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| HERSKOVITS, MELVILLE | ||||
| (1895-1963) Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University who
conducted extensive fieldwork in Dahomey, Dutch Guinea, Haiti, Trinidad, and, to a lesser
degree, Brazil. His Life in a Haitian Valley (Knopf 1931) illustrates Herskovits's
awareness of the African contributions to family organization, economics, and religion in
the New World. In his classic The Myth of the Negro Past (Harper 1941), he argued
that African American religions and cultures have retained numerous practices surviving
from Africa, or "Africanisms." For example, he found that in such areas as
Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and the American Deep South, Catholic saints and African deities had
merged to produce a new set of spirits. —Hans A. Baer |
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Hartford
Institute for Religion Research hirr@hartsem.edu
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