CLASS SESSIONS
Topics, Readings and Assignments:
Week 1 – 1/29 Sacred Space is out there and in here
Readings:
• Take a tour of the Petra Great Temple Excavations: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/Petra/
• Undergo the HolyLand Experience™ at: http://www.theholylandexperience.com/
• Read Malcom X’s 1964 account of the hajj in One Thousand Roads to Mecca, ed. M. Wolfe, 1997, Grove Press: New York; pp 486-503
• Excerpts from the self help treatise Sacred Space: Enhancing the energy of your home or office by Denis Linn, 1995. Read: Preface, Chapters 1, 2, 5, 10, 17 and whatever else of this catches your attention.
• Hughes, Thomas P. 2004. “Technology and the Second Creation” in Human Built World: How to think about technology and culture. Chicago: U. Chicago Press. 17-43.
For the fun of it if you have never read it before:
• Macaulay, David. 1979. Motel of the Mysteries. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Week 2 – 2/5 Theorizing Sacred Space
Readings:
• Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane; the Nature of Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. (Introduction and Chapter 1)
• Basso, K. 1996. “Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape.” in Senses of Place. Ed. S. Feld and K. Basso. SAR Press
• Lowenthal, David. 1985. “Reliving the Past: Dreams and Nightmares” in The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-34.
• Lane, Belden. 1988. “Axioms for the Study of Sacred Place” in Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. 11-33
Week 3 – 2/12 To Take Place
Readings:
• Smith, J. Z. (1987). To take place: toward theory in ritual. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Shehadeh, Raja. 2007. Palestinian Walks: Notes on a vanishing landscape. London: Profile Books (Intro and Walk #2 “The Albina case”)
Week 4 – 2/19 HOLIDAY
Week 5 - 2/26 Sacred Space and Cultural Practice
Readings:
• Ditchfield, Simon. 2005. “Reading Rome as a sacred landscape, c. 1586-1635.” In Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe. ed. W. Coster and A. Spicer. 167-192. CUP
• Campo, Juan. 1991. “The Mecca Pilgrimage and the formation of Islam in Modern Egypt.” In Sacred Places and Profane Spaces: Essays in the Geographics of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Ed. J. Scott and P. Simpson-Housley. Westport: greenwood Press. 145-162.
• VanGenepp, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 1-3)
• Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977. Chapters 1 and 3 (though I would strongly recommend reading the whole book)
• Edensor, Tim. 1998. Tourists at the Taj: Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site. New York: Routledge. (Intro and Chapters 1 and 2)
Week 6 – 3/4 Monuments and Memory
Readings:
• Edensor, Tim. 1998. Tourists at the Taj: Performance and Meaning at a Symbolic Site. New York: Routledge. (Chapters 3-7)
• Alcock, Susan E.; 2002. Archaeologies of the Greek past: landscape, monuments, and memories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1-35 "Archaeologies of Memory."
• Guha-Thakurta. 2003. “Archaeology and the monument: an embattled site of history and memory in contemporary India,” in Monuments and Memory, 59-81.
• Bernbeck, Reinhard and Susan Pollock; 1996. “Ayodha, archaeology and identity,” Current Anthropology 37: 138-142.
Exercise 1: Memorialization
• On the wiki document a case study of memorialization through the use of monuments. This might be a real physical place (even local), something drawn from the realm of fiction, or simply an idea locked in the sketchpad of an artist or the binary code of GoogleEarth or Wikimapia. Do these monuments construct memories that not only reflect an image of a particular social reality but also manage to transform our engagement of that social world through their play on time and space into something more? The ancient Sumerians had a term for it – “mē” – which might be translated as a divine enervating force. What place does ritual have in these transformations if they in fact exist?
In class we will plan to discuss your case studies in conjunction with the readings on the relationship of monuments and memory. In what ways is this part of a social process of making space sacred?
Research Paper proposal due in class.
Week 7 – 3/11 (-)Topia: Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia
Readings:
• Foucault, M. 1967. “Of Other Spaces, heterotopias.” Available at: http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html
• Preucel, R. 2006. “Brook Farm and the Architecture of Utopia.” Chapter 8 of Archaeological Semiotics. Oxford: Blackwell, 175-209.
• Davis, Mike. 1998. “How Eden Lost its Garden.” Chapter 2 of Ecology of Fear. New York: Vintage Books 57-92
• Hamilakis, Yannis. 2000. Cyberspace/Cyberpast/cybernation: constructin Hellenism in Hyperreality. EJA. 3: 241-264
• VIDEO - Echoes Of Forgotten Places: Urban Exploration, Industrial Archaeology, and the Aesthetics of Decay directed by Robert Fantinatto, 2005 Scribble Media
• A fun read if you have the time: Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere
Week 8 – 3/18 Shelter for the Soul: Sanctuaries and other Architectural forms
Readings:
- Renfrew, Colin, Penelope A. Mountjoy, and Callum Macfarlane. 1985. The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi. London: British School of Archaeology at Athens: Thames and Hudson (selections)
Case Study: Rural Studio
• Have a read through the volume Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency 2002; Princeton Architectural Press.
