The Alamo is popularly acclaimed as the hallowed site where the sacrifice of courageous defenders defeated despotism and gave birth to a free society in San Antonio and all of Texas. Nearby San Fernando Cathedral, on the other hand, is the symbolic center of a Mexican Catholic community which did not cross a border to enter the United States, but had the border cross them during U.S. territorial expansion. This paper examines the contested interpretations of San Antonio history as embodied in the sacred space and public ritual at these two sites. Drawing on sources from history, theology, and anthropology, the essay illuminates key elements in the intricate web of religious images, ideas, and worldviews that vie for expression and prominence in San Antonio's sacred landscape.
The Journal of Ritual Studies, founded in 1987, is a broadly based interdisciplinary journal, concentrating on the diverse, creative and globally significant topic of ritual studies. Disciplinary perspectives include, among other things, anthropology, history, religious studies, art and aesthetics, cognition, classical studies, archaeology, and philosophy: in other words, a rich diversity of humanistic and scientific perspectives. Notable contributions have come from scholars all over the world, encompassed either in individual papers or in special focused issues, or in book review forums. The long-term editors for the Journal of Ritual Studies are Dr. Pamela J. Stewart (Strathern) and Professor Andrew Strathern.
Dr. Pamela J. Stewart (Strathern) and Prof. Andrew Strathern are a wife and husband research team with a long history of joint publications and research. They are based in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, and have been Visiting Research Fellow and Visiting Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Durham; Visiting Research Fellows in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen; and have been Visiting Research Fellows at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan over many years.
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Journal of Ritual Studies
© 1998 Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern