Objective
Black Jews in the US, Hindus in Trinidad, and Vodu priests in Ghana: people across the Black and Brown Atlantic use occult books, in innovative, creative ways. Such usage is often policed, ridiculed, or demonized. Scholars pay little attention to these developments. Occultism studies centres the West and Asia. Scholars of Africana and Caribbean religion are concerned that a focus on such books obscures local agency or reinforces the racialized link between blackness and irrationality. Yet, occult books have been crucial to religion, identity- and community-formation, knowledge production, and subjugation across the Atlantic. This provokes two questions. How and why have occult books become a site of the production, negotiation, and contestation of knowledge, power, race, and community? What does this tell us about the intersection of colonialism, emancipation, and occultism?
Because of the books’ clandestine and controversial status, scholars seeking answers face complicated challenges. OCCULTATLANTIC addresses these by developing a comprehensive and innovative approach. It focuses on the historical and contemporary circulation, use, and regulation of one corpus: occult books published by De Laurence, Scott, and Co. It does so across North America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, since 1900. It combines archival research, participant and digital ethnography, and GIS-mapping, and brings together insights from religious and Black studies, global history of science, and book- and reception history.
OCCULTATLANTIC projects four new horizons. It 1) redraws the religious map of the Black and Brown Atlantic, by showing and exploring innovative usages of occult books; 2) introduces a new mixed method approach to study the global occult; 3) creates a GIS-map that can become a major touchpoint for future researchers of religious networks; and 4) develops a theoretical model for an improved understanding of the relation between colonialism, emancipation, and occultism.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2026-STG
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6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands
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