Dr. Erin Moore Department of Anthropology
Office: KAP 340
, 626 688-7224
Draft Syllabus:
The Global Performance of Healing: Anthropology 301
Pilgrimage: Walking the Camino de Santiago in Galicia, Spain
Dates:
Classes: May 15-26, 9-Noon,
Hikes Eaton Canyon, Altadena, before our trip TBD
Travel approximately May 27th – June 17, 2017 (papers due via email June 31)
For the SURF grant you need a Dornsife Major; you cannot be graduating in June; and, you need 3.0 average.
Please get D Clearance from me through an interview.
There is “exceptional funding” for Presidential and Trustee scholarhip students.
In General:
This is an academic research course in: 1. Anthropological methods (participant observation); 2. Medical anthropology to learn about other cultures of healing; and, 3. pilgrimage as an ancient tradition throughout time and across many religions and cultures.
Introduction:
“Problems Without Passports” is Dornsife College curriculum that encourages a student-driven learning experience immersed in an international setting under the supervision of a USC faculty member. This 4-unit Problems without Passports course focuses on the performance of healing through classroom study and a three week field course in northern Spain. This class is part of the medical anthropology major’s track; students in my previous Anthropology 301 courses have also gotten credit for Health and Humanities, Religious Studies, and IR. Speak to your academic advisor about credit toward your major (Spanish will give credit this year).
Students enrolled in Anthropology 301 will engage in experiential education concerning health, illness and alternative healing modalities. As a cultural anthropologist with a background in medical anthropology, I will guide the students in the intellectual aspects of doing ethnography. Students will discuss the literature and ethnographic films in the classroom and then have the direct experience of walking a segment of the Camino de Santiago. Through focused reflection groups, the students will develop their own independent research project on the Camino, the pilgrims, pilgrimage in the modern world, health and healing. Students will learn critical observation skills, how to prepare and conduct interviews, learn survey techniques, and qualitative data analysis. This student-driven learning experience will examine not only the performance of healing through pilgrimage but also the performance of anthropology.
This Course:
The Camino de Santiago (the Way of Saint James) is a medieval pilgrimage route that traverses Western Europe to end in northwestern Spain (Galicia) at the Cathedral for St. James, Santiago de Compostela. The Apostle St. James was said to have preached the Catholic gospel in Spain, martyred in Jerusalem and, according to legend, his remains were smuggled back to Galicia sometime after 44 CE. The pilgrimage route follows ancient Roman trade roads. While the earliest record of pilgrims to Santiago stems from the 9th century, it became a popular destination in the 11th and 12th century when the Catholic Church gave plenary indulgences to pilgrims and the Spanish kings were fighting the invasion of Islamic forces. Pilgrimage to Santiago became one of the three main pilgrimage destinations along with Rome and Jerusalem. Today the Camino is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are many pilgrim paths to Santiago; we will walk a part of the French route (from León to Santiago).
All healing uses the power of the mind to engage the body to heal. People everywhere get sick and all societies have developed practices, technologies and medicines to treat illness. However, not all peoples understand sickness, healing, or even what it means to have a body in the same way. This medical anthropology class will look at pilgrimage in its historical perspective and its modern usage from the perspective of heath and healing. In the distant past pilgrims used the pilgrimage for many different purposes, religious as well as political, economic, healing and adventure. The lore of the Camino is filled with stories of miraculous gifts of sight, fertility, virility and other healings. Modern pilgrims still walk to fulfill vows made to the saint or to make new requests for health, prosperity or love. Others find it a spiritual retreat from the stress of the modern world.
Anthropologists gather their data through participant observation. We will have six days in the classroom discussing medical anthropology, pilgrimage in different cultures, and the anthropological/historical perspective on pilgrimage. After our time in the classroom we will spend three weeks in Spain. Our time on the Camino is our time to feel what it is like to be a pilgrim, staying in bunks in pilgrim hostels, eating pilgrim meals in shared kitchens, and receiving the pilgrim blessings at the Catholic churches along the way. We will stay in a variety of lodgings to meet a variety of different people: priests, albergue volunteers (the hospitaleros), residents of villages who run bars and restaurants… These are all opportunities to reflect on what it means to be a pilgrim in the 21st century.
