Thomas A. Tweed

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar focuses on emplacement and displacement, on the ways that religion orients devotees in place and propels them across space. It is divided into two sections. The first section is a reading seminar. It opens with readings from history, geography, sociology, anthropology, American Studies, and religious studies; we then consider several case studies that draw on diverse sources and methods to study sacred places (including shrines, memorials, and cities) and religious movement (including migration, missions, and pilgrimage). Then in the second section we shift the focus to the students’ research projects. We begin by talking about research design, methods, and ethics and conclude with members of the seminar presenting the results of their research.

Requirements

Two book reviews (15% each); an oral presentation to the class (10%); regular and informed class participation (10%); a research project proposal (10%); and a research paper (40%).

Possible Texts

The reading for this cross-disciplinary seminar will include works by scholars in History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, American Studies, and Religious Studies. Those scholars include Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Thomas Bender, Henri Lefebvre, Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, Anna Tsing, Jill Dubish, Yi-Fu Tuan, David Harvey, D. W. Meining, Michel de Certeau, Carolyn Chen, Jonathan Z. Smith, David Chidester, Kim Knott, and Lily Kong. We’ll discuss selected chapters from Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine, eds., Key Thinkers on Space and Place (2009) and Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (2002). And the assigned books will include the following: Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion (Routledge, 2011); Thomas A. Tweed, America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital (Oxford, 2011); Emma Anderson, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Harvard, 2007); S. Scott Rohrer, Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865 (UNC, 2010); Raymond Michalowski and Jill Dubisch, Run for the Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage (Rutgers, 2001); and Carolyn Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Migration and Religious Experience (2008). 

This course offers a thematic introduction to the study of religion by focusing on narrative, ritual, and artifact at Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim pilgrimage sites. Using one Latino Catholic pilgrimage site in New Mexico to orient our opening discussion, the course begins by thinking about the meaning of key terms— including religion, shrine, and pilgrimage. To get our bearings and map the field, we consider some leading theories of pilgrimage and influential ways of studying it. Then we turn to Japan and analyze one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites there. We next shift our focus to Islam and Mecca, including Malcolm X’s account of his journey to the holiest Muslim site. Finally, we focus on a Christian site, a Cuban American shrine in Miami dedicated to Our Lady of Charity. The course meets the criteria for the Cultural Diversity in the U.S. flag because a bit more than one third of the course deals with an underrepresented cultural group in the U.S.—Latinos. It also meets the standard for the Global Cultures flag because more than half, and almost two thirds, of the course material deals with cultures of non-U.S. communities—Buddhists in Japan and Muslims in the Middle East.

Texts:

Michael Wolfe, ed., One Thousand Roads to Mecca (Grove Press, 1997);homas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Ian Reader, Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

Grading

1) Intellectual Journal (20%)- a journal of up to 20 entries that includes analysis of the assigned readings on Latino Catholics, Japanese Buddhists, and Middle Eastern Muslims; 2) Midterm Exam I and Midterm Exam II (25% each): One exam focuses on Latinos in the U.S. The other exam focuses on Muslims in the Middle East; 3) Cummulative Final Exam (25%): About half of the final exam focuses on Buddhists in Japan and the rest concerns material from throughout the course; 4) Class Participation (5%)

This seminar introduces graduate students to the field by considering the history of theories and methods in the study of religion. We concentrate on three fundamental questions: 1) How have scholars defined “religion”?; 2) How have they studied it?; and 3) How have they narrated the field’s history? Focusing on the period between the 1870s and the 1970s, especially the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century, we read “classic” texts and consider multiple approaches—anthropological, psychological, historical, phenomenological, geographical, and sociological. We also identify some lineages in the study of religion that have been obscured in most of the histories.  Considering more recent trajectories and issues in the study of religion since the 1970s, we end by looking at a few works on gender studies, cognitive science, spatial analysis, poststructuralism, and postcolonial theory. Along the way, we will read a wide range of interpreters, including works by David Hume, Herbert of Cherbury, Hannah Adams, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, F. Max Müller, Morris Jastrow, E. B. Tylor, James Frazer, William James, Sigmund Freud, Emil Durkheim, Max Weber, Rudolph Otto, G. Van der Leeuw, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Talal Asad, Timothy Fitzgerald, Russell McCutcheon, Ursula King, Karen McCarthy Brown, Harvey Whitehouse, Edward Said, David Chidester, and Richard King.

