Date of Award
5-1-2026
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Communication Studies
First Advisor
Anderson, Rebecca
Abstract
This project approaches a long-term experience of living in a cult through a performance studies lens. Utilizing autoethnographic methods, it explores personal insights and observations from years within the inner-circle of a coercive religious environment under tyrannical leadership. A variety of systems and relationships are narrated and analyzed according to three categories: ritualization, deployability, and occupation. Ritualization explains how a body becomes imbued with the rhythms and mantras of a cultic milieu. Deployability describes how this body is put into action at the service of the leadership. Occupation, as a metaphor, illuminates how a cultic subject becomes filled with the needs and desires of the guru. Employing scripts, poetry, song lyrics, and other performance-centered styles, the hidden methods of a totalist religious group are revealed. The project concludes with general observations about cultic groups, and potential areas for further exploration.
Access
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