Our participation will be supplemented by collecting healing stories from everyone we meet along the way. Everyone has a story to tell. What does it mean to be a pilgrim today? Who are pilgrims (ages, genders, ethnicity, class)? Are they different from the medieval pilgrims? How are they the same? Do you have to be religious? Why are you walking? Do you believe in the power of relics or the power of the Pope to grant indulgences? Have you seen miracles or healings? What is healed and how is it healed? What is a miracle today? What are the negative aspects of the revival of the Camino in the 1980s? What is the field of anthropology and how do cultural anthropologists do their research? What are the problems with participant observation as a methodology for research? What is the pilgrim’s worldview and how was it incorporated into the Catholic culture of Spain? What is the pilgrim’s concept of the body/the spirit/the afterlife? How do these concepts affect ideas about healing? How do you judge effective treatment? How do pilgrimage and biomedicine interact?
Scholarship assistance is available through SURF (Student Undergraduate Research Foundation, need 3.0 GPA and Dornsife major and the Del Amo Foundation the funds research in Spain). The cost is approximately $3,000. (This includes airfare). You are also responsible for USC tuition. Scholarship aide is competitive and will also depend on what other assistance you are receiving.
Book to buy:
Webb, Diana, 2008, Medieval European Pilgrimage c. 700-c. 1500, Palgrave.
FYI (If you choose, maps). A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago, St. Jean – Roncevalles - Santiago. By John Brierley
ARTICLES WILL COME FROM THESE BOOKS: I will post on blackboard
Badone, Ellen and Sharon R. Roseman, eds., 2004, Intersecting Journeys, The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, U. of Illinois Press.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 1475, Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath’s Tale)
Melczer, William, 1993, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela, Italica Press, Inc. (The Medieval Codex, Book Five)
Mitchell-Lanham, Jean, 2015, The Lore of the Camino de Santiago, Two Harbors Press.
Morinis, Alan, ed. 1992, Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Contributions to the Study of Anthropology), Praeger.
Sanchez y Sanchez, Samuel and Annie Hesp, eds. 2015, The Camino de Santiago in the 21st Century, Routledge.
Reference book: just for interest, not required, Gitlitz and Davidson, 2000, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago, The Complete Cultural Handbook.
There are also articles available on Ares Electronic Reserve.
Classes and Fieldwork:
1. Keep a journal of class notes and personal feelings/ expectations to review for your blogs and final paper. I grade these generously, looking mostly for completion and usable, quotable, solid field notes (names, times, conversations, etc.). (10% of final grade, I will look periodically).
You may keep this in Spanish as your conversations turn to Spanish on the Camino, particularly if you are a Spanish major or minor.
You may also keep this on-line and send it to me when requested.
As you read, you will have questions. Write your questions in your journals. Bring your questions to me, your classmates, pilgrims and people you meet along the way.
Write down every interaction and/or conversation you have before and after Spain that sheds light on health, healing and pilgrimage: note the language and Camino signs, other sights you notice, and your own thoughts.
2. Written Reflections : (10%) All students must write approx. 400 word response on the readings assigned for EACH class at USC. Descriptive, Comparative or Critical. Write your own thoughts, experiences and connections with other readings. Write on ALL the readings assigned for the day and cite page numbers.
This may not be turned in LATE. NOTE: pls. PASTE it into the email.
Send by midnight the day before the class for which it is due. Please mail earlier if you can.
Classes
1. Intro. to Anthropology and Medieval Pilgrimage: Catholics, Relics and Indulgences
Reflection due for today by midnight last night: Descriptive, Comparative or Critical. What was significant to you in the reading?
Read: Diana Webb, pg. 1-16, 20-39 Introduction to pilgrimages and medieval pilgrimages from an historical perspective, don’t worry about the details, just read to get the feel of these mass movements.
Note that Santiago, Compostela, Galicia or Saint James all refer to the Cathedral at the end of the Camino de Santiago; Castile refers to one Spanish Medieval Kingdom nearby.
In class: “Six Ways to Santiago” or “The Way”
2. Introduction to Medical Anthropology: QUIZ start of class.
Medical Anthropology as a Field, Fieldwork and Developing Community in a California healing center.
a. Margaret Mead on Fieldwork, “Letters from the Field.”
b. Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind, A California Retreat Center, Michael Lerner: “Healing” “Wounded Healers” and “Wholeness” pages 323-363
http://www.commonweal.org/programs/cancer-help.html (2016 we finished the film from class one, and did not get to any of this before our guest came).