Texts

Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (Chicago: Open Court, 1986); David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956); William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin, 1982); Peter Gay, ed., The Freud Reader (New York: Norton, 1989); W. S. F. Pickering, ed., Durkheim on Religion  AAR Texts and Translations Series (Atlanta: Scholars Press; New York, 1994: distributed by Oxford University Press); Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1964; 1993). Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harvest, 1959); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, updated edition (Berkeley: University of California, 2001); Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2004); Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’ (London: Routledge, 1999); Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Recommended Text: Daniel Pals, Eight Theories of Religion, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pals is highly recommended. [Another volume that might help those who feel they need a bit more introduction to cultural theory is Philip Smith’s Cultural Theory: An Introduction (2001).]

Grading

Assessment will be based on the following: 1) ANALYSIS PAPERS (15% each): Three critical analysis papers (two to three pages each) that consider one of the assigned texts. One of these three papers must describe and assess one of the narrative histories of the field (See the list of narratives below). 2) CLASS ORIENTATION (10%): One 12-15 minute class presentation that introduces the other members of the seminar to the assigned readings for the day. 3) FIELD OR SUBFIELD PAPER (10%): One two to three-page analysis of how one of the assigned texts, or in some cases it could be a recommended text, has been used or criticized in your own discipline or area of specialization. 4) OVERVIEW (30%): One overview or analysis of the history of the study of religion (from three to five pages, or its equivalent). This can take any form that seems most helpful to you and suits your learning style. It could be an historical narrative, thematic analysis, diagram, chart, table, video, web page, data base, blog, chronology, or it could combine multiple forms of visual and verbal representation. 5) PARTICIPATION (5%): Regular attendance and informed participation in the seminar.

Using three orienting themes—mapping, meeting, and migration—this course introduces students to the history of U.S. religion from the nineteenth century to the present. It focuses on how diverse peoples imagined and transformed the landscape, interacted with one another at different sites, and moved within and across national borders. It is divided into three sections. The first provides an historical and thematic overview, introducing key terms and issues. The second discusses the variety of religious traditions that have flourished in the United States. Those include not only Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism, but also Islam, Buddhism, and Native American traditions. In the final section of the course we explore a series of issues, drawing on sources from varied religious groups and historical periods—from slave religion in the antebellum South to Asian immigrant traditions in post-1965 America. The topics we discuss in that section include race, immigration, gender, war, politics, law, economy, art, science, and literature.

Texts

We will use two main textbooks in this course. The first is an atlas, which allows us to explore some of the class’s central themes (mapping, meeting, and migration): Bret E. Carroll, The Routledge Historical Atlas of Religion in America (Routledge, 2000). The other is a two-volume book that collects many primary sources: Edwin S. Gaustad and Mark A. Noll, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America, 2 vols., 3rd edition (Eerdmans, 2003). Some brief readings also will be posted on the online course reserve and to the course’s Blackboard site. (If cost is a worry for you and you cannot afford all the texts, you should know that we also will put them on reserve.)

Grading

The methods for assessing student progress also reflect the course objectives. Grading will be based on 1) two mid-term exams that include both multiple choice questions and take-home essays (25% each); 2) a final exam (25%) that includes both multiple choice questions and take-home essay portions; 3) an intellectual journal (20%); 4) informed and consistent class participation (5%). The three essays encourage you to study one topic carefully and in its historical context, as you refine your ability to write clearly and argue persuasively. The intellectual journal entries, which spread out over the whole course, demand that you keep up with the diverse readings and understand the larger story of U.S. religion. At the same time, the journal sharpens your analytical skills and prepares you for class discussions. Those discussions provide both breadth and depth, while encouraging you to refine your analytical skills as we focus on particular texts and the issues they raise. The mandatory final journal entry asks students to synthesize course material and reflect on the central issues of the class.

