Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display
Author: Cristina Sánchez Carretero
Publisher: Universidad de Alcala
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13:
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Public Performances
Author: Jack Santino
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2017-12-15
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1607326353
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPublic Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power. Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms—an act of popular sovereignty. Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed—or at least intended—by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change. Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
We are what We Celebrate
Author: Amitai Etzioni
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2004-12
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 0814722261
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchange presents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this fascinating exploration into the history and meaning of holidays and rituals. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, one of the most influential social and political thinkers of our time, this collection provides a compelling overview of the impact that holidays and rituals have on our family and communal life. From community solidarity to ethnic relations to religious traditions, We Are What We Celebrate argues that holidays such as Halloween, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day play an important role in reinforcing, and sometimes redefining, our values as a society. The collection brings together classic and original essays that, for the first time, offer a comprehensive overview and analysis of the important role such celebrations play in maintaining a moral order as well as in cementing family bonds, building community relations and creating national identity. The essays cover such topics as the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday; the importance of holidays for children; the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa; and the controversy over Columbus Day celebrations. Compelling and often surprising, this look at holidays and rituals brings new meaning to not just the ways we celebrate but to what those celebrations tell us about ourselves and our communities. Contributors: Theodore Caplow, Gary Cross, Matthew Dennis, Amitai Etzioni, John R. Gillis, Ellen M. Litwicki, Diana Muir, Francesca Polletta, Elizabeth H. Pleck, David E. Proctor, Mary F. Whiteside, and Anna Day Wilde.
Grassroots Memorials
Author: Peter Jan Margry
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2011-08-01
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0857451901
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGrassroots memorials have become major areas of focus during times of trauma, danger, and social unrest. These improvised memorial assemblages continue to display new and more dynamic ways of representing collective and individual identities and in doing so reveal the steps that shape the national memories of those who struggle to come to terms with traumatic loss. This volume focuses on the hybrid quality of these temporary memorials as both monuments of mourning and as focal points for protest and expression of discontent. The broad range of case studies in this volume include anti-mafia shrines, Theo van Gogh’s memorial, September 11th memorials, March 11th shrines in Madrid, and Carlo Giuliani memorials in Genoa.
Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death
Author: J. Santino
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-04-30
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 1137120215
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is an edited volume of approximately 17 essays that deal with various types of spontaneous shrines and other, related public memorializations of death. The articles address events such as New York after 9/11; roadside crosses, and the use of 'Day of the Dead' altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants.
Labor's Millennium
Author: Brett H. Smith
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2010-01-01
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 1606080679
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHistorians have traditionally interpreted the American land-grant higher-education movement as the result of political and economic forces. Little attention has been given, however, to any explicit or implicit theological motivations for the movement. This book tells the story of how the Christian belief of many founders of the University of Illinois motivated their educational theory and practice. Constructing a social gospel of labor's millennium (their shorthand for God's kingdom being enhanced through agricultural and mechanical education), they initially proposed that the university would impart a millenarian blessing for the larger society by providing abundant food, economic prosperity, vocational dignity, and a charitable spirit of sacred unity and public service. Rich in primary-source research, Smith's account builds a compelling case for at least one such institution's adaptation of an inherited evangelical educational tradition, transitioning into a new era of higher learning that has left its mark on university life today.
Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland
Author: Sheila M. Young
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2019-10-11
Total Pages: 221
ISBN-13: 1793603871
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe hen (or bachelorette) party, with its groups of visible, raucous women on trains, planes, and in public spaces is ubiquitous throughout the English-speaking world. The practice of the blackening, a unique form of kidnapping and “punishment” ritual, is limited to North Eastern parts of Scotland and to specific sectors of the population. Both are prenuptial rituals enacted by women. In Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland, Sheila Young produces a thorough description of how these two rituals were and are enacted and analyzes the ways these practices have changed through time as a social commentary. Young’s study provides valuable insights into identity, gender, social class, contemporary attitudes to ritual, and what it means to approach marriage in the twenty first century.
Something Old, Something Bold
Author: Beth Montemurro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2006-04-11
Total Pages: 243
ISBN-13: 0813539447
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWeddings in the United States are often extravagant, highly ritualized, and costly affairs. In this book, Beth Montemurro takes a fresh look at the wedding process, offering a perspective not likely to be found in the many planning books and magazines readily available to the modern bride. Montemurro draws upon years of ethnographic research to explore what prenuptial events mean to women participants and what they tell us about the complexity and ambiguity of gender roles. Through the bachelorette party and the bridal shower, the bride-to-be is initiated into the role of wife by her friends and family, who present elaborate scenarios that demonstrate both what she is sacrificing and what she is gaining. Montemurro argues that American society at the turn of the twenty-first century is still married to traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity and that prenuptial rituals contribute to the stabilization of gender inequalities
Enacting History
Author: Scott Magelssen
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2011-03-18
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 0817356541
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEnacting History is a collection of new essays exploring the world of historical performances. The volume focuses on performances outside the traditional sphere of theatre, among them living history museums, battle reenactments, pageants, renaissance festivals, and adventure-tourism destinations. This volume argues that the recent surge in such performances have raised significant questions about the need for, interest in, and value of such nontraditional theater. Many of these performances claim a greater or lesser degree of historical "accuracy" or "authenticity," and the authors tease out the representational and historiographic issues related to these arguments. How, for instance, are issues of race, ethnicity, and gender dealt with at museums that purport to be accurate windows into the past? How are politics and labor issues handled in local- or state-funded institutions that rely on volunteer performers? How do tourists' expectations shape the choices made by would-be purveyors of the past? Where do matters of taste or censorship enter in when reconciling the archival evidence with a family-friendly mission? Essays in the collection address, among other subjects, reenactments of period cookery and cuisine at a Maryland renaissance festival; the roles of women as represented at Minnesota's premiere living history museum, Historic Fort Snelling; and the Lewis and Clark bicentennial play as cultural commemoration. The editors argue that historical performances like these-regardless of their truth-telling claims-are an important means to communicate, document, and even shape history, and allow for a level of participation and accessibility that is unique to performance. Enacting History is an entertaining and informative account of the public's fascination with acting out and watching history and of the diverse methods of fulfilling this need.
Festivities, Ceremonies, and Rituals in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in the Late Middle Ages
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2022-07-04
Total Pages: 423
ISBN-13: 9004514015
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book deals with various examples and aspects of rituals and ceremonies in the late medieval Bohemian lands. The individual contributions explore particular rituals (coronation, wedding, funeral) or environments (cities, nobility, court, church).
