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THE GENDERED ALTAR: WICCAN CONCEPTS OF GENDER AND RITUAL OBJECTS
Title
THE GENDERED ALTAR: WICCAN CONCEPTS OF GENDER AND RITUAL OBJECTS.
Creator
Sloan, Jesse, Zorn, Elayne, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Many ethnographic accounts within the annals of anthropological literature describe the religious beliefs and magical rituals of peoples throughout the world. Fewer scholars have focused on the relatively young Neo-Pagan religious movement. "Neo-Pagan," explains Helen Berger in Voices from the Pagan Census (2003), "is an umbrella term covering sects of a new religious movement, the largest and most important form of which is…Wicca" (Berger et al. 2003: 1). This thesis examines the...
Show moreMany ethnographic accounts within the annals of anthropological literature describe the religious beliefs and magical rituals of peoples throughout the world. Fewer scholars have focused on the relatively young Neo-Pagan religious movement. "Neo-Pagan," explains Helen Berger in Voices from the Pagan Census (2003), "is an umbrella term covering sects of a new religious movement, the largest and most important form of which is…Wicca" (Berger et al. 2003: 1). This thesis examines the relationship between practice and ideology by analyzing the material culture of Wiccan altars as used by Wiccans in Central Florida, USA. Particular attention is paid to beliefs concerning concepts of gender associated with ritual objects, and concepts of gender and sexuality as understood by practitioners. Many Wiccans see divinity as manifested in two complementary beings: the Goddess and the God. The fertility that these divine beings achieve through sexual union is the subject of an elaborate ritual called the Great Rite. A pair of Wiccans, often a masculine High Priest and a feminine High Priestess, conduct this ritual by manipulating specific objects, which are believed to be strongly gendered. I argue that Wiccan rituals reflect, construct, and reinforce the Wiccan precept of a gender-balanced cosmos through the interaction of these primary ritual actors and the gendered objects they manipulate. As a practicing Wiccan, my theoretical approach is aligned with that of the native scholar. The native scholar faces challenges distancing her or himself from research, but gains opportunities from insider knowledge. Wiccan ideology stands in contrast to heteronormative conventions of gender and sexuality. However, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Wiccans may need to actively negotiate for representation in this movement, where fertility is stressed. Wiccans continuously reinvent established practices in an attempt to create a more satisfying religious community.
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Date Issued
2008
Identifier
CFE0002176, ucf:47525
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002176
Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures in the Age of Convergent Technologies
Title
Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures in the Age of Convergent Technologies.
Creator
Powell, Daniel, McDaniel, Rudy, Campbell, James, Brenckle, Martha, Arnzen, Michael, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The first two decades of the new millennium have witnessed an abundance of change in the areas of textual production, digital communication, and our collective engagement with the Internet. This study explores these changes, which have yielded both positive and negative cultural and developmental outcomes, as products of digital dissonance. Dissonance is characterized by the disruptive consequences inherent in technology's incursion into the print publication cultures of the twentieth century...
Show moreThe first two decades of the new millennium have witnessed an abundance of change in the areas of textual production, digital communication, and our collective engagement with the Internet. This study explores these changes, which have yielded both positive and negative cultural and developmental outcomes, as products of digital dissonance. Dissonance is characterized by the disruptive consequences inherent in technology's incursion into the print publication cultures of the twentieth century, the explosion in social-media interaction that is changing the complexion of human contact, and our expanding reliance on the World Wide Web for negotiating commerce, culture, and communication.This study explores digital dissonance through the prism of an emerging literary subgenre called technohorror. Artists working in the area of technohorror are creating works that leverage the qualities of plausibility, mundanity, and surprise to tell important stories about how technology is altering the human experience in the twenty-first century. This study explores such subjects as paradigmatic changes in textual production methods, dynamic authorial hybridity, digital materiality in folklore studies, posthumanism, transhumanism, cognitive diminution, and physical degeneration as explored in works of technohorror.The work's rhetorical architecture includes elements of both theoretical and qualitative research. This project expands on City University of New York philosophy professor No(&)#235;l Carroll's definition of art-horror in developing a formal explanation of technohorror and then exploring that literary subgenre through the analysis of a series of contemporary texts and industry-related trends. The study also contains original interviews with active scholars, artists, editors, and librarians in the horror field to gain a variety of perspectives on these complicated subjects.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006642, ucf:51231
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006642