This graduate seminar introduces students to the study of religion in the Americas. In the course’s first section, we consider classic approaches to the study of U.S. religion and religion in Latin America and the Caribbean. After that orientation to the scholarship, the second section begins to move toward approaches that reframe the study of religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Hemisphere. We start by exploring some theoretical and methodological perspectives that might help as we try to extend the chronological span and expand the geographical reach of our narratives—and as we emphasize transcultural and comparative analysis. Focusing on recent historical and ethnographic case studies that model those approaches, we focus, in turn, on the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Hemisphere. Along the way, we consider a wide range of peoples, practices, and places—from pre-contact Asian migrations to the Americas and fourteenth-century encounters in the Canary Islands to recent Afro-Caribbean migrant piety in the Bronx and Zen Buddhist practice in contemporary Brazil. The course opens by asking about how we might expand the chronological and geographical scope of narratives and it ends with students’ attempts to move toward new perspectives by designing pedagogically useful syllabi and presenting methodologically suggestive case studies.

Texts

Assigned reading will include: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds.,The Atlantic in Global History, 1500-2000 (Prentice Hall, 2007). Anna L. Peterson and Manuel A. Vásquez, eds., Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context (NYU Press, 2008). Allan Greer and Jodi Blinkoff, eds., Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas (Routledge, 2003). Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Harvard University Press, 2006). Thomas A. Tweed, ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (University of California Press, 1997). Jon F. Sensback, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard UP, 2005). R. Marie Griffith, ed., American Religions: A Documentary History (Oxford UP, 2008). Cristina Rocha, Zen in Brazil: The Quest for Cosmopolitan Modernity (University of Hawaii, 2006). Carolyn Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (Princeton University Press, 2008). David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Wilely Blackwell, 2008).  Paul Christopher Johnson, Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (University of California Press, 2007).

Grading

Assessment will be based on the following: 1) Five two-page book reviews (500 words). 2) A Final Project, which will be either (a) a ten -to twelve-page essay that uses a methodologically suggestive case study in the student’s area of research to explore one issue concerning approaches to the study in the Americas; or, (b) students may create and defend (in a five-page document) a syllabus on Religion in the Americas. 3) Serve as discussion facilitator for one class session. That will mean opening the class with a ten-minute introduction to the readings and issues for that day. 4) Oral Presentation of Final Project: students will give a brief presentation about their Final Project (either the methodologically suggestive case study or the syllabus on Religion in the Americas) on the last day of class. 5) Regular, informed class participation.

DESCRIPTION: This undergraduate seminar examines Roman Catholic devotion in the United States. It opens by briefly considering two earlier periods in U.S. Catholic history, the “era of colonialism” and the “era of immigration.” Then the focus shifts to the twentieth century and the “era of consolidation” (1917-1959) and the “era of fragmentation” (since 1960). Using North America’s largest Catholic church building (Washington’s National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception) as a focal point, we analyze the visual culture and ritual practice of U.S. Catholics during the tumultuous 20th century. Along the way, we engage a wide range of sources, including architecture, memorials, holy cards, statues, comic books, photographs, movies, short stories, catechisms, letters, donation lists, census records, memoirs, magazines, and advice manuals. Those sources allow us to explore six defining themes of Catholic piety in the period: the concern to build institutions, contest Protestants, mobilize women, engage children, incorporate immigrants, and claim civic space.

TEXTS: James T. Fisher, Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America (Oxford University Press, 2002). Mark Massa, ed., American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader (New York University Press, 2008). Jeffrey M. Burns, Ellen Skerrett, and Joseph M. White, eds., Keeping the Faith: European and Asian Catholic Immigrants, American Catholic Identities: A Documentary History (Orbis Books, 2000). Thomas A. Tweed, “America’s Church”: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital (Oxford University Press, 2011).

GRADING: Assessment of student performance will be based on the following: 1) A research paper proposal (10%); 2) peer review of a draft of another student’s research paper (5%); 3) a research paper of 12 to 15 pages that draws on primary sources and deals with one issue raised in the assigned readings (35%); 4) A midterm exam that will include both multiple choice questions and a take-home essay (30%); 5) a class presentation (10%); and 6) regular and informed class participation (10%). 

