Admission requirements
Admission to the MA Middle Eastern Studies (research) or the MA Asia Studies (research).
Preferably, students have some basic knowledge of and interest in the 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. Students of other MA programmes are kindly referred to the regular MA 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 and sainthood in historical and contemporary Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and specifically examine the theoretical orientations being used to interpret them. The course consists of two parts. In the first part, a series of lectures will offer an interpretative and theoretical framework in addition to regional perspectives;, in the second, the student will present their own research in preparation of the written term paper.
Course Objectives
After successfully completing the course, the student is able:
to provide an in-depth overview of the ritual practice of the sacred journeys discussed in class;
to recognize the various theoretical perspectives informing the study of these pilgrimages and holy places;
to conduct a critical literature review of a particular pilgrimage or holy place;
to report about it orally and in writing.
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 to have done the assigned readings and be prepared to discuss them with others.
Bring the books or handouts we are working with 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
weekly meetings 12 x 2 hrs, 24 hrs, with an extra 6 hrs in a form to be discussed
weekly reading assignments (450 pages), 60 hrs
6 assignments (Q&Cs) consisting of (a) a summary of the main arguments of the literature assigned for the class (maximum of three paragraphs) (b) a question or statement about an issue raised in the literature or a specific quotation that you would like to discuss and (b) brief comments about why you selected the question, statement or quotation, 10 hrs
presentation, 30 hrs
end term paper of 6,000 words, 150 hrs
Total: 280 hrs = 10 EC
Assessment method
Individual presentation (of the final paper): 30%
Final paper ResMA-students: 6,000 words: 60%
Attendance and participation: 10%
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. (The paper deadline mentioned in uSis is a fictional date for administration purposes only. The actual date will be communicated by the convenor of the course.)
In order to pass the course, students must obtain an overall mark of 5.50 (=6) or higher.
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 students are required to have read at least the following article prior to the first meeting of the course:
S. Coleman, “Do you believe in pilgrimage? Communitas, contestation and beyond”, Anthropological Theory 2/3 (2002), 355-368 (this article can be easily downloaded via the University Library webcatalogue).
Additional reading will be determined by the convener at a later stage taking into account the students’ fields of interest. Extra sessions (in total six hours) will be organized to discuss this extra literature.
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.)