Keffie Weiss

My ideas for my research paper are, at this point, exceedingly preliminary. I have a general problem that I would like to explore, but don't have the particular case study in which to address it. All this prefacing aside, I would like to examine the role of group performance in the mutual constitution and reification of group identity and of the "state". In looking at the textual and material references of group performances, perhaps we can gain insight into the more "bottom up" means of "state" production than the more top-down approaches of previous scholarship. My hope is that through the examination of these practices we might gain insight into the means by which people constitute and produce "statliness" through their bodies. I intend to examine how performance functions to both tie people together and to the landscape (both urban and extra-urban).

In examining performance we must necessarily examine it within its context-- for it is the context that makes it meaningful (a la Smith (2003) in regards to his discussion of authority). The immediate case study in which this issue seems prevalent is the Akitu festival of the Babylonians and the Assyrians (although I might look to examine these processes in another context-- suggestions welcome/encouraged).

Preliminary Bibliography

Bidmead, Julye. 2002. The Akitu Festival: Religious contintuity and Royal Legitimation in Mesopotamia. Gorgias Press: New Jersey

Black, J.A. 1981. "The New Year Ceremonies in Ancient Babylon: 'Taking Bel by the Hand' and a cultic Picnic." Religion 11, 39-59

Carlson, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A critical introduction. Routledge: London

Casey, Edward. Body, Self, and Landscape: A Geophilosophical Inquiry into the Place-World.

Cohen, Mark E. 1993. The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. CDL Press: Bethesda

Eagleton, Terry. 2007. Ideology. Verso: London

Holloway, Stephen. 1995. Harran: Cultic Geography in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its implications for Sennacherib's 'Letter to Hezekiah' in 2 Kings in Holloway, S. and L. Handy (eds.) 1995. The Pitcher is Broken. Sheffield Press: Sheffield

---Assur is King! Assur is King!

Kreppner, Florian Janoscha. 2002. "Public Space in Nature: the Case of Neo-Assyrian Rock Reliefs". Altorientalische Forschungen 29 (2), 367-383

Lumsden, Stephen. 2004. The Production of Space at Nineveh in Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London 7—11 July 2003. D. Collon and A. George (eds). London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 187-197.

Novak. Mirko. 2005. From Ashur to Nineveh: the Assyrian town-planning programme," in Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London 7—11 July 2003. D. Collon and A. George (eds). London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 177-185.

Muir, Edward. 1981. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton University Press: Princeton

Pongraz-Leisten, Beate. 1995. "The Interplay of Military Strategy adn Cultic Practice in Assyrian Politics" in S. Parpola and R.M. Whiting (eds.) Assyria. Helsinki.

---1994. Ina sulmi irub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akitu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr.

Schilling, Chris. 2005. The Body in Culture, Technology, and Society. Sage: London

Smith, Adam T. 2003. The Political Landscape. University of California Press: Berkeley

Sommer, Benjamin. "The Babylonian Akitu Festival: Rectifying the King or Renewing the Cosmos?" The Journal of Near Eastern Society 27 (2000), 81-95

Stronach, David. 1994. Village to Metropolis: Nineveh and the Beginnings of Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia. in Nuove fondazioni nel Vicino Oriente antico: realta e ideologia. Atti del colloquio 4-6 dicembre 1991; Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche del Mondo Antico. Stefania Mazzoni (ed.); Sezione di Egittologia e Scienze Storiche del Vicino Oriente; Università degli studi di Pisa. Giardini: Pisa, 85-114.

--- 1995. Notes on the Topography of Nineveh. in Neo-Assyrian geography. Mario Liverani (ed.); Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” Dipartimento di Scienze storiche, archeologiche e anthropologiche dell’Antichità, Quaderni di Geografia Storica 5: Roma: Sargon srl, 161-170.

Turner, Bryan S. 2000. The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Blackwell: Malden