This seminar introduces graduate students to the field by considering the history of theories and methods in the study of religion. We concentrate on three fundamental questions: 1) How have scholars defined “religion”?; 2) How have they studied it?; and 3) How have they narrated the field’s history? Focusing on the period between the 1870s and the 1970s, especially the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century, we read “classic” texts and consider multiple approaches—anthropological, psychological, historical, phenomenological, geographical, and sociological. We also identify some lineages in the study of religion that have been obscured in most of the histories.  Considering more recent trajectories and issues in the study of religion since the 1970s, we end by looking at a few works on gender studies, cognitive science, spatial analysis, poststructuralism, and postcolonial theory. Along the way, we will read a wide range of interpreters, including works by David Hume, Herbert of Cherbury, Hannah Adams, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, F. Max Müller, Morris Jastrow, E. B. Tylor, James Frazer, William James, Sigmund Freud, Emil Durkheim, Max Weber, Rudolph Otto, G. Van der Leeuw, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Talal Asad, Timothy Fitzgerald, Russell McCutcheon, Ursula King, Karen McCarthy Brown, Harvey Whitehouse, Edward Said, David Chidester, and Richard King.

Texts

Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (Chicago: Open Court, 1986); David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956); William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin, 1982); Peter Gay, ed., The Freud Reader (New York: Norton, 1989); W. S. F. Pickering, ed., Durkheim on Religion  AAR Texts and Translations Series (Atlanta: Scholars Press; New York, 1994: distributed by Oxford University Press); Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1964; 1993). Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harvest, 1959); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, updated edition (Berkeley: University of California, 2001); Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2004); Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’ (London: Routledge, 1999); Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Recommended Text: Daniel Pals, Eight Theories of Religion, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pals is highly recommended. [Another volume that might help those who feel they need a bit more introduction to cultural theory is Philip Smith’s Cultural Theory: An Introduction (2001).]

Grading

Assessment will be based on the following: 1) ANALYSIS PAPERS (15% each): Three critical analysis papers (two to three pages each) that consider one of the assigned texts. One of these three papers must describe and assess one of the narrative histories of the field (See the list of narratives below). 2) CLASS ORIENTATION (10%): One 12-15 minute class presentation that introduces the other members of the seminar to the assigned readings for the day. 3) FIELD OR SUBFIELD PAPER (10%): One two to three-page analysis of how one of the assigned texts, or in some cases it could be a recommended text, has been used or criticized in your own discipline or area of specialization. 4) OVERVIEW (30%): One overview or analysis of the history of the study of religion (from three to five pages, or its equivalent). This can take any form that seems most helpful to you and suits your learning style. It could be an historical narrative, thematic analysis, diagram, chart, table, video, web page, data base, blog, chronology, or it could combine multiple forms of visual and verbal representation. 5) PARTICIPATION (5%): Regular attendance and informed participation in the seminar.

This course offers a thematic introduction to the study of religion by focusing on narrative, ritual, and artifact at Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim pilgrimage sites. Using one Latino Catholic pilgrimage site in New Mexico to orient our opening discussion, the course begins by thinking about the meaning of key terms— including religion, shrine, and pilgrimage. To get our bearings and map the field, we consider some leading theories of pilgrimage and influential ways of studying it. Then we turn to Japan and analyze one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites there. We next shift our focus to Islam and Mecca, including Malcolm X’s account of his journey to the holiest Muslim site. Finally, we focus on a Christian site, a Cuban American shrine in Miami dedicated to Our Lady of Charity.

Texts:

Michael Wolfe, ed., One Thousand Roads to Mecca (Grove Press, 1997); Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Ian Reader, Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

Grading:

1) Intellectual Journal (20%)- a journal of up to 20 entries that includes analysis of the assigned readings on Latino Catholics, Japanese Buddhists, and Middle Eastern Muslims

2) Midterm Exam I and Midterm Exam II (25% each): One exam focuses on Latinos in the U.S. The other exam focuses on Muslims in the Middle East

3) Cummulative Final Exam (25%): About half of the final exam focuses on Buddhists in Japan and the rest concerns material from throughout the course

4) Class Participation (5%)

Meets with AMS 325
Writing Flag
Bridging Disciplines Program (BDP certificate in Cultural Studies)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This is a course about religious things. It focuses on artifacts, or what some scholars have called “visual culture,” and it considers how religion mediates artifacts and artifacts mediate religion. More specifically, the course introduces students to religion and visual culture in the United States since the 1840s. The religious artifacts we analyze include paintings, drawings, sculptures, architecture, murals, film, video, domestic furnishings, monuments, gardens, and cemeteries. Several religions are represented: We look at Protestant self-taught art, Latina Catholic paintings, Jewish New Year postcards, Plains Indians’ drawings, and Buddhist-inspired video art. We will visit the Blanton museum, talk with a local artist, examine monuments at the Capitol, view videos and films, and analyze images in each class session. In the first few sessions, we ponder the meaning of key terms, like “religion” and “visual culture” and students refine their ability to interpret religious visual culture by focusing on one popular religious image. In this thematically organized class, we then consider a variety of religious artifacts associated with ever widening social spaces—including the body, the home, the garden, the museum, the theater, the congregation, the shrine, the city, the state, the nation, and the world. We end the course by returning to where we began, as students offer their own definitions of key terms and propose their own strategies for interpreting religious visual culture. 

