Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

The Spiritual Migrants Of Sogenji: Notes Of Participant Observation In A Rinzai Zen Temple, Andrei-Razvan Coltea

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Anomie is a cultural pathology that is becoming chronic in the West, characterized by the erosion of values, disintegration and deregulation. Amongst its symptoms we find anxiety, isolation, depression, tribalism, incoherence and loss of meaning. Individuo-globalism is a new ideology that permeates the religious market created by globalisation, encouraging individuals to discover, nurture and express their ‘true self’. This new spirituality forms the background for a journey that our ‘heroes’, a handful of non-Japanese inhabitants of a Japanese Rinzai Zen monastery, have been undertaking for years in search of the philosopher’s stone that could cure anomie and its symptoms. At …

Reimagining Yiddishkeit: Place And Belonging In A Modern Orthodox Synagogue Community, Joshua Jacoves

Senior Theses and Projects

This is a study of the disruption of place and belonging in an urban, multi-generational, Modern Orthodox Jewish community in the Northeastern United States. It asks how members define themselves as part of a religious community. Living within walking distance of their synagogue, members build community based upon shared space. In order to embrace a more pluralistic community, local leaders in the past ten years have been pushing the boundary on what is and is not religiously allowed. This creates new, more inclusive spaces to be formed within this community, which fall along the lines of gender, sexuality, and religious …

An Ethnography Of Voodoo Tourism And Heritage Sites In New Orleans, Lousiana, Bryant Long

Master of Arts in Art and Design Theses

This thesis considers how Voodoo is presented and experienced in various tourism and heritage sites within New Orleans in the present moment. A variety of visual representations, verbal narratives and multimedia performances were documented and analyzed through participant observation. Current tourism relies on the city’s ghost stories, mythology, as well as Voodoo practices and lore, raising questions about the melding of fact and fiction in the potential perpetuation of sensational ideas about the city and its African heritage. Cultural sites discussed in this thesis include Congo Square, the New Orleans Voodoo Museum, Voodoo Authentica, the New Orleans Museum of Art, …

Different Versions Of Myself, Anya Smith

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This is a research-informed screenplay exploring the relationship between religion and recreational pole dancing. While the popularity of recreational pole dancing has grown over the last two decades, it remains a controversial topic in some circles. This study employed interviews, autoethnography, and a literature review to examine the tensions between pole dancing and religion. Creative Analytic Practice was employed as a method of evaluating and presenting the research, which culminated in a fictional screenplay.

The story is about Louise, a young woman caught between two worlds. She feels pressured to conceal her recreational pole dancing activities in order to retain …

Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, And Appearance In Indonesia, Patricia Spyer

Art & Visual Culture

Less than a year after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998, huge images of Jesus Christ and other Christian scenes proliferated on walls and billboards around a provincial town in eastern Indonesia where conflict had arisen between Muslims and Christians. A manifestation of the extreme perception that emerged amid uncertainty and the challenge to seeing brought on by urban warfare, the street paintings erected by Protestant motorbike-taxi drivers signaled a radical departure from the aniconic tradition of the old colonial church, a desire to be seen and recognized by political authorities from Jakarta to the UN and European Union, …

The Effects Of Racialization On Sikhs In America: An Intersectional Approach, Harsirjan K. Roopra

Senior Theses

Sikhs have been largely ignored in the literature surrounding social justice and religious tolerance. The many pressures Sikhs face, and the social assumptions that lead to them, must be brought into the broader conversation on these issues so that educators and politicians might help support the well-being of the Sikh community. Sikh identity has been misinterpreted and redefined in modern day American society. The lack of cultural and religious literacy of many Americans, coupled with Sikhs’ distinct visible identity, has led to xenophobic violence against Sikhs since their arrival in the U.S. more than a century ago. The root of …

Born-Again On Sundays: Exploring Narratives Of Belief And Performances In A Belizean Methodist Church, Katharine Serio

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

If you are only at church services on Sunday and do not actively practice your religious faith every day, are you “born again” every day? Reverend Rebecca Lewis of Wesley Methodist Church in a small town in Belize preaches active participation in the church and encourages her congregation to attend all religious events, pray rigorously, and read the Bible actively, but how does the congregation listen to her and react to her sermons? “Born-Again on Sundays” is an ethnographic account that draws on anthropological theories of belief and vernacular religion, performance and narrative, and poverty and reflexivity to explore the …

Religious Schism: A Case Study Of Social And Political Critique In Sāmoa, Alexis M. M. Zilen

