The Peoples of the Books: Sacred Texts in Social Contexts
RELI 376
Spring 2011 not offered
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| Certificates: Middle Eastern Studies |
This course will explore the diverse roles of sacred texts in the everyday lives of religious communiites. It will focus, in large part, on differing understandings of scripture in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, but it will pose a set of theoretical questions about textual interpretation and authority that are relevant to a wide range of religious (and secular) traditions. How, we will ask, do individuals and communities engage with religious texts and narratives? How do social structures and institutions shape the process of textual interpretation? How is the immense authority of sacred texts negotiated in the context of everyday social life? How are ancient texts reimagined in contemporary literary works and artistic productions? How, in short, do texts and communities--peoples and their books--work to construct each other in religious life? |
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Essential Capabilities:
Intercultural Literacy, Interpretation
This course will encourage students to reflect on interpretation as a social process, by examining the everyday practices of reading, speaking, citing, and interrogating religious texts in a range of contexts. It will also explore how religious texts have been reinterpreted in contemporary literature.
This course will expose students to divergent views of scripture and textual authority in a number of different religious traditions (primarily but not entirely Jewish, Christian, and Muslim). It will foster intercultural literacy through a cross-cultural analysis of literacy itself.
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS RELI |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Jonathan Boyarin (ed.), THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF READING
Harold Coward, EXPERIENCING SCRIPTURE IN WORLD RELIGIONS
Vincent Crapanzano, SERVING THE WORD: LITERALISM IN AMERICA FROM THE PULPIT TO THE BENCH
Matthew Engelke, A PROBLEM OF PRESENCE: BEYOND SCRIPTURE IN AN AFRICAN CHURCH
Anna Gade, PERFECTION MAKES PRACTICE: LEARNING, EMOTION, AND THE RECITED QURAN IN INDONESIA
Moshe Halbertal, PEOPLE OF THE BOOK: CANON, MEANING, AND AUTHORITY
Susan Handleman, THE SLAYERS OF MOSES: THE EMERGENCE OF RABBINIC INTERPRETATION IN MODERN LITERARY THEORY
Shulamit Hareven, THE MIRACLE HATER
Charles Hirschkind, THE ETHICAL SOUNDSCAPE: CASSETTE SERMONS AND ISLAMIC COUNTERPUBLICS
Brinkley Messick, THE CALLIGRAPHIC STATE: TEXTUAL DOMINATION AND HISTORY IN A MUSLIM SOCIETY.
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Examinations and Assignments:
A series of short papers on the course reading, and a longer paper based on independent research. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course meets the Thematic Approach requirement for Religion majors. |
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