REQUIRED TEXTS

David Morgan and Sally Promey, eds., The Visual Culture of American Religions (University of California Press, 2001). Electronic version available for free through the UT online library catalog.

Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (Yale University Press, 1995).

David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (University of California Press, 2005). Electronic version available for free through the UT online library catalog.

RECOMMENDED TEXT

Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 9^th ed. (Prentice Hall, 2007).

GRADING PROCEDURES

This class is about reading, viewing, discussing, and writing. To help refine those skills, the evaluation of students’ performance will be based on the following: 1) An intellectual journal, which is due at the final class session. Students will record analyses of the assigned readings and images (23%); 2) A three-page interpretive essay (22%). This early essay, which builds on in-class writing exercises and takes advantage of peer review of students’ first draft, aims to refine students’ ability to interpret religious artifacts and prepare them for the rest of the course; 3) A midterm exam: identification items and take home essay (22%); 4) A final exam (28%). Like the midterm, the comprehensive final exam will consist of two parts: an identification section in which you will identify 6 of 7 items (worth 60 points) and a take home essay section (worth 40 points); 5) Regular and informed class participation (5%).

Contacting Each Other: I want to make sure that I do everything possible to help you learn. So please take advantage of office hours (both mine and your TA’s). It is important to me to make sure that you have every reasonable opportunity for help. If you cannot make office hours, contact me so we can set up another time to meet. You can reach me by email, but please give me at least 24 hours to respond to you during the week. I do not always check email on weekends or holidays, though I sometimes do. I will communicate with you by email too, so please do check email regularly. If I need to communicate with you, I will email the class and/or post the message to Blackboard. Check both regularly. (See the UT email policy below.) 

Use of E-Mail for Official Correspondence to Students

Email is recognized as an official mode of university correspondence; therefore, you are responsible for reading your email for university and course-related information and announcements. You are responsible to keep the university informed about changes to your e-mail address. You should check your e-mail regularly and frequently—I recommend daily, but at minimum twice a week—to stay current with university-related communications, some of which may be time-critical. You can find UT Austin’s policies and instructions for updating your e-mail address at http://www.utexas.edu/its/policies/emailnotify.php.

University of Texas Honor Code and Academic Integrity

“The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.”

The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.

If you are uncertain about what constitutes plagiarism, or other violations, please feel free to ask me. Students who violate the University rules on scholastic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary penalties, including the possible failure in the course and/or dismissal from the University. The policies on scholastic dishonesty will be strictly enforced. For more information, you can talk with me or visit the Student Judicial Services Web site: http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sis.  

You are encouraged to study together for the exams and to discuss information and concepts covered in lecture and the sections with other students. You can give "consulting" help to or receive "consulting" help from such students.  However, this permissible cooperation should never involve one student having possession of a copy of all or part of work done by someone else, in the form of an e-mail, an e-mail attachment file, a diskette, or a hard copy.

Should copying occur, both the student who copied work from another student and the student who gave material to be copied will both automatically receive a zero for the assignment. Penalty for violation of this Code can also be extended to include failure of the course and University disciplinary action.

During examinations, you must do your own work. Talking or discussion is not permitted during the examinations, nor may you compare papers, copy from others, or collaborate in any way. Any collaborative behavior during the examinations will result in failure of the exam, and may lead to failure of the course and University disciplinary action.

Accommodations: Documented Disability Statement

If you require special accommodations, you must obtain a letter that documents your disability from the Services for Students with Disabilities area of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (512-471-6259 voice or 1-866-329-3986 for users who are deaf or hard of hearing). Present the letter to me at the beginning of the semester so we can discuss the accommodations you need. No later than five business days before an exam, you should remind me of any testing accommodations you will need. For more information, visit http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/for_cstudents.php. A few related guidelines:

• Please notify me as quickly as possible if the material being presented in class is not accessible (e.g., instructional videos need captioning, course packets are not readable for proper alternative text conversion, etc.).