Student Publications

Examining religious schism within Sāmoa in order to demonstrate that schism of Christianity within Sāmoa, of charismatic-Pentecostal churches from traditional mainline churches, represents a social critique. By unifying under a reformed church environment, which mimics existing religious and cultural systems, Sāmoans are challenging their economic, social, and political positionality, while upholding the traditional framework of the fa’aSāmoa, Sāmoan way of life. This work highlights how individuals within Sāmoa navigate increasingly complex social, political, and economic power dynamics. Much of the focus of explores how individuals exercise religious agency, formulated through a created Sāmoan cosmology, to challenge larger structures of oppression …

The Segregation Of Religion: How Othering Influences Society’S Narrative Understanding About The Symbiotic Relationship Among Racism, Sexism, And The Church, Ajanet Rountree

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The social dependence on the sociology of male spiritual leadership is substantial. This dependence accomplishes two ideas: neutralizes the feminine experience and obviates the anthropological implications of religion in the perpetuation of oppression and subjugation. When considering racism and sexism in religion, specifically as they relate to the Black Christian church, a dismissal of accusations and assertions occurs by yielding to the context of the social era. This paper seeks to further clarify the position of women, who pushed against the grain of the gendered and racialized spaces of their churches and communities, as they sought to establish human rights …

For The Wild: Ritual And Commitment In Radical Eco-Activism By Sarah M. Pike, Alda Balthrop-Lewis

The Goose

Review of Sarah M. Pike's For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism

Mind Over (What Doesn’T) Matter: De-Stigmatizing Mental Health From Senegalese Women’S Perspectives, Jenna Marks

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As a matrilocal and collectivist society, Dakar is an urban space where the woman is at the center. With this in mind, it is possible to understand all the pressures women in urban Senegalese society face. Women are the center of the household, thus being responsible for the family, finances, and the social aspect of welcoming visitors. In addition to these factors, women in Senegal also deal with community expectations and responsibilities since there is larger emphasis on the community, rather than the nuclear family in Senegalese society. This paper examines how these two aspects of Senegalese society (matrilocality and …

The Quest Of Vision: Visual Culture, Sacred Space, Ritual, And The Documentation Of Lived Experience Through Rock Imagery, Aaron Robert Atencio

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This document will approach the multifaceted concepts that arise through the study of rock art and the cultivation of culture and belief through vision. Through this document the audience will encounter conceptual ideas regarding belief systems, ritual, experience, cognition, sacredness, and space/landscape — and how these are all essential dynamics that take place in the processes that cultivate the Shoshone visual culture. This document will employ an anthropological lens on the mentioned subject matters, while also approaching these concepts with an interdisciplinary curiosity of how they intermingle; creating a cohesive experience that focuses on these processes which empowered these people[s] …

Ohio River Survey (Fa 656), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 656. Kentucky Folklife Program project titled: “Ohio River Survey,” which includes interviews, tape logs, photographs and other documentation of folklife along the Ohio River in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Interviews may include a description of belief, traditional occupation, practice, craft, or tool, informant’s name, age, birth date, and address.

10. Education, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

CORE

As constituents of academia, our students are surrounded by educational systems and models. This module seeks to broaden their horizons regarding educational systems and the process of learning, ranging from individual to societal to global levels. Two leadership theories (transformational and situational) are observed in this module as well as how education and leadership can combine in an effective manner.

Rappaport, Roy (1926-97), Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

Natura Sanat: On Ecological Aspects Of Healing Miracles In Kalwaria Pacławska, Poland, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska

Journal of Global Catholicism

The subject-matter of my article is a change affecting the discourse on miraculous healings in a Catholic Marian sanctuary – Kalwaria Pacławska – run by Franciscan friars in the South-Eastern Poland and a way in which those changes affect pilgrims’ bodies. In Kalwaria Pacławska there meet, intersect and compete various religious and secular discourses and they all influence emotions and bodily sensations accompanying pilgrimage to this sacred site. One of those discourses has been introduced to Kalwaria just recently. The central element of the sanctuary is the miraculous image of Virgin Mary which is the goal of numerous pilgrimages from …

Gender And Religion In A Shifting Social Landscape: Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Practices, Ad 600-700, Caroline Palmer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

