Fulfills: Form

If we take ritual to be the social act basic to humanity, as
Rappaport argues, this formal event and  related genres (festival,
carnival, drama, contests, pilgrimage), provide an arena for the
exploration of a group’s definition of itself, its relationship to
others, and the organization of the group itself. Equally important,
it provides the social response to contradiction which occurs within
or without. The ritual genres intensify and condense communication,
creating an experimental technology, in the words of the Comaroffs,
to affect the flow of power in the universe, to plumb the
magicalities of modernity. Because the ritual genres occur in social
space, they engage with issues involving public culture. Whether
weddings, football games, political conventions, funerals, or
celebrations of the seasons or the saints, the ritual genres involve
performance and participation and a public. In contemporary global
culture, the ritual genres are increasingly providing the resources
for public, commercial,
and global competitions and performances.

Using theories of ritual, power, politics and public culture, the
course will consider the production of ritual, the form itself, its
discourse, and the actual performance. Selected studies will
concentrate on the public context of ritual and festival,
participation of specific populations, and the outcomes, planned and
unplanned. Linking ritual to public culture, the course explores it
as a response to contradiction in social, economic, and political
life, which expresses and shapes ideologies, beliefs, and practices
in everyday life. We will consider specific events and how they
embody and respond to politics, tourism, history, gender, the state,
religion. Examples will address the global and the local. Studies
may include rites of passage (traditional ones and newly created
ones), historical celebrations, music festivals, religious rituals,
occupational festivals.

Ethnographic studies will be cross-cultural. One study will be a
literary form that incorporates one of the ritual genres.

Two papers will be required: one 10 page paper and one 20 page
paper. Weekly responses (written) will be required.
Readings will be announced