• Please notify me as early in the semester as possible if disability-related accommodations for field trips are required.  Advanced notice will permit the arrangement of accommodations on the given day (e.g., transportation, site accessibility, etc.).

Religious Holidays

By UT Austin policy, you must notify me of your pending absence at least fourteen days prior to the date of observance of a religious holy day. If you must miss a class, an examination, a work assignment, or a project in order to observe a religious holy day, I will give you an opportunity to complete the missed work within a reasonable time after the absence.

Q drop Policy

The State of Texas has enacted a law that limits the number of course drops for academic reasons to six (6).  As stated in Senate Bill 1231: “Beginning with the fall 2007 academic term, an institution of higher education may not permit an undergraduate student a total of more than six dropped courses, including any course a transfer student has dropped at another institution of higher education, unless the student shows good cause for dropping more than that number.”

Behavior Concerns Advice Line (BCAL)

If you are worried about someone who is acting differently, you may use the Behavior Concerns Advice Line to discuss by phone your concerns about another individual’s behavior. This service is provided through a partnership among the Office of the Dean of Students, the Counseling and Mental Health Center (CMHC), the Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and The University of Texas Police Department (UTPD). Call 512-232-5050 or visit http://www.utexas.edu/safety/bcal.

Emergency Evacuation Policy

Occupants of buildings on the UT Austin campus are required to evacuate and assemble outside when a fire alarm is activated or an announcement is made.  Please be aware of the following policies regarding evacuation:

Familiarize yourself with all exit doors of the classroom and the building. Remember that the nearest exit door may not be the one you used when you entered the building. If you require assistance to evacuate, inform me in writing during the first week of class. In the event of an evacuation, follow my instructions or those of class instructors. Do not re-enter a building unless you’re given instructions by the Austin Fire Department, the UT Austin Police Department, or the Fire Prevention Services office.

***

CLASS SCHEDULE

Defining Key Terms: ‘Religion’ and ‘Visual Culture’

1. W 1/20            An Introduction to the Class

2. M 1/125            Defining Religion
Reading: Morgan, Sacred Gaze, 52-54. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, 123-127 (on how technology mediates religion). Selected Definitions of Religion.

3.  W 1/27            Defining Visual Culture.  In-class writing.  
Reading: Morgan, Sacred Gaze, 1-47 (intro and chp. 1), and 55 (summary of the 7 functions of religious visual culture). Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 7th ed., 44-46 (“Basic Questions” to ask about art) [on Blackboard].   David Morgan, “Questions to Ask When Looking at Works of Art” (handout on Blackboard).  S. Brent Plate, ed., Introduction, Religion, Art, and Visual Culture, 1-11.  Morgan and Promey, Visual Culture of American Religion, 15-17. 

Interpreting Religious Visual Culture: A Case Study as Introduction

4. M 2/1            Interpreting Religious Things: Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1940) 
Reading: Morgan, ed., Icons of American Protestantism, (1-23).  Morgan, Sacred Gaze, 48-74 (chp. 2).

5. W 2/3            Interpreting Religious Things: Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1940)
In-class writing.
Reading: Morgan, ed., Icons of American Protestantism, chp 2. Barnet, Short Guide to Writing about Art, 7th ed., 46-62 (on the analysis of drawing and painting).

6. M 2/8            Interpreting Religious Things: Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1940)
In-class writing.
Reading: Morgan, ed., Icons of American Protestantism, chp 6 .

The Sites of Religious Visual Culture in America since 1840

 7. W 2/10            The Body: Christian Dress and Diet
Please note: papers are due before the start of class today in our classroom by 2:00pm.  
Reading: Diane Winston, “Living in the Material World: Salvation Army Lassies and Urban Commercial Culture, 1880-1918,” in Giggie and Winston, eds., Faith in the Market (2002), 13-36.

8. M 2/15            The Home: Victorian White Protestant Homes and Early-Twentieth- Century African-American Catholic Homes
Reading: 1) Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity, chp. 3 (“The Bible in the Victorian Home”). 2) Read about Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s painting Mending Socks (1924). 3) Go to ARTstor (access it through the UT library online site). Search ARTstor for Motley. Look carefully at Mending Socks. Regenia Perry, “African American Art.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Search “Grove Art Online” in the UT online library catalog and follow the “electronic resource” link.

