In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, amidst former steel factories, grocery stores, hospitals, and country clubs, on a hillside overlooking Interstate 376 sits an impressive display of ancient Indian architecture: the Sri Venkateswara (SV) Temple, the oldest Hindu Temple constructed in the Penn Hills section of Pittsburgh in 1976. Although living on the opposite side of the globe, diasporic Indians in Pittsburgh reconstruct their home surroundings and rigidly follow the Indian religion, tradition, and culture especially inside the SV Temple. In fact, the SV Temple is a small version of India itself; things that are experienced in daily life in India are reproduced and materialized by priests and devotees every day inside the temple. My fieldwork revealed that immigrant Indians often feel alienated from their host society. Rituals, music and dance concerts, lectures and language classes in the SV Temple provide not only psychological consolation for diasporic Indians, but helps to construct their identities as Indian. In Indian tradition, the boundary between sacred and secular is vague, and diasporic Indians usually express their Indian identities through performance.
In this thesis, I focus on Indian-Americans (especially Hindu Tamils) perceptions of religion and culture by examining musical performances during a ritual ceremony (Venkateswara Abishekam) and a childrens Sunday school session based on fieldwork research conducted in 2006 and 2007. This thesis addresses the following question: What roles do ritual ceremonies and musical practices play in constructing notions of India in Pittsburgh? My findings reveal how essentialized notions of culture have become central to identity construction in diasporic communities. My point is not to present a monolithic view of Indian-Americans perceptions regarding identity, but rather it is to use their individual perceptions of music and culture in order to understand the reality of Indian-American lives in the United States.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04212008-235017 |
Date | 04 June 2008 |
Creators | Eguchi, Yuko |
Contributors | Andrew N. Weintraub, Mathew Rosenblum, Bell Yung, Fred W. Clothey |
Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | text |
Format | application/pdf |
Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04212008-235017/ |
Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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