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During late Nordic iron age there were two main cultures in Scandinavia; the Norse and the Sami.  This essay seeks to do two things. Firstly, to determine differences and similarities in how said cultures viewed liminality, that is the border line, or threshold, between two 'areas'. Secondly, to in one text gather and discuss all these areas where liminality played an important role. If not exactly the same a clear similarity is found in how liminality in the landscape was viewed, but the Norse seems to have found more meaning in the liminality of architecture. Both cultures also found one sex preferable before the other concerning magic, but while the Sami favored men, the Norse thought it women's work. Men taking on a woman's role was, among the Norse, found to be both shameful and dangerous, while the Sami of the age seems to have had no such view.  The Norse and Sami saw power in liminality, in various ways, making use of it in burial, religious ritual and magic.

As seen from cultural history, shape-shifting is a very widespread literary motif, which suggests that it has high inspirational power and general appeal. Shape-shifting has not been critically examined in the detail it merits: it is mostly examined as a part of other theories. Examination of Freud‟s psychological theories and modern literature such as Dracula, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains shows strong connections between the power of this motif and repressed animal instincts – an animal within. This connection usually manifests symbolically rather than as an actual representation of an unearthing of repressed material. There are connections to religious beliefs and a wish to be more than human which raises questions about what is implied by changing into an animal – less than human – shape. The relation between shape-shifting and repression causes an uncanny atmosphere about the motif, something which is used extensively in The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains and Dracula. There is also evidence suggesting the possibility that psychosis and neurosis might manifest as a sort of mental shape-shifting. In literature this can be seen in the were-wolf Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and the Berserkers of the Norse. Examination of the Boggart and Lupin of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and of the Norse berserkers show that the empowerment of shape-shifting mostly lies in control. All of this considered, and with the lack of critical examination in mind, shape-shifting seems severely underestimated and under-examined.

Imagination and fantasy environments created by writers and artists have always drawn people into their worlds. Advances in technology have blurred the lines between reality and imagination. My interest has always been to question the validity of these worlds and their cultures and to transcend the evolving virtual dimension by fusing it with what we perceive to be reality.

Educational institutions have not yet succeeded in their quest to formally educate Aboriginal students with success. In an effort to increase the graduation levels, many school districts have implemented mandates to hire more Aboriginal teachers and administrators. Through sharing her lived experience as an Indigenous elementary principal the researcher argues that although many bureaucratic organizations have formal policies to hire Aboriginal people into leadership positions, they still seek to maintain their power to keep the status quo in their organizations. This qualitative autoethnographic study acknowledges Indigenous ways of knowing through the sharing of stories and experience. The experiences will highlight emotional and cultural struggles that one can face when differing cultures and values emerge in a bureaucratic system based on colonialist viewpoints. Due to the vantage point of an insider, the researcher has traced her life from childhood and shared experiences and stories as a mixed-blood Mohawk woman and leader in the education system. Through an examination of signifying moments these stories depict a personal struggle for identity in her role as a female Mohawk principal in a school with a predominant Aboriginal student population. Chosen stories and incidents are recounted to reveal the social, political, historical, institutional, and cultural systems that are embedded within society. Both the researcher and her mother’s stories are universal in terms of experience that transcends understanding among Aboriginal people who are aiming to create organizational change. This genre of qualitative research will allow the reader to see the ongoing transformation that has occurred in the researcher’s first five years as an administrator in the public school system. Her upbringing and her mother’s teachings are internalized and become the catalyst for navigating through turbulent times and allow for continuing growth as an Indigenous leader in education. / Graduate

This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal matter, manifesting fertile, positive aspects in conjunction with dangerous, negative ones, I show how it was believed to attract supernatural forces within the natural world. It could empower or pollute, restore health or waste corporeal and spiritual existence. While this theme has been studied in a medieval religious context and by anthropologists, its relevance during the early modern period has not been explored. I argue that, considering the impact of the Reformation on people’s mentalities, studying the way in which ideas regarding blood and the body changed from late medieval times to the eighteenth century can provide new insights about patterns of social and religious tensions, such as the witch-trials and persecutions. In this regard the thesis engages with anthropological theories, comparing the dialectic between blood and body with that between identity and society, demonstrating that they both spread from the conflict of life with death, leading to the social embodiment or to the rejection of an individual. A comparative approach is also employed to analyze blood symbolism in Protestant and Catholic countries, and to discuss how beliefs were influenced by both cultural similarities and religious differences. Combining historical sources, such as witches’ confessions, with appropriate examples from anthropology I also examine a corpus of popular ideas, which resisted to theological and learned notions or slowly merged with them. Blood had different meanings for different sections of society, embodying both the physical struggle for life and the spiritual value of the Christian soul. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the dualism of the fluid in late medieval and early modern ritual murder accusations against Jews, European witchcraft and supernatural beliefs and in the medical and philosophical knowledge, while chapters 5 and 6 focus on blood themes in Protestant England and in Counter-Reformation Italy. Through the examination of blood in these contexts I hope to demonstrate that contrasting feelings, fears and beliefs related to dangerous or extraordinary individuals, such as Jews, witches, and Catholic saints, but also superhuman beings such as fairies, vampires and werewolves, were rooted in the perception of the body as an unstable substance, that was at the base of ethnic, religious and gender stereotypes.