Examining poetry under the rubric of religion, geography, and gender provides a lens through which I read postcolonial literatures, thus positing new emphasis in literary studies, and suggesting for African women empowerment as opposed to weakness, articulation as opposed to silence. Religion and poetry among Black people in Africa and the Black diaspora are sacred because religion pervades values, beliefs, and socio-political life, and religion saturates the environment; as well, the role of a poet is connected to that of a seer or a sage. Comparing Turn Thanks, a collection by Jamaican-born Afro-Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison with The Springs Last Drop, a collection by Nigerian poet Catherine Acholonu, reveals that African and Afro-Caribbean womens strong sense of community, spiritual sensitivity, holistic attitude of women fight for liberation, the quest for healing and hope through the power of crafted words and rituals present an ideology of Africana womanhood as embedded in African cultural traditions. The two poets are rooted in their culture and being rooted empowers them as members of the community and speaking voice to build on values in their communities. In terms of the structure and themes of their books, the diction of their poems and the titles of their works, the poets suggest that there is a spirit connected with the works that readers must discern and become attuned to in order to unravel the meaning and the significance of the works. Both poets go back to the primacy of the word in the spiritual and oral traditions. The thesis argues that spirituality will continue to interest scholars because it represents a strong desire of twentieth-centruy humanity to maintain equilibrium in the face of socio-political upheavals through a discerned integration of both the spirit and body for a holistic existence and survival of communities and to understand the potential of applying and realizing the power of the spirit in connecting rather than fragmenting individuals and communities. On the whole, African people in Africa and the diaspora have utilized their spirituality in order to survive, to maintain the sanctity of their culture, and to present communities that have the quality of constituting a complex unity. People from other cultures and vocations can apply the benefits that can be gained from spirituality in their communities and vocations, not only for creative empowerment but for wholeness in those communities and maximum benefits in their vocations.

Examining poetry under the rubric of religion, geography, and gender provides a lens through which I read postcolonial literatures, thus positing new emphasis in literary studies, and suggesting for African women empowerment as opposed to weakness, articulation as opposed to silence. Religion and poetry among Black people in Africa and the Black diaspora are sacred because religion pervades values, beliefs, and socio-political life, and religion saturates the environment; as well, the role of a poet is connected to that of a seer or a sage. Comparing Turn Thanks, a collection by Jamaican-born Afro-Caribbean poet Lorna Goodison with The Springs Last Drop, a collection by Nigerian poet Catherine Acholonu, reveals that African and Afro-Caribbean womens strong sense of community, spiritual sensitivity, holistic attitude of women fight for liberation, the quest for healing and hope through the power of crafted words and rituals present an ideology of Africana womanhood as embedded in African cultural traditions. The two poets are rooted in their culture and being rooted empowers them as members of the community and speaking voice to build on values in their communities. In terms of the structure and themes of their books, the diction of their poems and the titles of their works, the poets suggest that there is a spirit connected with the works that readers must discern and become attuned to in order to unravel the meaning and the significance of the works. Both poets go back to the primacy of the word in the spiritual and oral traditions. The thesis argues that spirituality will continue to interest scholars because it represents a strong desire of twentieth-centruy humanity to maintain equilibrium in the face of socio-political upheavals through a discerned integration of both the spirit and body for a holistic existence and survival of communities and to understand the potential of applying and realizing the power of the spirit in connecting rather than fragmenting individuals and communities. On the whole, African people in Africa and the diaspora have utilized their spirituality in order to survive, to maintain the sanctity of their culture, and to present communities that have the quality of constituting a complex unity. People from other cultures and vocations can apply the benefits that can be gained from spirituality in their communities and vocations, not only for creative empowerment but for wholeness in those communities and maximum benefits in their vocations.

