Welcome
This course ran during the Winter term, 2010, at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Religion and Culture Department. The course is now over, but the site will remain as an archive and resource. In conjunction with regular lectures, I used WordPress to deliver course materials, but also to encourage discussion and a sharing of ideas and student work in a more open environment. Using an Open Source Management system like WordPress was in part an experiment aimed at exploring how new media might augment and hopefully improve a lecture driven format. If you have any questions or comments about using WordPress in teaching a course, or comments about this site, please e-mail at barry@twohornedbull.ca
About The Course
This course deals with the spatial dimensions of religions. One feature of religions is that they provide a sense of orientation, direction, and location, as well as guide and direct movement. Charles Long, in his book Significations, writes: “For my purposes, religion will mean orientation–orientation in the ultimate sense, that is, how one comes to terms with the ultimate significance of one’s place in the world.” For the purposes of this course then, we can approach religions as the means through which individuals and groups becomes placed in space. We focus on three key sites: Jerusalem, Wittenberg, and the Great Plains. Jerusalem is a holy city for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Wittenberg, Germany, was the seat of the historical Reformation and Martin Luther’s home for thirty-six years. The Great Plains figure prominently in the civil religion and mythic narratives of the United States, and are home to several American Indian Nations, such as the Lakota and Cheyenne. We also address a number of key themes, including theoretical notions about sacred space, nature and wilderness as sacred locales, and relations to place in the modern and postmodern worlds.
How to Use This Site
On these webpages you will find a weekly schedule, materials for lectures, readings, media (photos, music, video), course tools, and occasional links to external websites. The site is navigated via the sidebar at the right. Each lecture session has a title and a webpage, and you should visit the page prior to the lecture, giving yourself enough time to view and read content, print out notes, find the course readings (and read them!), and complete any other required work for that session. Audio and visual materials need not be viewed prior to class. Focus on having the notes and required readings at hand. Most of the images on this site employ lightbox, which means if you click them, you will be able to view a larger image (like the one below). If you encounter any problems, have any suggestions, or turn up any good internet material, send me an email, or post it.
Your Contributions: The site is designed and published with Wordpress, and you will need to learn how to post and comment to the site. The site will allow us to carry on conversations in between classes, and to take advantage of open source content management. Two of your assignments involve making posts to the site (you can make additional posts, if you like), and thoughtful, well-written posts and comments, in addition to your classroom presence and participation, are part of the course requirements. Needless to say, choose your words carefully: no profanity, abusive language, personal attacks, links to suspect websites, hacking or the like. Rather: be civil, critical, insightful, open.
Barry