My thesis examines seventh-century East Anglian mortuary practices and cross-correlates grave goods and human remains to determine whether there was an expression of the sexual division of labor during this period of social and religious change. I argue that gender roles changed as a result of adopting kingdoms and Christianity. Prior to this time period, Anglo-Saxons were primarily pagan and were buried with extensive burial goods. In addition to changes in religious and burial practices, during the Final Phase (600-700 AD) there appears to have been a division of labor that was not as dichotomous in the Migration Phase (450-600 …

Selection Perception: Views On The Theory Of Evolution Among Residents Of Moshi, Tanzania, Robin Waterman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The theory of evolution is a major tenet of biological science and has many practical applications, particularly in agriculture, medicine, and conservation. Nevertheless, there is significant opposition to the theory and its incorporation into school curricula, largely on religious grounds. This disconnect between public opinion and scientific opinion has been studied at length in the US and to some extent in other industrialized nations, but little is known about the issue in other communities around the world. This paper will use the town of Moshi, Tanzania as a case study in community views and knowledge about the theory of evolution. …

The Shari'a Courts Of Mogadishu: Beyond "African Islam" And "Islamic Law", Ahmed Ibrahim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, based on a year and eight months of fieldwork, is a historical ethnography of a Shari‘a-based movement which appeared in Mogadishu, Somalia within a year after the complete disintegration of the central government in 1991. The movement originated when religious authorities and “traditional” elders established centers in various neighborhoods in Mogadishu to deal with the vacuum of power after the fall of the state. Since Shari‘a structures of authority and discourse were integral to the formation and functioning of the centers, they became known as Shari‘a courts. My work on the Shari‘a courts intervenes in the literature on …

Factors That Influence How Sunni Muslims In Western Michigan Perceive Violence, Joyce Busch

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Decisionmakers in organizations like the Department of Defense and the State Department rely on accurate information to develop strategies to engage foreign populations. There is gap in understanding how perceptions are formed in religious adherents, specifically understanding how Muslims determine if violence is an acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Informed by Hobföll's conservation of resources theory of stress, the purpose of this case study was to identify and understand the religious and secular factors that influenced a group of Sunni Muslims in Western Michigan to accept or reject violent behaviors. Research questions focused on how this population's perception of violence was …

The Acoustics Of Justice: Music And Myth In Afro-Brazilian Congado, Genevieve E. Dempsey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

For the Afro-Brazilian musicians of popular Catholicism, or Congadeiros, who live precariously on the urban and rural margins of Brazil, ritual undergirds their struggles for subsistence, spiritual fulfillment, and racial equality. When Congadeiros create ritual, they enter into a tradition begun in the seventeenth century in Brazil by their enslaved African and Afro-descendant ancestors who intoned songs of redemption. In keeping with their ancestors’ evocations of dignity during slavery, worshipers in the present day embed multiple kinds of vested interests within ritual festivity to achieve racial equality. This article explores Congado, the ceremonies of these disenfranchised musicians, to …

Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …

Image Of Yoga: Instagram, Identity, And Western Imagination, Brigid Nell Boll

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Abstract

This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …

"It's Getting Gangsa Up In Here": Balinese Gamelan In The Western Academy, Ruadhan Davis Ward

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Media Representation Of Islam And Muslims In Southern Appalachia, Saundra K. Reynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content …

Occupy Judaism: Religion, Digital Media, And The Public Sphere, Ayala Fader, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides an analysis of Occupy Judaism, an explicitly religious expression of Jewish protest, which occurred simultaneously with Occupy Wall Street, the direct-democracy movement of 2011. Occupy Judaism, like Occupy Wall Street, took place both in physical spaces of protest in New York City and digitally, through mobilizing and circulating debate. The article focuses on the words and actions of Daniel Sieradski, the public face and one of the key founders of Occupy Judaism, supplemented by the experiences of others in Occupy Judaism, Occupy Wall Street, and Occupy Faith (a Protestant clergy-led initiative). We investigate what qualified as religion …

Proof Of Heaven?: Controversy Over Near-Death Experiences In American Christianity, Joel Sanford

The Hilltop Review

Testimonies claiming firsthand experience of Life after Death have been circulating in many cultures since antiquity. Among these experiences are those occurring at, near, or beyond the point of death or apparent death. Testimonies of this kind of experience, now widely referred to as a Near-death Experience (NDE), were popularized by Raymond Moody's publication of Life after Life in 1975. In the last 10 years, it seems there has been a growing American public interest in these experiences, resulting in a slew of New York Times best-sellers. With such provocative titles as Proof of Heaven and Heaven is for Real …