This
course takes an imaginative approach to introducing Religious
Studies by focusing on a series of case studies that illustrate
how diverse religious ideas and practices can be interpreted as
forms of map-making. These cases will help to demonstrate how
religious life in different times and places has been shaped by
the dynamic interplay of social, political, economic, environmental,
aesthetic and personal factors and by peoples’ efforts to
represent or map this interplay in bringing order, meaning, and
purpose to their personal and collective lives. In considering
these religious mappings, we will also be attentive to the ways
that students of religion are also map-makers and users. That
is, we will also pay attention to the methods and materials that
we, as religious studies scholars, use to characterize and represent
the religious worlds of other cultures as well as of our own.
Mondays
and Wednesdays will, by and large, be devoted to lectures; Fridays
will be reserved for the most part for smaller group work. There
will be a variety of daily and weekly exercises, some in-class
and some assigned as homework. Most of these will involve paired
or small-group collaborative work, with scheduled presentations
to highlight major points that will be or have been covered in
class. There will also be "term projects," which will
be carried out in small groups of 4-5 students each. Reading will
be balanced by "discovery" assignments, in which you
will be asked to find evidence or examples of particular kinds
of "mappings" or to produce your own "maps"
of various sorts.