Performance, Arts, and Religion
The Performance, Arts, and Religion concentration (PAR) in the Graduate Division of Religion will support and train doctoral students who intend to research topics related to the complex relationship between the arts, performance and religion. The concentration will guide students to integrate the theoretical study of religion (including ritual, affect theory, aesthetics and performance studies) with art traditions (including music, dance, and visual arts) in diverse cultural and regional contexts. The concentration will foster students to become astute analysts of performance traditions and perhaps also performers/practitioners themselves.
The emerging field of performance studies investigates the diverse ways that cultural ideals and symbolic meanings are conveyed through the arts with deep emotional impact and effective social power. Worship, liturgy, and ritual—all basic components of religious systems—depend upon performance skills and associated artistic traditions. Religious Studies analyzes ritual through assumptions about performance, but new trends in Performance Studies complicate and nuance these assumptions which rested on a binary division of thought/action. Performance is crucial not only for its emotive and affective power, but also for its bringing into focus the issues of aesthetics, agency, intentionality, and symbolic communication during religious events.
Arts and performance demand an inherently interdisciplinary approach, utilizing a multiplicity of methods and theoretical constructs. Emory University is well positioned in terms of capacity and resources to nurture this concentration, which will foster closer cooperation between the GDR and programs in Music, Theater and Dance, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. It will also foster cooperation with Emory’s Center for Creativity and the Arts.
Goals
- To give GDR students competency in analyzing artistic traditions in relation to religious traditions and events.
- To increase GDR students’ capacity to teach and research at the intersection of performance studies, aesthetics, and religion.
- To foster a community of scholars at Emory—both students and faculty—who are practitioner-analysts.
- To equip GDR students to integrate arts and performance skills into their intellectual profile and academic research.
Opportunities
- Regular gatherings (including colloquy and performances) with faculty, students and performers to share artistic insights, hone observation and analysis skills, and discuss emerging theories of performance.
- Build community of students with shared interests and complementary skills in performance, arts and religion, and better connect with colleagues beyond Emory.
- Acquire insight into topics, concerns, theories, and methods of enquiry related to the interdisciplinary field of performance and religion— including those that question or challenge dominant Western academic assumptions.
- Guide students in the GDR to incorporate music, dance, theater and visual art into their future pedagogy.
- Support students as they engage artistic traditions in their dissertations and incorporate performances into their research, presentations and publications.
Requirements
Students must take two seminars (one core seminar and one elective) and also engage an artistic tradition through analysis, documentation or practice.
The core seminar is a specially designed seminar on “Performance Arts and Religion” that all students in the concentration must take; it may be taught in rotation by various faculty who are members of the concentration.
The second seminar is an elective on a topic related to ritual, ethnography or performance theory; the concentration coordinator will maintain a list of seminars that are relevant and students will be expected to tailor their writing for the seminar to address the arts and performance.
Each student must also engage an artistic or performance tradition, taking advantage of the music ensembles, dance troops, theater companies, museums or other institutions on campus or in the wider Atlanta community. Engaging a tradition may mean practicing that artistic tradition, analyzing its performances or products, or documenting communities of artists and performers. This engagement must be over two semesters and will be for credit through directed study, ensemble courses, or TATTO credit; the rationale behind this requirement is that practical experience engaging an artistic tradition is invaluable in building academic expertise.
After coursework and exams, students in the concentration are expected to design their dissertation topic to engage on the study of religion in the arts and performance.
Concentration Advisor
