Seth Epling

Rush, Dana. Vodun in Coastal Bénin. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013.

I found this book by using Professors Brennan’s recommendation. After she recommended this book, I went to the library and found that this book was a good reference point for the religion of Vodun in the west coast of Africa.  Rush focuses on the fact that Vodou is not a religion of the past. She emphasizes that this book is open ended and not finished. This is because Vodou is always being changed and this book needs to be updated and be discussed. She explains more about the the religion of vodou and not much about the my specific festival, this will be a good reference for the general practices and information about the deities and how they were derived from other religions and cultures.

Dana Rush perspective is one from the outside from research and personal trips. She has an acknowledgement in which she thanks all of the people who have helped her. She feels in debt to these people and for the actual religion of Vodun. This has a bias because she is looking from the outside. She is most likely looking at a glamorised version of the religion, she does have first hand account of the culture because she lived in places like Benin, Togo, and Ghana. I did not see anywhere that said that she is a follower of the religion so the writing and information may have a different view point.

Bay, Edna G. Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

This was the other book that Professor Brennan recommended to me and I sought it out at the library and saw that it had lots of information to offer. This book was more about how art and artist in africa were changing. This is crucial for my research of my object because my object is a piece of metal work, a piece of art. There are sections in  the book about how metal work in Vodun religion has changed.  She has a section devoted to a festival of Hevioso which would be helpful in understanding the use of my scepter in certain festival. She also focuses in Asen, or using metal working to honor spirits or deities. In her work, she also studied the Kingdom of Dahomey which should bring parallels between the two works.

Unlike Rush, Bay seems to have separated her emotions out of the book. She focused strictly on the facts and tried not to put her own bias into the novel. This will influence the work because we are only getting her point of view on the festivals and customs. She uses many pictures and uses them to describe the practices. I do not see any first hand account from people who have lived or follow the religion. It is more of a textbook style of writing, very informational, goes through the history of asen and the ancestors and how that has changed. Her main goal is to inform people of this culture and not to tell a story.

Blier, Suzanne P. “King Glele of Danhomè, Part One: Divination Portraits of a Lion King and

Man of Iron.” African Art 23, no. 4 (October 1990): 42-53. JSTOR (3336943).

I found this article using JSTOR and CATQuest and I used the keywords: Benin, Vodun, and Hevioso. As I was skimming through it, I saw that she uses King Glele, a king from the Kingdom of Dahomey, to describe many rituals and use of certain tools. I found that King Glele used a scepter similar to the scepter I am studying. Both scepters were used to represent the deity Hevioso and similar aspects of the staff were discussed that I can draw conclusions to about my scepter. There are many times where in the article that say King Glele was empowered and fierce like a lion which I could bring connections due to some of the designs in my scepter.

Blier has a mixture of the two other writers. She has points in the article that she is very informative but at other points she is trying to tell a story. She is also an outsider looking in on the religious practices so there are little first hand accounts. She is tellings story brought down the generations by stories not by written accounts. Her goal is to bring those stories to have a meaning in history and relate them to the history King Glele reign. There will be bias in this piece because of the emotion that she puts into the piece. Since she is taking the accounts from other people there may be misunderstanding and that is something to be wary of. She will be converting other people’s words into her own.