abstract: “Her Brown Body Is Glory: A Legacy of Healing Forged Through Sisterhood and Dance” fondly captures the process of creating the evening length dance project, Her Brown Body Is Glory (HBBIG). This document addresses many themes, such as liminality, rites of passage, trauma in the African American community (like the effects of Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary’s “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) theory), and provides a perspective of healing rooted in dance, rituals, and community. This research focuses on dance being the source of intervention to create sisterhood among African American women of many shades. Throughout the creation of this dance project, the choreographer and dancers collaboratively generated experiences to cultivate a space of trust, vulnerability, sisterhood, and growth. The use of written, verbal, and movement reflection supported this creative process as the main source of ritual to check in with self, building community amongst the dancers, and generating choreography. The insertion of these sisterhood rituals into the production became the necessary element of witness for the audience to experience an authentic and moving performance of Her Brown Body Is Glory. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Dance 2020

Ce travail porte sur le renouveau religieux actuel des autochtones de la République de l’Altaï (Fédération de Russie). Les Altaïens renouent avec les pratiques considérées comme traditionnelles (chamanisme, bourkhanisme), mais se tournent également vers quantité de courants religieux plus ou moins exogènes (bouddhisme, christianismes orthodoxe et évangélique, mouvements New Age). Le choix d’une religion nationale qui servirait de point d’appui à la construction d’une identité altaïenne est un enjeu fondamental pour l’intelligentsia locale. Le politique imprègne en effet ces réarticulations du croire, et la concurrence entre les différents mouvements prend notamment corps dans l’appréhension singulière du territoire que chacun véhicule. Celle-ci est particulièrement visible dans les rituels saisonniers organisés par les adeptes du néo-chamanisme et du néo-bourkhanisme. De plus, l’analyse du festival des cultures altaïennes révèle comment l’Administration tente d’unir les autochtones sous la bannière d’un « esprit national », plaçant de ce fait l’événement dans la droite ligne des célébrations soviétiques de l’unité. Une nouvelle modalité d’utilisation de la poésie épique intervient dans ce processus de construction identitaire. En effet, l’épopée altaïenne s’inscrit dans les pratiques rituelles de nombreux courants religieux. Sa revitalisation, qui s’accompagne d’un remodelage profond, contribue à en faire le révélateur d’une identité altaïenne surpassant les divisions religieuses et transcendant les aspirations d’unité émanant du pouvoir central. Elle peut aussi être perçue comme un catalyseur qui singularise l’Altaï au sein de l’espace sibérien postsoviétique. / This work focuses on the contemporary religious revival among the indigenous people of the Altay Republic (Russian Federation). The Altaians reconnect with practices considered as traditional (Shamanism, Burkhanism), while exploring a more or less exogenous religious plurality (Buddhism, different branches of Orthodox and Evangelical Christianity, New Age movements). The choice of a national religion that could serve as a basis for the construction of a distinctive Altaian identity is a fundamental concern for the local intelligentsia. Political dimensions indeed do intersect with these different rearticulations of belief, and the competitive relationship between these movements especially takes shape in each particular understanding of the territory that each of them conveys. It is especially obvious within the seasonal rituals organized by the followers of neo-Shamanism and neo-Burkhanism. Additionally, the analysis of the festival of the Altaian cultures points out how the Administration tries to unite all the indigenous peoples under the banner of a “national spirit”. This attempt nevertheless makes the event a typical legacy of the soviet celebrations of unity. A new way of using epic poetry emerges in this identity construction process. The Altaian epic is indeed part of ritual practices in many religious trends. Its revitalization, followed by a deep reshaping, can be instrumental in turning it into a “revealing” of Altaian identity that overcomes religious divisions and transcends aspirations of unity that emanates from the central government. It can also be perceived as a catalyst in distinguishing the Altay within the Siberian post-soviet space.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / There has recently been a lot of interest in the role of traditional healers in various cultures. This study explores the merit of an integrative approach between western based psychological practices in South Africa and what is known as traditional African healing. In order to do so, this study aims to present the epistemological views of Jungian analytical theory and African healing practices. The purpose is to ascertain whether or not there are sufficient commonalities to allow for relatedness between these two worlds. Jungian analytical thought and practice is reviewed with particular reference to the collective unconscious, archetypes, complexes and dream interpretation as a pathway to individuation. The traditional healer's pervasive role within the context of the African cosmology is explored with particular reference to the understanding of the role of the ancestors, the causes of illnesses and the use of dreams, symbols and rituals in the healing process. The importance of the sacred in both healing modalities is presented. The study employs a qualitative research design with the phenomenological approach as an example of one of the traditions of this design. Interviews with five traditional healers comprise the data for the study. The data is analyzed according to the procedure recommended by Moustakas (1994). The interviews focused specifically on eliciting information regarding the calling and the training process of the traditional healer. It is proposed that the two approaches to healing investigated in this study present possible mechanisms to bridge the divide between the westernized approaches to healing and that of the non-technical practitioner. It is further proposed that this will have implications for the broadening of the training and implementation of psychology in South Africa today.

In Ben Okri's The Famished Road, rituals such as baptism are easily lost in the dense symbolism. The novel is, in the words of Douglas McCabe, a "ramshackle and untidy affair, a hodge-podge of social ideologies, narrative forms, effusive enthusiasms, and precision-jeweled prose poems" (McCabe 17). This complex untidiness can be discouraging for readers and critics alike, and yet "there is something contagious about the digressive, meandering aesthetic of The Famished Road" that makes the novel difficult to consign to confusion (Omhovere 59). Commonly considered post-colonial, post-modern, and magical-realist, The Famished Road deals with, among other things, spiritualism, family relations, and political and sociological tensions in Nigeria in the decades before its publication in 1991. These themes are depicted with a rush of symbols, and in such a clamor, baptism and other rituals may have trouble making themselves heard. And yet, paying attention to the repeated performance of baptism transforms this audacious, ramshackle novel into a story of liminality, alienation, and reconciliation, a story which celebrates these things as inevitable and necessary parts of life. As readers, we can use baptism to decode The Famished Road. In doing so, the novel develops a cyclical, ongoing narrative focused on the difficulties of and increased agency in liminality and the necessity of ritual, on an individual, familial, and socio-cultural level, in navigating that in-betweeness. I will begin by exploring baptism in The Famished Road in order to understand the performance and power of ritual. Here, ritual acts as a doorway, giving characters a chance to navigate liminality without removing themselves from it. This navigation gives them an increased understanding of how the world works and how they may operate in it. After exploring baptism as a ritual, I will examine Okri's "universal abikuism" and its connection to the flexibility of liminality.

Ce texte s’intéresse aux déclarations politiques médiatiques et plus précisément à la performativité des langages à partir des questionnements suivants : peut-on faire avec des mots ? Peut-on, comme l’entend le philosophe John Austin, réellement faire un acte grâce au langage ? En abordant différentes situations de déclarations politiques, la thèse interroge, sous l’angle de la pragmatique (des langages) et de la sémiologie, des discours politiques et médiatiques ainsi que les images qui les accompagnent. L’analyse porte tout d’abord sur des déclarations issues de notre quotidien (déclaration de pauvreté dans le métro, proposition artistique, etc.) puis s’attache plus particulièrement aux déclarations politiques sous la Vème République en France. On constate qu’une déclaration politique, afin de faire, ne peut être isolée mais doit s’entendre selon le contexte qui l’entoure. Elle dépend de langages, de rituels, de références culturelles et des médias. Ces derniers sont ceux qui l’hébergent et qui lui permettent une visibilité importante. Seule, une déclaration politique est vide et son langage ne peut agir. Elle est donc un objet qui existe par ramifications. / This text considers media-covered political declarations in the light of speech act theory and performativity by using the following questions as a starting point: Is it possible to do things with words? Can we, in the sense of John Austin, perform an action thanks to language? The thesis addresses different situations of political declarations in order to inquire into political statements, as well as the images the media associate to them, from the perspective of the pragmatics of languages and semiology. The work first focuses on declarations from everyday life (declaration of poverty, artistic endeavours) before moving on to a thorough analysis of political declarations during the French Fifth Republic. It is thus revealed that, in order to do, a political declaration cannot be considered as isolated but should be heard and understood in accordance with the context that surrounds its utterance. It depends on languages, rituals, cultural references and on the media. Indeed, the latter both host and allow the declaration broad reception by the public. By itself, a political declaration is empty and its language cannot perform. It is therefore an object which exists as part of a web of connections.

Ccna [ʃ:na], est une poésie féminine traditionnelle kabyle chantée publiquement lors des fêtes de mariages dans la région d’Ighil n Zekri de Tizi-Ouzou en Algérie. Elle traite essentiellement de la condition socio-affective de la composante féminine des communautés villageoises. Bien qu’elle s’apparente à d’autres types poétiques relevant de la tradition orale kabyle, cette poésie possède des spécificités propres et une originalité expressive, tant du point de vue de son contexte de performance que du point de vue des fonctions qu’elle assure au sein des sociétés productrices. En effet, les cérémonies de ccna donnent lieu à la production d’un espace virtuel de communication et de gestion des conflits qui mérite indéniablement une étude approfondie. Ce projet de recherche est construit autour d’un corpus traduit et annoté, son étude implique nécessairement une approche, à la fois proprement littéraire des textes et anthropologique (acteurs, conditions de création, diffusion et réception). / Ccna [ʃ:na], is a female traditional Kabylian poem sung publicly at weddings in the area of Ighil n Zekri in Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria. It mainly deals with women’s socio-emotional conditions in rural communities. Although it is similar to other poetic types in the kabylian oral tradition, this poetry has specificities and a meaningful originality, from the point of view of its performance context as well as from the functions it ensures within the producing societies. Indeed, ccna ceremonies lead to the creation of a virtual space of communication and conflict management that deserves an in-depth study. This research project is built around a corpus translated and annotated, its study necessarily implies an approach, both literary of the texts and anthropological (actors, conditions of the creation, dissemination and reception).

