Language and Religion
Anth 3609
Instructor: Joel Kuipers
M: 3.30-6.00 pm
Monroe Hall 113
CRN:16569
Religion and language are among the most complex, defining, and intensely felt symbolic expressions of humankind. This course begins with the assumption that both are semiotic systems – organized structures and routines by which meaning is conveyed through signs. After an introduction to the methods of semiotics, we will then proceed to ask how religious language – as a sign system - functions to represent, transmit, inscribe, translate, authorize and distribute the meaning of experiences of “invisible presence” (see William James Varieties of Religious Experience). What is the role of language in representing the experience of the divine, the holy, the uncanny, and the spirit world? How and why is the language used in these contexts so often “marked” and set off as “different” from ordinary language? How do words acquire magical power through performance? How do these words become authoritative? How does religious discourse become blasphemous? What is the role of print and other media in the inscription and reproduction of religious authority? Once inscribed, what are the rules for translating religious discourse among different communities? How do religious forms of discourse fare in modernizing worlds? We will examine a variety of forms of religious discourse – mantras, spells, songs, poems, liturgies, sacred texts, as well as silent, unintelligible, ecstatic and even virtual expressive practices – and investigate them historically, cross culturally and contextually. Students will explore these topics theoretically and ethnographically with original research projects.
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Prerequisite: Anth 1004 or equivalent; Anth 1002 helpful.
Books for the course:
Niloofar Haeri
Sacred Language, Ordinary People
978-0-230-10737-3
Richard Bauman
Let Your Words Be Few
0-88133-522-3
Courtney Handman
Critical Christianity
978-0-28376-3
Contact info for Kuipers
2112 G Street NW Room 201
202-994-6545; lab 202-994-3784
Office hours: Tuesdays 1.30-3.30 pm
Course Schedule
1) August 29. Introduction and organization.
2) September 12. Religious Language
Read: Keane “Religion and Language” *
3) September 19. Ritual, Experience and Speech Events
Read: Tambiah “A Performative Approach to Ritual”*
4) September 26. The Critique of Ritual: Quakers
Read: Bauman Let Your Words Be Few
5) October 3. Form, Meaning and Power in Ritual Language
Read: 1) Bloch “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation”* 2) Irvine “Formality and Informality in Communicative Events”* 3) Kuipers “Talking About Troubles”* 4) Kuipers “Obligations to the Word”*
6) October 10. Inscriptions of Religious Authority
Read: 1) Kuipers “Named Speech Registers and the Inscription of Locality in the Dutch East Indies”* 2) Viechnicki and Kuipers “’It’s All Human Error’”* 3) Kuipers “Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4”
7) October 17. Midterm: IDs and Essay Questions.
8) October 24. University Fall break
9) October 31: Blasphemy as Transgression
Read: 1) David Lawton “Speaking Blasphemy”* 2) Lawton “Judging Blasphemy”* 3) Keane “Freedom and Blasphemy: On Indonesian Press Bans and Danish Cartoons”*
10) November 7 Translation
Read: Courtney Handman Critical Christianity
11) November 14. Modernity 1: Imagined Communities, Religions and Nations
Read: 1) Pollock “Cosmopolis”* 2) Ronit Ricci Islam Translated * (excerpts) 3) Anderson Imagined Communities the Decline of Sacred Languages”
12) November 21 Modernity 2: The Persistence of Sacred Language and the Dilemmas of Secularism
Read: Haeri Sacred Language, Ordinary People
13) November 28 Modernity 3: New Media and the Sacred
Read: 1) Kerstein Radde-Antweiler “’Virtual Religion’ – an Approach to a Religious and Ritual Topography of Second Life” Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 3.1 (2008)* 2) Sands “Muslims, Identity and Multimodal Communication on the Internet” *
14) December 5. Agency
Read: 1) Keane “Sincerity, Modernity and the Protestants”* 2) Keane “Calvin in the Tropics: Subjects and Objects on the Religious Frontier”*
15) December 12: Presentations. Post your PPT presentations by December 11 on Blackboard discussion forum and comment on the others by December 14.
FINAL EXAM date TBA
FINAL PAPERS DUE on day of final exam. ~15 pages plus bibliography.
Learning Goals
· Learn to identify, produce and evaluate narratives of the history of the anthropological study of religion.
· Learn to identify, produce and evaluate the history of the anthropological study of language.
