Admission requirements
Admission to the MA Middle Eastern Studies or the MA Asia Studies, the MA Middle Eastern Studies (research) or the MA Asia Studies (research) or the MA Theology & Religious Studies. Preferably, students have some basic knowledge of Anthropology and Sociology of Religion.
Students who lack this knowledge are advised to read D.L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion (Oxford 2006) before the start of the course.
Description
This course aims at providing students knowledge of and insights into the development, function and meaning of pilgrimage and sainthood in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, both historical and contemporary. The scholarly inquiry into the diversity of religious expressions and behavior is interdisciplinary in nature and demonstrates changes in the religious landscape revealing an increasing religious pluralism in our times.
Pilgrimage is an ‘arena’ for competing religious and secular discourses, for both the official co-optation and the non-official recovery of religious meanings, for conflict between orthodoxies, sects, and confessional groups, for drives towards consensus, and for counter movements towards division. At the same time pilgrimage can be understood or identified in terms of ‘movement’: movement as performative action (effecting certain social and cultural transformations), movement as embodied action (providing the catalyst for certain kinds of bodily experiences), movement as part of a semantic field (referring to the need to contextualize the meaning of pilgrimage within local cultural understandings of mobility), and movement as metaphor (the ways in which pilgrimage-related discourses may evoke movement rather than require it).
The study of these various expressions, in most cases fluid and ambiguous, but highly dynamic and mutable, not only provides us with knowledge about people’s changing beliefs but also about the wider society in which they manifest themselves. The religious, social, cultural, political and material aspects of pilgrimage and its rites have produced a variety of scholarly interpretations.
In this course we will study examples of pilgrimage ant sainthood in historical and contemporary Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and specifically examine the theoretical orientations being used to interpret them. The course comprises of two parts. The first consists of series of lectures offering an interpretative and theoretical framework, the second consists of student’s presentations as a preparation for the written end term paper.
Course Objectives
Acquire general knowledge of current approaches to pilgrimage,
carry out research on topics related to pilgrimage under supervision,
present research both from a historical and social scientific perspective,
analyze the relationship between historical and contemporary social science academic literature in a given field,
orally present a plan for an small piece of (literature based) research,
present a small (literature based) research project outcome in a professional written format.
Timetable
check timetable
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Lectures by the instructors and a few guest experts, as well as oral presentations by students.
Attendance is mandatory and participation in discussions consists in 10% of the grade. Each student is expected having done the assigned readings and prepared to discuss them with others.
Bring the book or handouts we are working on to each meeting. If an emergency requires you to miss a meeting, notify the instructor in time, and be prepared to have another student report on what you missed; you are responsible for seminar information and announcements whether present or not.
Course Load
Meetings: 12 × 2 hours = 24 hours
Reading assignments: 66 hours
Presentation: 40 hours
End term paper: 150 hours
Total: 280 hrs. (= 10 ects).
Assessment method
Individual presentation (of the final paper): 30%
Final paper (5,000 words): 60%
Attendance and participation: 10%
To pass the course, students must have received an overall mark for the course of 5.50 (=6) or higher.
The end-term paper is written in two stages: a first version, which will be commented on, and a final version. Students who do not meet the deadline for the first version will lose the right to get comments and will only be graded based on their final version. Students who do not meet the deadline for the final version, will get a failing grade.
In order to pass the course, students must obtain an overall mark of 5.50 (=6) or higher. A new version of the final assignment may be written if the overall mark for the course is “5.49” (=5) or lower. If students take this option, they must choose an alternative topic. They will not be permitted to resubmit the same paper. The deadline for this version will be determined in consultation.
The course is an integrated whole. All categories must be completed in the same academic year. No partial marks can be carried over into following years.
Blackboard
Reading material and assignments will be distributed through Blackboard.
Reading list
Reading assignments for each meeting will be posted on Blackboard in due time, but the book we are starting with in this course is:
S. Coleman & J. Elsner, Pilgrimage. Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, Mass. 1995).
Registration
Students are required to register through uSis. To avoid mistakes and problems, students are strongly advised to register in uSis through the activity number which can be found in the timetable in the column under the heading “Act.nbr.”.
Students are also required to enroll on Blackboard as soon as the course is available there.
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs
Contractonderwijs.
(Studeren à la carte is not possible for this course.)