Spirituality

Spirituality

Small Axe 77, April 2027

Contributors

Rose Mary Allen (born 1950) has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous books and articles focusing on the cultural and social history of the Dutch Caribbean islands. In 2021, she assumed the role of Extraordinary Professor specializing in Culture, Community, and History at the University of Curaçao Dr. Moises da Costa Gomez. Among her recent publications is the edited volume "Slavery & the Dutch State. Dutch Colonial Slavery and Its Afterlives", 2025 (LUP) and the "Handbook Gender Studies in the Dutch Caribbean", 2024 (UVA and UoC). Additionally, Rose Mary Allen serves as one of the project leaders for the NWO research project titled "Church and Slavery in the Dutch Empire: History, Theology, and Heritage" (Protestantse Theologische Universiteit (PThU), VU, and University of Curaçao), spanning from 2023 to 2027.

Claudine Michel is a scholar of Haitian Vodou who, although not formally initiated, considers herself a Vodouizan à part-entière. She is a founding member of the Congress of Santa Barbara (KOSANBA, the Scholarly Association for the Study of Haitian Vodou and African Diaspora Religions), The Scholarly Association for the Study of Haitian Vodou, housed since1997 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Professor Emerita of Black Studies. For over thirty years, she has served as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Haitian Studies. She is co-editor with Patrick Bellegarde-Smith of Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality (Indiana UP, 2006).

Yanique Hume is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. Her research spans Caribbean Cultural Thought, Afro-Atlantic spiritualities and mortuary and Caribbean dance and performance cultures. A priestess in Kongo and Yoruba-based Africana traditions, her scholarship is grounded in embodied knowledge and critical artistic practice. She is the current President of KOSANBA, the Scholarly Association for the Study of Haitian Vodou and African Diaspora Religions. She is the co-editor of Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation Diaspora (Ian Randle Publishers, 2013); Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance (Ian Randle Publishers, 2016); and Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2018).

Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken is University Docent at the University of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) in Literary and Cultural Analysis where she teaches Vodou in academic disciplines attached to a still uncritical notion of the ‘secular.’ She also maintains an affiliation with the City College of New York’s Center for Worker Education. She is author of Spirit Possession in French, Haitian, and Vodou Thought – An Intellectual History (Lexington Books, 2015). She is co-editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies book review section, a former board member of the Haitian Studies Association and a member of the Albertine Translation.

Cécile Accilien is a scholar of French and Francophone studies whose primary research centers on former French speaking colonies of Africa and the Caribbean especially Haiti. She considers herself a cultural vodouyizan. She is currently Professor at University of Maryland, College Park and is associate editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies. She is co-editor (with Valerie Orlando) of Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives, and most recently author of Bay lodyans: Haitian Popular Film Culture (SUNY, 2025). She is a former president of the Haitian Studies Association.

N. Fadeke Castor is an Associate Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Northeastern University. She is a Black Feminist ethnographer and African diaspora studies scholar, with interests in religion, race, and performance. Her first book, Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad (Duke University Press, 2017), won the 2018 Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. Their work has been published in Cultural Anthropology, The Black Scholar, the Journal of World Popular Music and Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, among other publications. Dr. Castor’s current research focusing on the power of Black sacred ontologies and epistemologies to shape a better world has been supported by a Wenner-Gren Fellowship in Anthropology and Black Experiences at the School for Advanced Research (Santa Fe, NM).