· Learn how religious discourse is “marked” poetically, and how this marking functions in the organization of society.
· Learn to identify and evaluate competing interpretations of the structures and functions in discourse
· Learn to develop an original ethnographic research question.
· Learn how to evaluate secondary literature that supports, refutes, or otherwise contributes to your central claim
· Learn to gather original ethnographic data, prepare and analyze it for use in a research paper.
· Learn to use cultural comparison as a tool for understanding how cultural, social, or economic contexts shape understandings and behaviors
· Learn to work collegially as thinkers and cultural critics
· Learn to apply critical, analytical, and evaluative thinking to one’s own writing, through drafting, revising, and/or editing processes appropriate to the discipline in which they are working.
· Understand and learn to use key terms in linguistic anthropology, among them:
o Religion
o Indexicality/performance
o reflexivity
o media
o identity
o code
o register
Assessment:
Blackboard discussion 15%
Midterm 25%
Class participation (including paper comments) 10%
Final 25%
Final Paper 25%
General expectations:
Students must attend all classes. If you must be absent for a medical reason or family emergency, you must provide written documentation.
Blackboard discussions: Each week, before class, you must react to the article, book or group of articles assigned for the week. React to some aspect of the claims made in the article and evaluate it – positively or negatively – and defend your reaction. Do this by the Thursday before Mondays’ class. Then, by Saturday of the week before class, react to at least ONE of your classmates posts on Blackboard.
Rules of academic integrity must be followed.
Papers will be evaluated for strength and originality of your claim, the way in which your data supports the claim, the way in which your claim relates to (e.g. supporting or refuting) other claims in the literature, the coherence of the paper as a whole, and the validity of the findings.
Papers should use the APA style. I strongly recommend that you use citation software such as Refworks (supported by GW) or Endnote.
In your final papers, you must have an argument. Please consult the Turabian chapters on formulating a research problem when writing a research paper.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
I personally support the GW Code of Academic Integrity. It states: “Academic dishonesty is defined as cheating of any kind, including misrepresenting one's own work, taking credit for the work of others without crediting them and without appropriate authorization, and the fabrication of information.” For the remainder of the code, see: http://www.gwu.edu/~ntegrity/code.html
SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES (DSS)
Any student who may need an accommodation based on the potential impact of a disability should contact the Disability Support Services office at 202-994-8250 in the Marvin Center, Suite 242, to establish eligibility and to coordinate reasonable accommodations. For additional information please refer to: http://gwired.gwu.edu/dss/
UNIVERSITY COUNSELING CENTER (UCC) 202-994-5300
The University Counseling Center (UCC) offers 24/7 assistance and referral to addressstudents'personal, social, career, and study skillsproblems. Services for students include:
- crisis and emergency mental health consultations
- confidential assessment, counseling services (individual and small group), and referrals
http://gwired.gwu.edu/counsel/CounselingServices/AcademicSupportServices
SECURITY
In the case of an emergency, if at all possible, the class should shelter in place. If the building that the class is in is affected, follow the evacuation procedures for the building. After evacuation, seek shelter at a predetermined rendezvous location.
CREDIT HOURS
Over 15 weeks, students will spend 3 hours (150 minutes) per week in class, (37.5 hours for the semester). Homework and other out-of- class work is estimated at around 300 minutes per week (75 hours for the semester) and includes a 3-hour final exam for which approximately 10 hours of review is assumed.
University Policies
University Policy on Religious Holidays
1. Students should notify faculty during the first week of the semester of their intention to be absent from class on their day(s) of religious observance.
2. Faculty should extend to these students the courtesy of absence without penalty on such occasions, including permission to make up examinations.
3. Faculty who intend to observe a religious holiday should arrange at the beginning of the semester to reschedule missed classes or to make other provisions for their course-related activities
Support for Students Outside the Classroom
Disability Support Services (DSS)
Any student who may need an accommodation based on the potential impact of a disability should contact the Disability Support Services office at202-994- 8250in the Rome Hall, Suite 102, to establish eligibility and to coordinate reasonable accommodations. For additional information please refer to:gwired.gwu.edu/dss/
Mental Health Services 202-994- 5300
The University Mental Health Services offers 24/7 assistance and referral to address students’ personal, social, career, and study skills problems. Services for students include: crisis and emergency mental health consultations, confidential assessment, counseling services (individual and small group), and referrals. counselingcenter.gwu.edu/