9. W 2/17            The Home: Jewish and Christian Religious Greeting Cards, 1820-1920
Reading: Ellen Smith, “Greetings from Faith: Early Twentieth-Century American Jewish New Year Postcards,” Visual Culture of American Religions, chp. 12.

10. M 2/22            The Garden: Visionary Art in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Reading: 1) “What is Visionary Art?” at the webpage of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore: http://www.avam.org/stuff/whatsvis.html. 2) Finster, Stranger, 9-25, 27-37, 123-135.  3) James Hampton’s Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation’s Millennium General Assembly (1950-64): see the biography and the photograph of his installation at the web page of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 7th ed., 62-72 (on the analysis of sculpture). 

11. W 2/24            The Garden: Visionary Art
Reading: Finster, Stranger , 101-121, 147-159. 

12. M 3/1            The Home and The Garden: ‘The Barrio Mexican Religious Art Studio’ (Guest Artist)
Reading: Tweed, “Mary’s Rain and God’s Umbrella: Religion, Identity, and Modernity in the Visionary Art of a Chicana Painter.”

13. W 3/3            The Landscape: From Cemeteries to Billboards
Reading: Sally Promey, “The Public Display of Religion,” The Visual Culture of American Religions, chp. 1.  McDannell, Material Christianity, chp. 4.
Note: In recitation this week you view landscape paintings at the Blanton Museum. Meet in the lobby of that campus museum.

14. M 3/8              MIDTERM EXAM: IDs in Class and Take Home Essay Turned In
Note: Students who want some extra help as they begin to plan and organize their essay might consult Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 7th ed., 143-52 (“How to Write an Effective Essay”) (In Brief: How to Write am Effective Essay”).  See also the web site produced by the Material History of American Religion Project, which has useful resources, including texts and photographs of objects: http://www.materialreligion.org/.  

15. W 3/10            Plains Indian Drawings (1877) by Etahdleuh Doanmoe
Reading: Brad Lookingbill, “’Because I Want to Be a Man’: A Portrait of Etahdleuh Doannoe,” in Philip Earenfight, ed., A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Fort Marion (Seattle: University of Washington Press; Carlisle, Pa.: Trout Gallery, 2007), 30-52.

16. M 3/15            SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS

17. W 3/17            SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS

18. M 3/22            The Mall: Religious Objects for Sale
Reading: Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity, chp. 8. 

19. W 3/24            The Factory: J. Howard Miller’s Print We Can Do It! (1943) as Religious Icon? (Guest lecture: Hannah Wong)
Reading: David M. Lubin  (2003), ix-xii (preface) and 73-100.  “Icon” entry in Grove Art Online (go to Grove Art online from the UT library webpage.  Go to “research tools” => “find articles using database” => Grove Art/Oxford Art online) 

20. M 3/29            The Museum: Imagining Catholicism in Paintings and Installations
Reading: The Visual Culture of American Religions, chp. 5 and 6.  Look again at Motley’s Mending Socks. 

21. W 3/31            The Museum: Buddhism in American Painting and Sculpture from the 1940s to the 1960s
Reading: 1) Helen Westgeest, Zen in the Fifties, 2nd ed. (1997), 43-55; 72-85 (“The Unity between West and East: American Artists and Zen,” a chapter on Mark Tobey, John Cage, and Ad Reinhardt). 2) Thomas A. Tweed and Stephen Prothero, eds., Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (1999), 191-93, 196-200, 218-21.

22. M 4/5            The Museum: Buddhism and American Art since the 1960s
Reading: Jacquelyn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, eds., Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (2004), 248-57 (“Bill Viola”), 258-63 (biography of Viola). Gail Gelburd and Geri De Paoli, eds., The Transparent Thread: Asian Philosophy in Recent American Art (1990), 82-85 (Johns), 94-97, (Rauschenberg).  Jacquelyn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, eds., Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (2004), 204-211 (on Sanford Biggers).

