Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Music

This dissertation examines ''acting in'' as a subaltern tactic though which marginalized Christians from local Oriya villages leverage an ideological and cultural space for practicing and sharing a Christian piety in modern Odisha, India; a region that has experienced significant anti-Christian violence in the past two decades. This research examines the cultural and political work accomplished through two modes of ''acting in'' performances through which specific kinds of performances enable specific kinds of relationships. The first mode of ''acting in'' occurs in the openness of village streets and incorporates highly stylized epic narrative presentations of Christian scriptures realized through song, dance and drama. This ''acting in'' draws on local performance conventions in order to affect a resonance between the audience's experience with similar performances of Hindu epics and the ''acting in'' performances of Christian narratives presented here. This resonance, a domain of experience that Dwight Conquergood calls an ''embodied epistemology'' enables the dramatic presentation of Christian stories - and even the Christians themselves - to be received by villagers as if emanating from a shared past. The political notion of ''acting in'' becomes evident as I demonstrate how the tactics of this first mode of ''acting in'' include a jettisoning of practices deemed foreign. This combination of carefully crafted performance and the absence of foreign cultural markers enables Maranatha Ministries Christians to become accepted in the village - and undifferentiated from their Hindu neighbors. This lack of differentiation produces a functional invisibility to the state and unofficial means of surveillance that might otherwise find it expedient to govern Christians as a distinct social entity. In this way ''acting in'' enables peaceable relations between Maranatha Ministries Christians, their village neighbors, village elders and regional and state authorities (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ryan Skinner (Advisor); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Maurice Stevens (Committee Member); Udo Will (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethnic Studies; Folklore; Music; Peace Studies; Performing Arts; Religion; Religious History