This dissertation aims to present a model of sacredness – MAPR – that emphasizes four components to empirically study sacredness: source of meaning (M), experience of awe (A), protection against the profane (P), and relationship to religion (R). The empirical studies focus on the psychological mechanisms of protecting, and examine the association of violence and violation of sacredness. Five studies examined the hypothesized effect of violating sacredness on moral judgment and support for war. Hypothetical and semi-real scenarios were created in which a sacred site (versus a military site) is attacked and participants report the degree to which they support war as counterattack. Results showed no effects of sacredness in eliciting violence (Study 1). The proposed effect did not show either with fine-tuned aspects of sacredness: religious sacredness and ethnonational sacredness (Study 2), or under feeling prime (Study 3). This effect did not show with an Iranian sample either (Study 4). To address possible methodological challenges, we checked the manipulation scenarios by changing the non-sacred condition into a manufacture plant (previously a military site). The null results remained unchallenged (Study 5a). We also examined individuals’ attitudes toward attacking the sacred site in Study 2, and counterattacking for the sacred site in Study 3. In addition, some personality variables were included to index the characteristics of individuals who support protecting the sacredness. No clear pattern was observed. The results suggest the possibility that the connection of sacredness and violence may be a misconception. The null finding has significant implications in today’s tumultuous world, where dialogue is needed between different faith communities, and terrorism can and should be distinguished from religious commitment.

The intention of my thesis is to articulate how spiritualities, some in emergent secular expressions, as direct experiences of the sacred, may formatively shape and be actualised in new forms of democratic government as a self-organising phenomenon emerging in concert with evolutionary dynamics. I am attempting to apply experiential interconnectedness which is embodied in the best of human experience as a generative base and an organising dynamic to the evolution of democratic politics. The contribution to knowledge and understanding that my thesis brings is that the elucidation of experiences, inner processes and images which governing based on sacredness could incorporate. I expand the discussion on democracy to include the transformative and generative power of significant experiences. Consistent with democratic principles of inclusive equality, I devolve insights from the lives, thoughts and activities of ordinary people which are then analysed within relevant theoretical perspectives and related to emergent social trends. The focus of the research is on possibilities, transformation and empowerment available within a sacred cosmos, an interconnected and interactive reality. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Magister Artium - MA / This mini-thesis thesis intends to grapple with silences by looking the possibilities of reconceptualising archives through notions of “traces,” “absence,” and “fragments.” Examining archives as bodies of knowledge, a window to telling us something about pastpresent- future representations is to think about navigating archives of colonialism and slavery as sites of historical memory. The aim of this paper is to enter the pedagogical problem of remembering and gendered representational voids by seeking to explore how artistic representations offer insights in the absence of detail in the colonial archives. In exploring the relationship between bodies, remembering and the historical trauma of slavery and colonialisation, specifically in relation to historical corporeal and flesh narratives attached to indigenous black women, and how women negotiate these meanings through embodied interventions in (post-) slavery South Africa. The positioning of the body as an archive probes questions on how the memory of traumatic wounding in a (post-)slavery South Africa body politics are inscribed to convey meaning, memory and identity. The notions of embodiment that this thesis is concerned with asks in what ways can we creatively and imaginatively re-construct, outside of conventional historiographies and knowledge(s), that which has been disembowled through colonial dominating narratives of enslaved subjects?

