Final Project Proposals

I’ve gone through all the final project proposals. Wow! I am impressed.

I’ve created a separate forum under the ‘Discussion Board’ on the Portal/Blackboard site for each general topic you’ve chosen. Check them out – they are arranged by region/theme, and are intended to give you some instant conversation partners (to exchange references, ideas, and so on). We’ll talk more in class tomorrow about the final projects and how we will incorporate them on our virtual map. See you then.  -akg

Jan. 26 Meeting at the ROM

Hi all,

Just a reminder to those who weren’t in class today: we will be meeting in the front lobby of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) next Tuesday at 11am. Please bring your student ID to enter free; otherwise there is an entrance fee. We will meet in the lobby and enter the museum together, talk over the permanent collection on the first and second floors, and then retire to the basement for lunch. AND PLEASE BRING a hard copy of your final project proposal and annotated bibliography. These are due Jan 26, 11am at the ROM! See you then. -akg

Jan. 19 Response Question

In 1-2 pages (dbl. spaced) MAXIMUM, please describe the way in which the missionary accounts found in Mission to Asia depict the “local inhabitants” encountered in the course of their travels. Use specific examples from the text. Your response can focus on so-called religious aspects of the local cultural contexts they encounter, but could just as easily include the missionary experience of food practices, gender roles and so on. Be specific and stick to the page limit. We’ll discuss your responses in class. See you next week. -akg

Final Blog Projects

Included below is a link to a course website that contains a number of excellent student blog projects that were created last term in RLG356.Islam in China. Those students followed the same project outline that you will this term, so check out their links (listed by group on the right side of the page):

http://borderlandstudies.wordpress.com/

In particular, you can see how they incorporated text, images, videos and so on to present their research. We’ll talk more about the final projects for RLG245, but the RLG356 samples should serve as guides for the kind of work I’ll expect from you come late March.  -akg

Jan. 12 Readings and Group Topics

Greetings – the readings for this week include:
*Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, selections
*Ellen Bradshaw Aitke, “The Cologne Mani Codex”

In addition, I’d like you to look through the entry on “Syncretism” found in the Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd Edition) accessible through the UofT library website. Having done all the readings, I’d like you to discuss online (as your Group Topic) what you think separates Manichaeism from other so-called “syncretic” traditions. Is it ’syncretic’, and if so, what does recognition of that fact get us as scholars of religion? In other words, how does ’syncretism’ as an organizing principle help us (hurt us?) when thinking about Manichaeism as a textual tradition? We’ll talk about this in class together tomorrow. Happy reading and writing.  -akg

Winter 2010

Happy New Year.

Class resumes Tuesday, and there are several readings due this week. In place of a course reader this term, I will upload pdf files of individual articles on Blackboard, so check the Portal course site. Other readings can be found in the required textbooks (all of which can be purchased at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore – see the Syllabus) or on various websites, links to which are provided on the Weekly Schedule (see above). The readings on Manichaeism and Tang China due this week will be available Monday, January 4 on Blackboard, and I’ll expect your blog entries sometime by the end of the first week of classes. We’ll also discuss the final research projects this week. See you in class Tuesday. -akg

Talks on Campus (that you should go to)

2009 F.E.L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas
From Tuesday, 08 December 2009 -  4:30pm To Thursday, 10 December 2009 - 6:00pm Every day
University College Presents “The Materiality of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages” Caroline Walker Bynum Professor of Medieval European History, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University Professor Emerita, Columbia University Tuesday, December 8 “Weeping Statues and Bleeding Bread:  Miracles and Their Theorists” Wednesday, December 9 “Living Synecdoche:  Parts and Wholes in Medieval Devotion” Thursday, December 10 “The Materiality of the Visual: How Did Medieval People See?” In the period between 1150 and 1550 a number of Christians in western Europe made pilgrimage to places where material objects–among them paintings, statues, relics, pieces of wood, earth, stones, and Eucharistic wafers–allegedly erupted into life by such activities as bleeding, weeping, and walking about. In these three lectures, Prof. Bynum will describe the miracles themselves, discuss the problems they presented for both church authorities and the ordinary faithful, and probe the basic assumptions about matter that lay behind them. She will also analyze what modern theorists call “medieval art” and argue that it called attention to its materiality in sophisticated ways that help explain both the animation of images and the iconoclastic resistance to them. December 8, 9 & 10, 2009 4:30 p.m., Room 140, University College 15 King’s College Circle, University of Toronto. View a map. Reception in Room 240 following lecture on December 8 Members of the faculty, staff, students and the public are cordially invited. No registration necessary. Call (416) 978-3160 for more information. About the speaker: Caroline Walker Bynum studies the religious ideas and practices of the European Middle Ages from late antiquity to the sixteenth century. She obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard in l969. She taught at Harvard from l969-76, at the University of Washington from l976-88, and at Columbia University from l988 to 2003. In January 2003 she became Professor of European Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She holds honorary degrees from thirteen American and foreign universities and in 1999 she was Jefferson Lecturer, the highest honor the U.S. federal government awards to a scholar in the humanities. In the 1980s, her book Holy Feast and Holy Fast was instrumental in introducing the concept of gender into Medieval Studies. Her recent work, in Wonderful Blood (2007) and in her forthcoming Christian Materiality (Zone Books, 2010), is a radical reinterpretation of the nature of Christianity on the eve of the reformations of the sixteenth century. About the Priestley Lectures: F.E.L Priestley retired in 1972 from his position as a Professor of English at University College in the University of Toronto after some fifty years of teaching. The F.E.L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas were established by several of his former students. The lectures are interdisciplinary and may focus on literature, economics, history, geography, philosophy, theology, science, political science, as well as business, law, and medicine. Three in number and given on successive days, the lectures reflect their namesake’s broad interest in the history of ideas, as well as his dedication to teaching and scholarship.

The Final Stretch

Greetings,

Just wanted to write a quick update on the final couple weeks of class this term (can you believe how fast all these exciting weeks have passed?!):

Nov. 24: Online Group Topic – for this group topic I want you to focus on daily life at Dunhuang. What is the socio-political situation at the site, and how does Buddhism figure in? What do we know, and what do we not know, that might help us reconstruct the actual practice of Buddhism in the Dunhuang region?

Dec. 1: Short Paper 3 is due, which is to be a short (1-2 pages max) critical summary or precis on Sharf’s “Introduction” found in the course reader.

See you all next Tuesday. -akg

Nov. 17, Short Paper 2 Due

Greetings,

As noted on the weekly class schedule, your second short papers are due this Tuesday, Nov. 17. I’d like you to write a short critical summary of

Stanley Abe’s article “Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West” found in the course reader. Remember, the goal of the short critical summary or precis is NOT to repeat all the points raised by Abe, but to lay out the key ideas and intellectual moves, so to speak, that Abe makes in his article. That is to say, what are his main points, how does he make them, and why?

And please be sure that you have read through last week’s readings on Indian Buddhism. It will help with this week’s assignment. See you Tuesday. -akg

Nov. 10 CLASS CANCELLATION

Tomorrow’s Silk Road class has been cancelled. We’ll meet again after the fall break.

-akg