Overview
Author, Dr Tamara D. Turner will discuss and demonstrate highlights from her new book, Dancing at the Thresholds. This book tells the story of communities in Algeria who practice diwan: a nocturnal musical ritual in which practitioners enter various modes of trance to achieve affective "ignition" and emotional release through the body. Seen by other locals as a form of "popular" or "folk" Islam, Algerian diwan exists as a racially identifiable and minority practice embodying centuries of historical trauma rooted in the trans-Saharan slave trade by entwining sub-Saharan pantheons and knowledge with North African religious practices.
Diwan practitioners carefully cultivate a specific atmosphere, or hal, that allows them to reach the trance-like state where music and bodily movements can navigate the gaps between tradition and modernity, the human and nonhuman, and the sacred and the secular. As a whole, this book tells a story about the nature of healing and how wellness depends on the respect of wider, affective ecologies beyond both the individual and the human.
Speaker
Dr Tamara D. Turner is a psychological anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who specialises in the connections between music, consciousness, and mental health, particularly in Sufi and ritual communities of North and West Africa. Since 2008, she has conducted international field research on the ways that music and dance function in healing across cultures. She has held academic posts and fellowships in the US, UK, Algeria, and Germany, publishing award-winning, international research spanning the fields of psychology, cultural theory, African Studies, and music studies.
Details
This event is open to all and free to attend with no need to book.
This is a hybrid event, which will take place in-person in the Gatsby Room (Chancellor's Centre) and also on Zoom.
If you would like to attend online, please register for the Zoom link.
Refreshments will be available for the in-person audience.
Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
Wolfson Humanities Society
The Humanities Society organises regular talks spanning a wide range of topics which take place every Tuesday during term time - please sign up to their mailing list to keep up to date with their upcoming events.
