaissance -- Notes from Ekitiland -- The blood of mothers -- Ethnogenesis from within -- Afterword: beyond the mirror of narcissus

This book presents a research study investigating young foreign language learners' ability to compose communicative texts in English. It reviews current research on young learners' EFL writing, reports on the learners' EFL writing competence, describes text quality at different CEFR language levels, and discusses current teaching practices and the learners' perception of EFL writing.