Cultural Studies:

(4 Credits)

This course examines old and recent performances of divination, their acts of reading, and contexts of study. These include the semiotics of discerning celestial and organic worlds, and collective orientations towards the future, stories of creation and apocalypse, speech acts of prophecy, and materials of talismanic use. We will study histories of quotidian everyday rituals, trials and tests, along with acts deemed implausible, ridiculous, heretical and miraculous, to ask how and why divinatory practices have been needful, authorized or persecuted. We will consider the work that acts of divination have performed under colonial administration, feudal and agrarian transitions to capitalism, relations of enclosure, property and extractivism, and within regimes of political power and social hierarchy, the control of reproductive labor and kinship. In doing so, we will critically reassess performance studies’ roots in the study of ritual. We will also question how esoteric, spiritualist and speculative practices have been studied in anthropology, iconology and history, used as avant-garde and experimental techniques in visual, media and performing arts, and commercialized in popular ritual cultures. Expect to parse excerpts from the Bible, I-Ching, accounts of juridical proceedings, works of visual and live performance and scholarly writing from history, art history, anthropology, medieval and environmental studies. This class will not promote any particular cultural or religious practices, nor does it encourage or emphasize practical magic. This is a seminar based on reading and analytical discussion with a final research paper.