The work focuses on understanding the concept of the sacredness and the importance of rituals in contemporary family. It shows how the sacredness is understood by pupils at primary school compared to high school students and what the role of sacredness in their current and future lives is. The author handles the theoretical part on the basis of literature and a practical part is based on questionnaires distributed to students of primary and secondary schools. The aim is to handle the sacred topic from different perspectives and compare different approaches and opinions of students at this topic. The result is a detailed overview of the topics in the curriculum within it is possible to teach the sacred topics in those classes. The author will respect the principles of professional work and regularly consult with the supervisor.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2004-03-10Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:43:47Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 santos_la_dr_assis.pdf: 1190579 bytes, checksum: 32ca957a1a3a2d1829881387c2a744d1 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O protestantismo foi um movimento histórico que atuou como força cultural e religiosa no campo religioso nas primeiras décadas da República brasileira. As noções de campo, representação e crença nortearam a pesquisa. O protestantismo foi analisado desde as suas origens, conflitos, números e representações, na sua configuração regional maranhense. O processo de romanização da Igreja Católica no Maranhão definiu estratégias, confrontos e o controle das devoções populares, e determinou dificuldades para os protestantes. As mudanças e transformações ocorridas durante a Primeira República redefiniram os novos centros do sagrado no campo religioso brasileiro. Em busca de posições neste campo, os protestantes construíram sentidos e identidades por meio de instituições e de publicações. O pluralismo evangélico incidiu na pluralidade cultural e religiosa em curso na sociedade brasileira, e articulou, junto com outros movimentos, os discursos da civilização e da modernidade. A crença evangélica em sua interface com a cultura e a religiosidade foi analisada a partir da historiografia sobre o protestantismo, da iconografia do quadro dos Dois Caminhos, da biografia de Miguel Vieira Ferreira e do olhar desinteressado do jornalista João do Rio. As outras faces do sagrado protestante na cultura brasileira foram múltiplas a partir dos paradigmas da crença, das representações, do sujeito e da cultura. / The protestantism was a historical movement that acted as a religious and cultural force in the religious field in the first decades of the Brazilian Republic. The notions of field, representation and belief guided the research. The protestantism was analysed from its origins, conflicts, numbers and representations, in its regional configuration in Maranhão. The process of Romanization of the Catholic Church in Maranhão defined the strategies, the conflicts, and the control over popular devotions, and determined difficulties for the protestants. The changes and transformations that occurred during the First Republic redefined the new centers of sacredness in the Brazilian religions field. Searching for positions in this field, the protestantism built meanings and identities through institutions and publications. The evangelical pluralism entered the currently cultural and religious pluralism, and articulated, with other movements, the discourses of civilization and modernity. The evangelical belief and the interface between it and the historiography about the protestantism were analysed from the iconography of the picture The Narrow and the Broad Way , from Miguel Vieira Ferreira s biography and from the journalist João do Rio s desinterested view. The other faces of the protestant sacredness in Brazilian culture were many, from the paradigms of the belief, the representations, the subject and the culture.

Trata-se de uma investigação que busca a partir de um estudo comparativo entre três tipos de manifestação do sagrado nas redes digitais (a religião tradicional, a new age e a ciber-religiosidade), refletir e interpretar que tipo de representação do sagrado o digital favorece ou até possibilita. Esta investigação está alicerçada em um quadro interpretativo das tecnologias comunicativas que as entende como elementos fundamentais nas transformações sociais, logo, a investigação primeiramente busca justificar o caráter não instrumental da mídia a partir de um exame da história das tecnologias de comunicação, analisando como diferentes tecnologias comunicativas tiveram suas influências singulares no campo religioso. A segunda etapa da dissertação pretende revisar criticamente a literatura da comunicação digital, e principalmente explorar como o tema da religião na internet foi tratado pelo meio acadêmico. As últimas etapas da pesquisa se referem ao estudo empírico da presença das representações do sagrado nas redes digitais, adotando uma estratégia de pesquisa que denominamos como estudo exploratório participativo online, que para cada tipo de manifestação elencada, possui suas singularidades. / The research consists of an investigation that seeks to understand and interpret which type of representation of the sacred is favored or even enabled in the digital culture. The investigation is made through a comparative study between three types of manifestations of the sacred in digital networks (the traditional religion, the new age and the cyber-religiosity). This investigation is based on an interpretative framework of communication technologies that are understood as essential elements in the social transformations. Therefore, the investigation first aims to justify the non-instrumental character of the media from an examination of the history of the communication technologies, analyzing how different communication technologies have singularly influenced the religious field. The second stage of the dissertation intends to critically review the literature of digital communication, and mainly to explore how the subject of religion in the Internet was treated in the academic field. The last stages of the research relates to the empirical study of representations of the presence of the sacred in digital networks, adopting a research strategy that we call an exploratory participative online study, which holds singularities of each type of the chosen manifestation.