Guest speaker: Annie O’Niel, 2nd half of class
Producer:Phil's Camino www.philscamino.com, (Phil has cancer and creates his own Camino in his backyard until….)
Co-producer/Pilgrim: Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago www.caminodocumentary.org
Author: Everyday Camino with Annie www.everydaycaminowithannie.com, spiritual reflections for home or on the trail.
3. Hike Eaten Canyon for walking practice, about three hours to and from parking lot in Altadena. Uber to my house and carpool from there. 1228 Stratford Ave. South Pasadena, Ca. 91030. 626 688-7224.
FIELD TRIP
1. Spiritualist Church, visit a healing service (1.5-2 hrs. hours, Sundays 2 pm)
Bring paper and pen.
Spiritualist healer in Los Angeles (BACKGROUND)
http://www.spiritualistcenter.org/history.html (Visit the cite and see the interview with Lee Jones before you come, 26 minutes).
A brief introduction to Spiritualism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
Spiritualist Center 323 856-8646, 6417 Lexington Ave., Los Angeles 90038, 101 N. to Santa Monica Blvd, left, to Cahuenga rt to Lexington, left on Lexington.
Healing service begins at 2 p.m.. Come early to chat and to sign up for a healing or reading. It takes about 50 min. in traffic from USC. Parking on street can be challenging.
Dress in church clothes, pants are fine.
First fieldwork: Linger a bit before and after and find out who goes there and why. What do they believe in? TALK to people. Sit in the back so you can see what is all going on. Peek sometimes when your eyes are closed. Do the members go to other churches too? Do they believe in reincarnation; biomedicine? Bring $10. for a spirit healing (if you have a friend, you can split the cost, one be the patient and one be the observer).
Remember: This is fieldwork. It does not matter if you believe in the spirits or like the service. You want to understand this culture.
DUE: (but it is important to get it in while it is fresh in your mind).
3 page reflection on the fieldwork.
Content (Answer 1-4 below):
1. Participant Observation: Comment on what you learned about the practice of anthropology and the questions that you have about the practice. Does participant observation make sense as a methodology to learn about other cultural ways and peoples. What are the drawbacks? Were you able to participate without losing your research goals or being too cynical? (Remember you are not converting; you are studying).
2. Performance: What did you see, hear, feel, smell. Use all your senses. This is the performance of healing – how did they lure you in (or not)? How do the healers attempt to convince you that what they are doing is real? (How do they legitimize their performance of healing?)
3. Pilgrimage: Is this a pilgrimage spot, is this a rite of passage (cite page numbers)? Where is it the same and where different? How might this be like the shamanic healing you read about (cite page no.).
4. Biomedicine: What is the relationship between biomedicine and Spiritualism in this center? Do they use any of the symbols from biomedical healing?
4. Quiz at start of class. Response due midnight before class.
Medical Anthropology cont. The Theatre of Performance
1. Claude, Levi-Strauss, Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, “The Sorcerer and His Magic” pgs. 129-137 (Intro to the importance of performance in the work of a Shaman.)
2. “Doctor’s White Coat”
3. Anthropology and Pilgrimage: PDF Scan mailed to you, Victor Turner,
“Passages, Margins, and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas,” Worship: 46 (7) 1967 Skip the first 3 pages to 393-412
(this is from the grandfather of pilgrimage studies in anthropology introduces you to the vocabulary: structure, anti-structure, rite of passage, liminality and communitas. This sets the stage for all future studies in pilgrimage in anthropology. 22 pages.
5. HIKE 7:30 am on trail with full packs, 13 to 15 pounds, meet at my house at 7:10.
6. Quiz in class, Response due midnight before class.
Fieldwork Participant Observation (discuss our fieldwork from the Spiritualist Center in Hollywood!!!) (paper due last night as well as responses),
Anthropology and Pilgrimage cont. plus medical anthropology and placebo:
1. Sacred Journeys, The Anthropology of Pilgrimage , Introduction, the Territory of The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Alan Morinis 1992 (This piece defines pilgrimage, sets the typology of pilgrimages. It continues the conversation that started with the Turner materials.) Rd. 1-21 only.