Theatre Studies 110 Rites and Rituals

This Subject Guide will help you to find information in your subject area.

The Online Catalogue

A library catalogue tells you which books, journals and audiovisual items are held by that particular library. You can usually search a number of ways, such as by titles, authors, subjects and call numbers.

Useful subjects are:

rites and ceremonies AND (place name) eg Africa
rites (initiation) or (marriage) or (funerals)
rites of passage
You can also search for peoples and cultures eg. Apalakiri Indians; or Samo (Papua New Guinea people).

Don't forget that music, anthropology, dance, religion and culture, social life and customs, festivals and magic all overlap your topic.

To find works by a particular author who deals in ritual studies, try an Author search eg Geertz, Clifford. To find critical or biographical information about an author and his/her works, do a Subject search such as Geertz, Clifford.

Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Here you can find dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies and other ready reference tools which will help you to clarify terms and find background information for your assignment topics. The items listed below are held in Dixson Library. Click here to find the online Encyclopedia page.

There are encyclopedias in Dixson Library on a range of relevant topics eg R203.803/E563 Encyclopedia of religious rites, rituals and festivals or R200.321/E56/2004 Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition.Try a keyword search in the catalogue including religion and encycloped* to locate relevant works or browse the 200s in the Reference collection.

Journals

The National Geographic may be useful for this topic. It is shelved at P910.5/NAT. There is an annual index in the December issues and it is indexed in some of the Indexing tools. Most libraries will carry this publication with the index.