Ritual and the Body : Ukrainian Rites of Passage (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies)

Ritual and the Body explores how people experience life’s most profound transitions: birth, marriage, and death. Drawing on Ukrainian folk traditions, Maria Mayerchyk shows how rituals mark changes in social status by shaping how the body moves, speaks, eats, hears, and even feels itself to exist. From christenings and weddings to funerals, the book follows key figures and moments of ritual life—the newborn child, parents, newlyweds, and the deceased—and reveals how bodily states, clothing, sound, food, light and darkness, joy and grief all carry meaning. With clarity and insight, Mayerchyk invites readers to see the human body as a powerful cultural language, one through which communities make sense of loss, transformation, and belonging.