La musique et la danse constituent le noyau de la vie rituelle d’une confrérie au statut particulier, par rapport aux autres confréries du soufisme marocain, il s’agit des adeptes gnawa. Présenter comme les descendants d’anciens esclaves, les gnawa réconcilient dans leurs rituels des éléments mythiques qui les situent dans un entre-deux entre le licite et l’illicite, l’ici et l’ailleurs. Loin de s’achever dans des dichotomies de principes, leurs pratiques sont de fait plurielles et suggèrent un espace ou la logique communautaire est mise au service de la représentation de soi. Les transformations accélérées et les changements d’échelles qui affectent les mondes contemporains réorientent les modes d’existence des acteurs à travers des pratiques complexes et délibérées de performance, de représentation et d’action. Les éléments culturels gnawa sont mis en scène sous de nouveaux labels et poursuivent de nouveaux enjeux ou la référence culturelle masque le déni d’égalité entre les individus. Longtemps marginalisés, les gnawa sont aujourd’hui célébrés dans des espaces transnationaux qui poussent l’observateur à s’interroger sur les rapports entre sens social et liberté individuelle dans le monde contemporain. / Music and dance constitute the heart of ritual life provide the center of ritual life for a friary with particular status regard to the other friaries of Moroccan Sufism, the gnawa practitioners. Exploring their connexion to slavery the gnawa performed in the ritual cultural elements that place them in a space between the legal and illegal, the here and elsewhere. However those dichotomy are flawed, their practices are various and suggest a space where the community manage a representation of themselves. The changes of scale that affect the contemporary world renew the ways of existence of social actors. This position put the terms of reconstruction and management of gnawa identity in the perspective of ‘simultaneity time’, where culture is caught in an accelerated movement of time and space. Their practice is hardly of only local interest, circulating on the global market, rebuilt by different actors, this gnawa circulation bring to the light the understanding of tradition, patrimony, identity and otherness.

The aim of the dissertation is to present the complex system of Buddhist rituals of death. Being the first lengthy study on the topic written outside Korea, this work introduces these rituals in the context of the rich Korean religious scene and indicates its connection to other religious and philosophical ideas present in the Sinitic cultural area. The dissertation is structured into five sections, each of which approaches the rituals from a different perspective. The "Introduction," presents the methodology, including the theoretical framework; textual research of ritual texts and fieldwork are the two key methodological approaches used to study the topic at hand. Chapter 2, "The Ritual Constituents," is an attempt to define an apparatus for analysis of the rituals. The two-axis scheme is an attempt to provide a tool, which will help us grasp not only the relative "richness" of the ritual but also its variability. Chapter 3, "The Structure and Typology of the Rituals," presents an overall analysis of the ritual process from the deathbed, to rebirth, and beyond. Its structure is based on contemporary rituals. I also use examples from Korean historical sources to demonstrate that certain types of rituals have been standard ritual activities throughout the history of Korean Buddhism. Chapter 4, "The...

The diploma thesis called "Ritual elements in the practices of Herbalife Independent Distributors" is focused on the manifestations of Randall Collins' interaction rituals on the example of multi-level marketing company - Herbalife. It tries to answer two questions: answer two questions: What does the Herbalife Independent Distributor community hold together? What motivates them to work, when everything is voluntary at Herbalife and they do not have a competitive driving force there? The connecting mechanism of the multi-level marketing structure and interaction rituals are practices of organizational culture. The most important are the physical meetings of members in which interaction rituals take place. By living interaction rituals, Herbalife members produce emotional energy, by which they empower the symbols of organization and the sense of group solidarity. Positive emotional energy has an impact on the cooperation of distributors with the organization, and it affects also their effort to achieve common goals.

The purpose of this essay is to concisely present an overview of the Pagan ritual practice before the Christianization of Ireland and the United Kingdom, which enables tracking down the connection and relationship between them and three American and British, Wiccan Youtube-creators nicknamed Witchtubers. Witchtuber’s description of Samhain and objects visible in chosen videos are analyzed from Christopher Partridge’s theory of Occulture along with the parameters of acceptance, harmonization and the centralization of Goddess-worship concluded by previous studies. Also causes of the development of Neo-Paganism and Wiccain the U.K. and USA have been a part of this research in being able to further draw connections between today’s practice amongst Witchtubers and previous research. In able to do this, Content analysis has been applied to the transcriptions made by the author of this essay in order to analyze the parameters of reference-features, proportional and thematic content. In conclusion, the analysis of Witchtuber’s videos along with previous research by scholars confirm the theory of Occulture along with the question of acceptance and harmonization though leaving the question of Goddess-centering as more of a possibility of representing the mere majority of practitioners. Fragmented pieces of information about the Pagan past is left and scholars claim Irish and British Paganism to have been extinct since the overthrow by Christians. It has left the practitioners of Wicca with their own interpretation and manipulation of Paganism. Witchtuber’s statements and showcasing of objects match scholar’s descriptions of historical context to the development of the Wiccan movement apart from a few exceptions. Those which cannot be directly connected rather indicate the continuous development of the movement as of being a personal religion.