Native American and African American material culture of mid-19thcentury to present day appear to hold evidence for a more ancient spiritual and cultural relationship between these two diverse peoples. There is evidence of strikingly similar, and in some instances, identical, pre-Columbian (before 1492) symbols from Africa and North America which allows us to examine questions of diffusion or independent invention. This thesis provides an examination of cultural practices and spiritual beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of North America and Africa through symbols incorporated in the material culture of each, focusing primarily on textiles and it provides an exploration into the traditional knowledge systems that under-lie the adaptations and syncretism of these culture groups in creating objects and ascribing meaning to symbols. In order to understand the similarities, along with the continuity and retention of ancient belief systems, it is necessary to travel the path back, as far as possible. Anthropological debates such as diffusion vs. independent invention are encountered and examined. Through the many processes of colonization, the histories of Indigenous peoples have been sanitized or erased to accommodate European hegemony and perceptions of superior knowledge systems. In searching for that which has been misplaced or stolen through colonization, the necessity of supporting an Indigenous praxis of Theory and Method in the discipline of Anthropology is presented. By recognizing Indigenous knowledge systems, and from such a perspective, it would be disingenuous to believe that there was no intercontinental contact between the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and those of Africa prior to 1492.

This paper focuses on how identity and racial ideology are factored into displays in the exhibit, Fossil Fragments: The Riddle of Human Origins, at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. I used visitor questionnaires, observations, exhibition construction and curatorial interviews to examine that the concept of race is so ingrained in our society racial ideology and identity is automatically embedded in exhibits about human evolution. How may the exhibition inform the visitors’ perception of race and human evolution? A key aspect investigated was if the curatorial staff was conscious or unconscious about the racial ideological information present in the exhibit. By examining the exhibition construction and visitor observations, I was able to see aspects of the exhibit reinforced visitor racial ideological beliefs. In seeing how exhibition construction coupled with the legitimacy and power of the museum effect people’s thoughts on human evolution, helped me understand that not only information in the museum but information left out can be as detrimental. All the information allowed me to form recommendations change the exhibit so that identity and racial ideological information would no longer be present.

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This study was conducted in an attempt to determine whether certain burial practices are unique to the people of Southern Appalachia. Eight individuals were interviewed, including a minister and a funeral director. As a result of the research, it was found that, although a strong sense of community and religion still prevails, making certain burial rituals distinctive to the people of Southern Appalachia, they are slowly eroding due to the growing presence of the modern American funeral industry. Qualitative research methods were used to analyze a segment of the Southern Appalachian population, with literature reviews of related material and in-depth interviews conducted with subjects in Grainger, Hamblen and Hancock Counties of East Tennessee.

During field experience as a storyteller constructing a performance based on the Battle of Kings Mountain on behalf of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association and the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, I encountered ethical and philosophical dilemmas. This challenge centered on ethical and spiritual convictions that put me in potential conflict with the task of creating a performance about war. This experience forms the basis of an autoethnographic approach to the art form, revealing the critical role played by personal ethics and a functioning engagement with historiography and narrative theory in producing effective performance stories. Historical performance storytelling has little developed theoretical discourse that takes into account contemporary theories of historiography and interpretation. My experience suggests that interdisciplinary thought on narrative, counternarrative, performance, and historiography should be incorporated by storytellers to aid in the production of ethical and effective historical storytelling performances.

This is an ethnographic case study of a musical community in Catalonia centered around the performance of bluegrass and old-time music. By using Victor and Edith Turners’ ideas of normative communitas, this paper identifies an aesthetic communitas model which describes a community centered around a performative genre. Through participant observation in the 16th Annual Al Ras Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival and interviews with local musicians, fans, venue owners, and luthiers, the ethnographic narrative details the characteristics of the aesthetic communitas in Catalonia and searches for associations of Appalachia that accompany the cross-cultural manifestation of bluegrass and old-time music in Catalonia. The conclusion examines the significance of the aesthetic communitas model and suggests further lines of research for this model.

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This dissertation describes an experimental project to devise forums for “civil” public discussion. It is an analysis of the project in terms of the Coordinated Management of Meaning theory, and discusses implications for the de-escalation of tension and the management of conflicts where passions are unusually strong and the positions taken by disputants are particularly intractable. There has been an interesting effort to improve the quality of public discourse at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The usual form of educational discussion is the ‘debate’ and true to form, the administration called for debates to be held in order to allow informed and civil discussants to educate the student body on the issues surrounding events in the Middle East during the mid-eighties. But a turning point was made when The Kaleidoscope Project was announced as “not a debate,” but as “an experimental forum for the non-adversarial public discussion of intractable disputes: to ‘discuss the undiscussible’.” Through the late eighties and into the early nineties, Kaleidoscope forums were held and the format refined. Subsequently, “people of good will” on the campus have attempted to increase the opportunities for students and faculty to engage in non-adversarial forums, increasingly citing a perceived need for dialogue. “Dialogue” has become the watchword for educational and mediated conversations. The subject of this study is The Black/Jewish/Other Video Exchange Project which allowed self-identifying student members of three groups, “Blacks”, “Jews”, and “Others”, to use videotaped interviews to “enter a dialogue” or—as the BJO Committee referred to it, to have a “distanced conversation”. The dissertation holds the premise that different forms of communication construct different ways of being human, and thus the communication process constructs the specific forms and outcomes of conflicts in human systems. I hypothesize that interventions designed to produce dialogue rather than debate or dispute are rooted in differences in cultural constructions of “conflict” and “dialogue” and that the way people communicate rather than what they think contributes more significantly to the form of the conflict. Successful conflict management is a matter of second order change; the success or failure of peacemaking interventions depends upon the maintenance or the collapse of the interventive control of contextual reconstruction. The dissertation provides a conversation analysis of the videotapes from the BJO Video Exchange Project in order to advance a deeper understanding of cross-cultural “dialogue” and the characteristics of “transformative discourse.”