Can a Song Save the World? the Dynamics of Protest Music, Spirituality, and Violence in the Context of the ‘War on Terror’
Can a Song Save the World? The Dynamics of Protest Music, Spirituality, and Violence in the Context of the ‘War on Terror’ Lauren Michelle Levesque Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Theology, Saint Paul University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate in Theology Ottawa, Canada December 31, 2012 © Lauren Michelle Levesque, Ottawa, Canada 2012 Abstract Can a Song Save the World? The Dynamics of Protest Music, Spirituality, and Violence in the Context of the ‘War on Terror’ In this dissertation, I construct and apply an adequate approach to the study of contemporary protest music in the discipline of spirituality. The purpose of this construction and application is twofold. First, I emphasize the ambiguity, complexity, and multiplicity of protest music as a genre and as a performance space. Second, I seek to broaden what scholars in spirituality consider valuable and viable examples of protest music in their discipline. By valuable and viable, I mean those examples that can act as sources of insight and as methodological frameworks. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first three chapters address issues of methodology. In Chapter One, I contextualize my research by discussing the history of spiritually-motivated peace activism in the United States. I focus on the capacities to imagine and to build a positive peace in the lives and works of particular activists. The examples explored provide precedents for a consideration of an ‘engaged spirituality’ in the contemporary United States. The spaces created by this spirituality, I propose, can be understood as mirroring those generated in protest music performances.
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