Anthropology of Religion/Intensive Student Projects
Over a year ago
in my Anthropology of Religion course I decided to ask my
students to develop term-long projects that focused on an
anthropological analysis of some aspect of religion and
spirituality. This particular course is a very important one that
I offer, for I feel that the misunderstandings that so often
accompany popular conceptualizations of religion and spirituality
can be challenged in the classroom. At the same time all people
bring their own biases as they relate to personal notions of the
divine in the classroom. To approach the topics critically, I
asked my students to develop an intensive, personalized project
that would draw on the diversity associated with the anthropology
of religion, as well as the controversies. The result was a very
rich array of projects. One focused on the politicization of
religion in Northern Ireland and offered a multiple frame collage
of images taken from popular accounts of Northern Ireland,
original photographs captured by the student during a trip to
Ireland, and her own artistic brushstrokes. Another student is
Wiccan and she asked to demonstrate aspects of her rituals with
the class. A third took a more global approach to the topic and
wanted to consider how religions variously interpret the divine
by looking at connections among the world/s cosmological systems.
Her result was a creative /active/ collage that opened up new
imagery as she removed pieces of a multicolored central symbol. A
final project was produced by two students who have a background
in the dramatic arts. They wanted to do a performance for the
class and they finally settled on a puppet show demonstration of
the major origin myths of world religions. At first I was unsure
if the medium would detract from the serious content; it did not.
In fact the puppet show, like the other projects in this class,
illustrated how openness to the format of anthropology
assignments can lead to unexpected connections and ideas.
I have tried to
emphasize the significance of language as it relates to the four
fields of anthropology. Students have a keen interest in how
language plays an active role in their lives, and many have been
inspired to develop original posters on the topic. Such work
inspired me to develop curriculum for a new course, Language and
Culture.
