Description: Values are the seeming undercurrent of personal and cultural life. They are the sources of daily decisions as well as the hidden dynamic in public policies. This course aims at an examination of the "deep-structure" religious paradigms which undergird and are expressed in the religions of the world and are the underlying many-faceted foundations of our contemporary multi-cultural world. In one sense, we will be tracing the trajectories of "paradigms in motion" as they are unleashed from overtly religious contexts into more camouflaged survivals in modern and post-modern culture. Thus anything becomes fair game as our object of study: from the quest of Gilgamesh to the search for the Holy Grail; from ancient hero-tales to valiant entrances into enlightenment; from the tree of life to the sacrificial death of a savior; from aboriginal dreamtime to Zen meditation; from spirituality to psychotherapy; from the cosmogonic egg to modern astrophysics. We will examine values as a form of sacred communication and as exhibited in sacred behaviours. We will have occasion to observe the transformation of myth into literature, cinema, and cultural symbolism. We will explore and interpret examples of modern/post-modern cinema, literature, and sociological activities which will all be treated as religious documents, thus realizing the anthropological reality of humanity as homo religiosus. In a nutshell, our aim will be to focus upon the evidence of the tenacity of religious paradigms as values in contemporary culture. Thus we will examine primary religious phenomena as encoded in scripture and in the deep-structure religious paradigms at the core of culture in order to
proceed to contemporary structures as a way of doing “cultural archeology” to unearth the stratas of religious themes, dimensions, insights and/or phenomena embedded there. The argument and exploration of this course is be based on the premise that “in the history of religions there are only documents and interpreters.” We will test that premise over a vast span of genres and works and in the context of contemporary american multi-culturalism. Such themes as the identity and purpose of humanity, the problems of suffering, ethics, the quests for ultimate meaning, significance, power, and transcendence; the prophetic critiques of religious and social dynamics or aberrations; horror and the holy and the wisdom of the monster tale will be among the many possible topics of focus in this course.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: reading assignments, class participation, at least one quiz, one small research paper on a relevant topic of your choice, one final-examination, and, of course, good mental hygiene.
Assignments and grading criteria: All assignments will be posted on the assignments page. Preparation and class participation are factored into the grading. Students must participate in all posted class assignments. This cannot be emphasized enough. The mid-term accounts for approximately 20% of your grade, the final about 20%, and the research paper 20% with a 40% margin based on online class participation (quality of comments, thoroughness of thought, evidence of reading, timeliness, etc). In addition, 2% will be subtracted from your overall grade for untimely participation for each assignment. My scale includes plus and minuses. Make-ups are possible only by divine intervention.
Texts (on order at the bookstore, but also available online via Amazon or some other such internet store):
Religion and Popular Culture in America
by Bruce David Forbes & Jeffrey H. Mahan
Paperback - 324 pages (2000)
University of California Press; ISBN: 0-520-22028-5
The Sacred Quest
by Lawrence S. Cunningham and John Kelsay
Paperback - 176 pages 3rd edition (2002)
Prentice Hall Pub Co; ISBN: 0130209945
Blue Jean Buddha : Voices of Young Buddhists
by Soumi D. Lounden and Jack Kornfield
Paperback 232 pages (October 2001)
Wisdom Publications; ISBN: 0861711777