Religion and Folklore (Smith College, Fall 2009)



REL 124: Folk Religion in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Dr. Jody Shapiro

Amherst College, Fall 2011

Classroom and time: Converse 209, MW 12:30-1:50 PM

Office hours: Monday after class and by appointment in Chapin 104

Email: jashapiro83@amherst.edu

DESCRIPTION: As world religions move through time and across geography and culture, they are met and transformed by the local, or folk, sensibilities of the communities with which they come in contact.  Indeed, it is that very fluidity, that ability to absorb and contain diversity that arguably gives the world religions their strength, durability, and influence on a large scale.  It is in their many folk particularities that these religions come to life in distinct, rich, sometimes surprising and contradictory ways—ways that reveal cultural essentials, shape lives, engage both intimate and institutional power relations, and re-imagine the broader traditions in which they participate.  This course will explore folk religious belief and practice across the world, focusing on ethnic communities, women, immigrants, and other non-elites.  Case studies include material from China, South and Southeast Asia, Mexico, Israel, southern Europe, West Africa, and the United States.  As folk religion is not always visible or available to outsiders, our entry point will be ethnographic material, and the course will include grounding in ethical and methodological questions concerning field work in religious contexts. 

REQUIRED BOOKS available for purchase at Food for Thought in Amherst Center. Please support this local worker-owned cooperative business by buying your books from Food for Thought.

Brink, Judy, and Mencher, Joan, eds., Mixed Blessings: Gender and Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally (New York: Routledge 1997)

Boucher, Sandy. Discovering Kwan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999)

Davie, Jody Shapiro, Women in the Presence: Constructing Community and Seeking Spirituality in Mainline Protestantism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998)

Griffith, James S., Beliefs and Holy Places: A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992)

Sered, Susan Starr, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (NY: Oxford University Press, 1992)

Stoller, Paul, Stranger in the Village of the Sick: A Memoir of Cancer, Sorcery, and Healing (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004)

REQUIRED ARTICLES listed on the schedule are available on e-reserve and/or in the library. ADDITIONAL REQUIRED MATERIALS may be announced in class. Pay attention.

ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADES: Students are responsible for all material presented in class discussion, both those listed on this schedule and any that may be added later. Grades are based on demonstrated command of the subject at hand, including in-class participation, presentations, three papers, and a final exam.

AN IMPORTANT WORD ABOUT LATE PAPERS: Everyone is a stickler about something. Your professor is a stickler about lateness. Papers are due to me in class at the beginning of class on the date due--not after class, not in my mailbox, not in email, not under my office door. “A day” is considered to begin after papers are collected at the beginning of class on the date due, which is to say, if you turn in your paper after that class, it will be considered one day late. Your grade for that paper will be docked 1/3 of its earned grade (i.e. reduced from B to B-) for every day it is late, unless you have a documented excuse from a doctor or a dean.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1: Wed 7 Sept:

Introductions, Expectations, Logistics, First Conversations

Unit I: Foundations: Thinking Like an Ethnographer

Week 2: Mon-Wed 12-14 Sept:

Geertz, Clifford, “Religion as a Cultural System,” Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 4th ed., ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 78-89.

Yoder, Don, “Toward a Definition of Folk Religion,” Discovering American Folklife: Studies in Ethnic, Religious, and Regional Culture (Ann Arbor: UMI research Press, 1990), pp. 68-74.

Goldstein, Diane, “The Language of Religious Experience and its Implications for Fieldwork,” Western Folklore XLII, 2 (April 1983), pp. 105-113.

Western Folklore: Special Issue: Reflexivity and the Study of Belief, guest editor David J. Hufford, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 1995)

Week 3-4: Monday 19 Sept through Monday 26 Sept:

Griffith, James S., Beliefs and Holy Places: A Spiritual Geography of the Pimeria Alta (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992)

Week 4 ½ : Wed 28 Sept:

Team Presentations

Week 5: Mon 3 Oct

FIRST PAPER DUE

Discussion of papers

Unit II: Hidden in plain sight

Week 5 ½ : Wed 5 Oct

Ackerman, Susan, “And the Women Knead Dough: The Worship of the Queen of Heaven in Sixth-Century Judah,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 109-124.

Turner, Kay, and Suzanne Seriff, “Giving an Altar to St. Joseph: A Feminist Perspective on a Patronal Feast,” in Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore, ed. Susan Tower Hollis, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 89-117.

Week 6: Mon 10 Oct NO CLASS

Week 6 ½ - 7: Wed 12 Oct-Mon Oct 17

Sered, Susan Starr, Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem (NY: Oxford University Press, 1992)

Unit III: Knowing Where You Belong

Week 7½-8: Wed Oct 19-Mon 24 Oct

Davie, Jody Shapiro, Women in the Presence: Constructing Community and Seeking Spirituality in Mainline Protestantism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)

Week 8½: Wed 26 Oct

Bowman, Marion, “Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, Heart Chakra of Planet Earth: Localisation and Globalisation in Glastonbury.” Numen, 52:2, 2005:157-190

McAlister, Elizabeth, “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 44, No. 3, September 2005, pp. 249-255.

Week 9: Mon 31 Nov-Wed 2 Nov:

Brink, Judy, and Mencher, Joan, eds., Mixed Blessings: Gender and Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally (New York: Routledge 1997) Selections to be announced in class for team presentations.

Week 10: Mon 7 Nov

PAPER DUE

Discussion of papers

Unit IV: Bodies and Souls

Week 10 ½-11: Mon 9 Nov-Wed 16 Nov

Laderman, Carol, “The Embodiment of Symbols.” Embodiment and Experience, ed. Thomas Csordas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 183-197.

Stoller, Paul, Stranger in the Village of the Sick: A Memoir of Cancer, Sorcery, and Healing (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004)

Week 12: THANKSGIVING BREAK 21-23 Nov

Mon-Wed 28-30 Nov

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998)

Unit V: All together now

Week 13: Mon-Wed 5-7 Dec Dec:

Boucher, Sandy. Discovering Kwan Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Compassion. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999)

Week 14: Mon 12 Dec

Presentations

Week 15: Wed 14 Dec:

Wrapping Up

FINAL PAPER DUE

Final exam date/time to be announced.

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