23. W 4/7            The Theater: Religion and American Film: “The Apostle” (Duvall, 1997)
Reading: Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt, Jr., eds., Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film (1995), 1-12 (introduction). Margaret R. Miles, Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies (1996), ix-xvi (preface), 5-25 (“Moving Shadows: Religion and Film as Cultural Products”).  Grant Wacker, “Pentecostalism,” Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, edited by Peter Williams and Charles Lippy.

24. M 4/12            The Theater: Religion and American Film: “The Apostle” (Duval, 1997)
Reading: Roundtable Review of “The Apostle” by Joel Martin, R. Marie Griffith, Vinson Synan, and Daniel Woods in Journal of Southern Religion (April 1998).                   

25. W 4/14             The Shrine: Holy Dirt, Holy Water, Ex Votos, and Devotional Images at Catholic Shrines
Study Guide for Final Exam distributed.
Reading: Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity, chp. 5. Ramón Gutiérrez, “El Santuario de Chimayó: A Syncretic Shrine in New Mexico,” in Gutiérrez and Fabre, eds., Feasts and Celebrations in North American Ethnic Communities (University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 71-86. Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 7th ed., 73-81 (on the analysis of architecture).

26. M 4/19            Writing Tutorial: Working on Writing the Final Essay

27. W 4/21            The City: Local Religious Architecture and Ritual Objects
Reading: Morgan and Promey, ed., The Visual Culture of American Religions, chp. 4. 

28. M 4/26            The State: Civil Religious Architecture and Monuments in Austin
Reading: 1) Ronald C. Wimberly and William H. Swatos, Jr., “Civil Religion” in William H. Swatos, Jr., ed., Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. 2) Read the web page for the Texas State Capitol: http://www.tspb.state.tx.us/SPB/capitol/texcap.htm. 

29. W 4/28            The Nation: Visual Culture and National Identity in Washington, D.C.
Reading:  Visual Culture of American Religions, chp. 3. Morgan, Sacred Gaze, 220-55 (chp. 7).

30. M 5/3            The World (in the City): Transnational Religious Architecture in Los Angeles
Reading: Francis Weber, Cathedral of the Our Lady of the Angels, 273-86 (on the tapestries by John Nava).

31. W 5/5            Bringing It All Together: Interpreting American Religious Visual Culture
Reading: Re-read all your journal entries, and then write a mandatory journal entry of 500 words (two typed pages) that revisits the questions we started with: 1) Define “religious visual culture”; 2) Which principles or stages are involved in the interpretation of American religious visual culture? Endorse, reject, or revise the view of interpretation suggested by Morgan, Plate, Barnet, or any other author we discussed. Or offer your own set of interpretive principles or stages. Finally, to bring it all together for you more personally also: 3) Describe how your own thinking has changed over the course of the semester. How, if at all, has your understanding of religion, art, America, or interpretation changed?

This course offers a thematic introduction to the study of religion by focusing on narrative, ritual, and artifact at Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim pilgrimage sites. Using one Latino Catholic pilgrimage site in New Mexico to orient our opening discussion, the course begins by thinking about the meaning of key terms— including religion, shrine, and pilgrimage. To get our bearings and map the field, we consider some leading theories of pilgrimage and influential ways of studying it. Then we turn to Japan and analyze one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites there. We next shift our focus to Islam and Mecca, including Malcolm X’s account of his journey to the holiest Muslim site. Finally, we focus on a Christian site, a Cuban American shrine in Miami dedicated to Our Lady of Charity. The course meets the criteria for the Cultural Diversity in the U.S. flag because a bit more than one third of the course deals with an underrepresented cultural group in the U.S.—Latinos. It also meets the standard for the Global Cultures flag because more than half, and almost two thirds, of the course material deals with cultures of non-U.S. communities—Buddhists in Japan and Muslims in the Middle East.

Texts:

Michael Wolfe, ed., One Thousand Roads to Mecca (Grove Press, 1997);
homas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Ian Reader, Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

Grading:

1) Intellectual Journal (20%)- a journal of up to 20 entries that includes analysis of the assigned readings on Latino Catholics, Japanese Buddhists, and Middle Eastern Muslims; 2) Midterm Exam I and Midterm Exam II (25% each): One exam focuses on Latinos in the U.S. The other exam focuses on Muslims in the Middle East; 3) Cummulative Final Exam (25%): About half of the final exam focuses on Buddhists in Japan and the rest concerns material from throughout the course; 4) Class Participation (5%)