Researching preaching beyond the (transcribed) text in (South) Africa

In (South) Africa, preaching should in addition to textual studies of recorded and transcribed sermon texts, also be studied as an enacted performance and thus beyond the transcribed text. This article develops an argument regarding the need for the field of Homiletics in (South) Africa to firstly broaden the object of empirical homiletical research and study preaching as an enacted or performed liturgical ritual and secondly, augment its existing research methodologies accordingly. Such a methodology will take African epistemologies and ontologies more seriously than traditional methodologies that only study transcribed texts and to a large extent ignore the significance of the performance of the sermon. Recent methodological developments in Liturgical Studies can be helpful in this regard and a discussion between the two disciplines are encouraged, as well as insights gained from other fields such as Ritual – and Performance Studies. The article ends with some implications that the broadening of the research object may have for homiletical research methods in Africa.

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Text and Stage: Shakespeare, Bibliography, and Performance Studies

New Theatre Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0266464x00007764 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 9 (34) ◽

pp. 179-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Graham Holderness ◽

Bryan Loughrey

Keyword(s):

Performance Studies ◽

Traditional Practices ◽

Textual Studies ◽

Stage Directions ◽

Theatrical Practice ◽

And Performance ◽

Harvester Wheatsheaf ◽

The University ◽

Comparative Examination ◽

Research Director

This article continues the debate initiated by Brian Parker, who in NTQ24 (1990) offered a critique of the new Oxford Shakespeare, and one of its editors, Stanley Wells, who responded in NTQ 26 (1991) with a defence of his departure from traditional practices of textual conflation. Here, Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey suggest that, on a closer examination, there is evidence that editorial intervention and conflation have been regularly employed in the Oxford edition: and in arguing against all such attempts to reconstruct ‘authoritative’ texts, they propose that, in their inevitable absence, the originals present the closest we are likely to approach to recreating the collaborative theatrical practice of Shakespeare's time. In illustrating the effects of editorial intervention from a close comparative examination of particular passages, they suggest, for example, that the stage directions make a shovel a likelier object of Hamlet's graveside contemplation than Yorick's skull. Graham Holderness, newly-appointed Professor and Dean of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, and Bryan Loughrey, Research Director at Roehampton Institute, have recently begun, through the Centre for Textual Studies, a programme of publishing accessible reprints of the important early editions, of which the first three have now appeared from Harvester Wheatsheaf.

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Multi-species ethnography: methodological training in the field in South Africa

Journal of Organizational Ethnography ◽

10.1108/joe-05-2020-0020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 343-363

Author(s):

Harry Wels

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Research Methods ◽

Design Methodology ◽

Ethnographic Research ◽

Research Methodologies ◽

Content Type ◽

Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽

Lessons Learnt ◽

And Training

PurposeTo further develop research methodologies for multi-species ethnographic fieldwork, based on researcher's experiences with multi-species fieldwork in private wildlife conservancies in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques.Design/methodology/approachReflections on methodological lessons learnt during multi-species ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa. The approach is rather “Maanenesque” in telling various types of tales of the field. These tales also implicitly show how all-encompassing ethnographic fieldwork and its accompanying reflexivity are; there is never time for leisure in ethnographic fieldwork.FindingsThat developing fieldwork methodologies in multi-species ethnographic research confronts researchers with the explicit need for and training in multi-sensory methods and interpretations, inspired by “the art of tracking” of the San.Originality/valueComes up with a concrete suggestion for a sequence of research methods for multi-species ethnography based on the trials and tribulations of a multi-species ethnographer's experiences in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques.

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Researching children’s play and contemporary art

Practice-based Research in Children's Play ◽

10.1332/policypress/9781447330035.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Megan Dickerson

Keyword(s):

Contemporary Art ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Art Museum ◽

Research Methodologies ◽

Children's Museum ◽

Alternative Research ◽

And Performance ◽

Contemporary Artist ◽

Learning Through Play ◽

Conceptual Work

The New Children’s Museum is a museum in which each ‘exhibit’ is a conceptual work of art by a contemporary artist, commissioned by the museum as a springboard for playful experiences. Neither a children’s museum, where the focus is on learning through play, nor a standard contemporary art museum, The New Children’s Museum is a hybrid space that calls for new ways of doing research, requiring tools that can go beyond positivist and ethnographic approaches. This review assembles examples of alternative research methodologies, drawn from diverse practices such as performance studies and performance art, that may contribute to mapping the complexities presented by a children’s museum that also actively engages in the production of contemporary art. It includes some experiments with a/r/tography, and in conclusion offers a method assemblage that might be termed ‘ludo-artographic’.

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FROM TRANCE DANCE TO PaR: THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES IN SOUTH AFRICA

Trends in Twenty-First-Century African Theatre and Performance ◽

10.1163/9789401200820_010 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 171-188 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Performance Studies ◽

And Performance

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Cultural Labour

10.1093/oso/9780199490813.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brahma Prakash

Keyword(s):

Conceptual Framework ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Life Experience ◽

Social Hierarchies ◽

Folk Performance ◽

And Performance ◽

The Relationship

Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves these communities to present what they feel, think, imagine, and want to see? Can such performances challenge social hierarchies and ensure justice in a caste-ridden society? In Cultural Labour, the author studies bhuiyan puja (land worship), bidesia (theatre of migrant labourers), Reshma-Chuharmal (Dalit ballads), dugola (singing duels) from Bihar, and the songs and performances of Gaddar, who was associated with Jana Natya Mandali, Telangana: he examines various ways in which meanings and behaviour are engendered in communities through rituals, theatre, and enactments. Focusing on various motifs of landscape, materiality, and performance, the author looks at the relationship between culture and labour in its immediate contexts. Based on an extensive ethnography and the author’s own life experience as a member of such a community, the book offers a new conceptual framework to understand the politics and aesthetics of folk performance in the light of contemporary theories of theatre and performance studies.

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Cultural History, Ritual and Performance: George L. Mosse in Context

Journal of Contemporary History ◽

10.1177/0022009420940033 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002200942094003

Author(s):

Peter Burke

Keyword(s):

Political Culture ◽

Early Modern ◽

Cultural History ◽

Performance Studies ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

History Of ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽

Modern Europe ◽

And Performance ◽

Cultural Turn

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.

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