This research reports on a project concerned with the relationship between the person and the environment in the context of achieving a contemplative or existential state – a state which can be experienced either consciously or subconsciously. The need for such a study originated with the desire to contribute to the design of multicultural spaces which could be used for a range of activities within the public and the personal arena, activities including contemplation, meditation and prayer. The concept of ‘sacred’ is explored in the literature review and in primary interviews with the participants of this study. Given that the word ‘sacred’ is highly value-laden and potentially alienating for some people, it was decided to use the more accessible term ‘contemplative’. The outcomes of the study inform the practice of interior design and architecture which tends currently to neglect the potential for all spaces to be existentially meaningful. Informed by phenomenological methodology, data were collected from a diverse group of people, using photo-elicitation and interviews. The technique of photo-elicitation proved to be highly effective in helping people reveal their everyday lived experience of contemplative spaces. Reflective analysis (Van Manen 2000) was used to explore the data collected. The initial stage of analysis produced three categories of data: varying conceptions of contemplation, aspects of the person involved in the contemplation, and aspects of environment involved in contemplation. From this, it was found that achieving a state of contemplation involves both the person and the environment in a dialectic process of unfolding. The unfolding has various physical, psycho-social, and existential dimensions or qualities which operate sequentially and simultaneously. Two concepts emerged as being central to unfolding: ‘Cleansing’ and ‘Nothingness’. Unfolding is found to comprise the Core; Distinction; Manifestation; Cleansing; Creation; and Sharing. This has a parallel with Mircea Eliade’s (1959) definition of sacred as something that manifests itself as different from the profane. The power of design, re-contextualization through utility and purpose, and the existential engagements between the person and environment are used as a basis for establishing the potential contribution of the study to interior design. In this way, the study makes a contribution to our understanding of how space and its elements inspire, support and sustain person environment interaction – particularly at the existential level – as well as to our understanding of the multi-dimensional and holistic nature of this interaction. In addition, it points to the need for a phenomenological re-conceptualisation of the design/client relationship. In summary, the contributions of this research are: the exploration of contemplative experience as sacred experience; an understanding of the design of space as creating engagement between person and environment; a rationale for the introduction of a phenomenological approach to the relationship between designer and clients; and raising awareness of the spiritual in a holistic approach to design.

Orientador: Benedito Miguel Angelo Perrini Gil / Banca: Eduardo Basto de Albuquerque / Banca: Ivan Esperança Rocha / Banca: Augustin Wernet / Banca: Lauri Emilio Wirth / Resumo: O protestantismo foi um movimento histórico que atuou como força cultural e religiosa no campo religioso nas primeiras décadas da República brasileira. As noções de campo, representação e crença nortearam a pesquisa. O protestantismo foi analisado desde as suas origens, conflitos, números e representações, na sua configuração regional maranhense. O processo de romanização da Igreja Católica no Maranhão definiu estratégias, confrontos e o controle das devoções populares, e determinou dificuldades para os protestantes. As mudanças e transformações ocorridas durante a Primeira República redefiniram os novos centros do sagrado no campo religioso brasileiro. Em busca de posições neste campo, os protestantes construíram sentidos e identidades por meio de instituições e de publicações. O pluralismo evangélico incidiu na pluralidade cultural e religiosa em curso na sociedade brasileira, e articulou, junto com outros movimentos, os discursos da civilização e da modernidade. A crença evangélica em sua interface com a cultura e a religiosidade foi analisada a partir da historiografia sobre o protestantismo, da iconografia do quadro dos Dois Caminhos, da biografia de Miguel Vieira Ferreira e do olhar desinteressado do jornalista João do Rio. As outras faces do sagrado protestante na cultura brasileira foram múltiplas a partir dos paradigmas da crença, das representações, do sujeito e da cultura. / Abstract: The protestantism was a historical movement that acted as a religious and cultural force in the religious field in the first decades of the Brazilian Republic. The notions of field, representation and belief guided the research. The protestantism was analysed from its origins, conflicts, numbers and representations, in its regional configuration in Maranhão. The process of Romanization of the Catholic Church in Maranhão defined the strategies, the conflicts, and the control over popular devotions, and determined difficulties for the protestants. The changes and transformations that occurred during the First Republic redefined the new centers of sacredness in the Brazilian religions field. Searching for positions in this field, the protestantism built meanings and identities through institutions and publications. The evangelical pluralism entered the currently cultural and religious pluralism, and articulated, with other movements, the discourses of civilization and modernity. The evangelical belief and the interface between it and the historiography about the protestantism were analysed from the iconography of the picture “The Narrow and the Broad Way”, from Miguel Vieira Ferreira’s biography and from the journalist João do Rio’s desinterested view. The other faces of the protestant sacredness in Brazilian culture were many, from the paradigms of the belief, the representations, the subject and the culture. / Doutor