• The Rural Studio videorecording. Chuck Schultz (director/producer); BluePrint Productions and Alabama Public New York, NY : BluePrint Productions, c2002
• Rural Studio Website http://cadc.auburn.edu/soa/rural%2Dstudio/
Exercise 2: Sanctuary
• On the wiki describe a visit to a local “sanctuary” (I use this term loosely so that it is your responsibility to actual define this category and how it relates to the actual place which you have visited”). In what ways is your experience negotiated through ritual, memory, fear and euphoria? Consider the role played by the physical/material place as opposed to the discourse that surrounds that particular sanctuary for the way in which you engage with it. How does this sanctuary compare to others that you have shaped your experience of sacred space in the past? Finally think about how you will best represent your experience to others. Feel free to use images, video, sound etc. as part of your description. (Unfortunately touch and smell are not senses that the wiki can accommodate but bring that to class if it is important.)
Book reviews due in class and posted on the wiki
Week 9 – 3/25 Spring Break
** Note that you might want to do the exercise for the following week while you enjoy your spring break.
Week 10 – 4/1 Getting back to Nature
Readings:
• White, Curtis. 2007. “The Idols of Environmentalism” Orion http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/233
• Nasr, Seyyed H. 1996. Religion and the Order of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapters 2, 6 and 8
• Bradley, R. (2000). An archaeology of natural places. London ; New York, Routledge. (selections)
• Leo Marx. The Machine in the Garden. Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. (New York: Oxford U. Press 1964).
Thoreau’s Legacy: The Business of Homesteading (just a sample explore for yourself)
http://www.homestead.org/ http://hollishomestead.blogspot.com/ http://www.motherearthnews.com/
Those interested in colonial North American and the relations with Native Americans:
• Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England.
• As well as his edited volume: Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature ed. (New York: W.W. Norton 1996)
Also a classic is:
• Nash, Roderick. 1967. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale U. Press.
Exercise 3: Nature
• Commune with nature. Were you successful? Document your experiment on the wiki. Slideshows, lab reports, poetry are all acceptable forms of narration. We can meditate on it more in class.
Week 11 – 4/8 Sacred spaces in a Secular World
Readings:
• Mitchell, Timothy. 1989. Colonising Egypt. Chapter 1 “Egypt at the Exhibition.” Berkeley: UC Press. ebook available at http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft587006k2/
• Holod, Renata. 1997. The Contemporary Mosque. Chapter 2 “The State as Client.” New York: Rizzoli
• Wu Hung. 2003. Monumentality of time: Giant clocks, the Drum tower, the clock tower. in Monuments and Memory, 107-132.
Case Study: The Museum
• C. Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums, New York, 1995; Chapter 1: The Art Museum as Ritual
• Gaskell, "Sacred to Profane and Back Again," in A. McClellan, ed. Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium, Malden, MA, 2003, 148-62.
Week 12 – 4/15 Deus in urbes
Readings:
• Rykwert, Joseph. The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. (Preface and Chapters 1 and 2; Recommended Chapters 3-6)
• Coben, L. S. 2006. “Other Cuscos: replicated theaters of Inka power.” In Archaeology of Performance: Theaters of Power, Community and Politics. ed. T. Inomata and L. Coben. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 223-259.
• Pahl, John. 2003. “Cities of God.” In Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 239-258.
• Christys, Ann. 2001. Cordoba in the Vita Vel Passio Argenteae. In Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages. Pp 119-136.
Another important and highly recommended reading:
• Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History: Its origins, its transformations, and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Exercise 4: The City
• Reflect on a city that you know well or desire to know better. Does the lens of sacred space provide any resonance for how you know that particular space? As you reflect think about whether your engagement is with the city as object or as subject. Does that make a difference? In what ways is your relationship with that city ritualized?
Week 13 – 4/22 Archaeological enchantment
Readings:
• Layard, A. H. (1852). Nineveh and its Remains. New York, Putnam. Vol 1. Preface, Intro, Chapters 1 and 2 – available for download from http://books.google.com/
• Hodder, Ian. 2006. The Leopard’s Tale: revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük. New York: Thames and Hudson. (Preface, Chapters 1,2 and 6, Epilogue)
• Hubert, Jane. 1994. Sacred Beliefs and beliefs of sacredness. In Sacred Sites, Sacred Places. ed. by D. Carmichael, J. Hubert, B. Reeves, A. Schanche. London: Routledge. 9-19.
Week 14 – 4/29 Presentations
Research Papers/Projects Due
