RELS 120: Religion, Art and Culture
Spring 2011
Louise M. Doire, M.Div.
Office: 4C Glebe Street
Mailbox: 4A Glebe St. (RELS Lounge)
Office hours: T/Th 9:30-10:30 and MW 1:00-2:00
Phone: 953-5939
Email: louisedoire@att.net OR doirel@cofc.edu
Course Description:
Students in this course will approach religion as “movement in time and place,” enacted in and
through the body, the home, the homeland and the cosmos. Through the media of literature and
film, we will examine the narratives of individuals and/or groups that negotiate self, religion and
culture through the experiences of displacement as a stranger, “the outsider.” How does one
create “a home” in an alien place? How does one traverse a cultural and religious terrain that is
“foreign?” Our examination will focus on the body and sensuality; on the home as religious
dwelling; on cultural and religious transportation and transformation, and on the cosmos as the
ultimate homeland.
“…teaching-and learning-means moving back and forth between the familiar and the strange,
and the familiarization of the other generates a limited but transformative empathy, which is
one mark of the educated person, the humane neighbor, and the effective citizen.” ~Thomas
Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling
Required Texts:
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee and Walker Evans
Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather
Babette’s Feast, Isak Dinesen
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy Brown
Selected readings on Ereserves.
Course Requirements:
3 Exams (3 X 100 points)
Five 2-page papers on ** readings (100 pts.)
NOTE: Two page papers are designated by subject and due date with two (**) asterisks.
Grading:
Each set of 100 points will be worth 25% of the final grade.
Numerical and letter grades will be based upon the following scale:
A 100-92 A- 91-89
B+ 88-86
B 85-82 B- 81-79
C+ 78-76
C 75-72 C- 71-69
D+ 68-66
D 65-62 D- 61-59
F
-58
Course Schedule and Reading Assignments
“Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God
or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger.” ~Timothy Radcliffe, OP
01/10 Course description and Syllabus
01/12-14, 19 The study of religion/course methodology
“Book One,” pp. xlix – liv and “Book Two,” pp. 1-16 (Agee)
01/17 No class- MLK Jr., Day
The Theory
“Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering
by drawing on human and superhuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.” ~Thomas
Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling
01/24-26 Thomas Tweed, “Confluences: Toward a Theory of Religion,” 54-79 (ERES)
The Home
“The house of one family, George and Annie Mae Gudger and their children, is a lamp. It is a
boat. It is a sacrament.” ~Kimberley Patton, Harvard Divinity School
“I’m out here a thousand miles from my home, walkin’ a road other men have gone down.
I’m seein’ your world of people and things, your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.”
~Bob Dylan, Song to Woody, 1962
01/28-31 Film “James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”
Kimberley Patton, “The Whole Home is Lifted,” (ERES)
02/02 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, pp. 25-73
02/04 ** Reflection Paper #1 on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men pp. 74-121
02/07-09 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, pp. 125-204
02/10 Complimentary showing of film, “The Visitor” 6:00-8:00
02/11 Discussion of film, “The Visitor”
02/14 First Exam
02/16 ** Reflection Paper #2 and Personal Altar/Triptych (Instructions to follow).
The Homeland
“On the back of a cartoon coaster, in the blue TV screen light, I drew a map of Canada. O
Canada! With your face sketched on it twice. Oh, you’re in my blood like holy wine. You taste
so bitter and so sweet.” ~Joni Mitchell, Case of You, 1970
“He spoke of it with great effort, and within that mystery, behind it, in everything he said about
Quebec, was the Church.” ~D.Y. Bechard
02/18 D.Y. Bechard, “Disobedient Ancestors,” (ERES)
02/21-23 Shadows on the Rock, Books One and Two
02/25 Paper Presentation, Doire, “Crossing and Dwelling: La Survivance of French-Canadian
Woonsocket, RI,”
02/28 Shadows on the Rock, Books Three and Four
“[…the religious] orient themselves by constructing, adorning and inhabiting domestic space.
Religion, in this sense, is housework. It is homemaking.” ~Thomas Tweed
03/02, 03/04 Thomas Tweed, “Dwelling: The Kinetics of Homemaking,” pp. 80-122 (hard copy
on reserve at Circulation Desk)
03/03 Complimentary showing of film, “Chocolat” 6:00-8:00
03/06-12 Spring Break
03/14 ** Reflection Paper #3 on Thomas Tweed, “Dwelling: The Kinetics of Homemaking,”
pp. 80-122
03/16 Discussion of film, “Chocolat”
Shadows on the Rock, Books Five, Six and Epilogue
The Body
“They were sitting down to a meal, well, so had people done at the wedding of Cana. And
grace has chosen to manifest itself there, in the very wine, as fully as anywhere.” ~Isak
Dinesen, Babette’s Feast
“All sorrows are less with bread.” ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
03/18 Babette’s Feast, Chapters I- VII
03/21 Raymond A. Mentzer, “Fasting, Piety and Political Anxiety among French Reformed
Protestants,” (ERES)
“Food is the major marker of the success of parties, the length of journeys, the passage of time
and of life.” Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola
03/23 Religion and Food: Ascetic Practices and Fasting
Babette’s Feast, Chapters VIII-XII
03/24 Complimentary showing of film, “Babette’s Feast” 6:00-8:00
03/25 Dieting for Jesus
03/28 ** Reflection Paper #4 on Babette’s Feast and discussion of film
03/30 Second Exam
The Cosmos
“That long black cloud is comin’ down. I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door. Knock,
knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door. Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.” Bob Dylan,
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, 1973
“Oh, set me up with the spirit in the sky. That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest, I'm gonna go to the place that's the best.” Norman
Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky, 1971
04/01-04 Bob Corbett, “Introduction to Voodoo” (ERES)
Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, pp. 1-78
04/06 Film: “Jump at the Sun” (shown in class)
“It is no exaggeration to say that Haitians believe that living and suffering are inseparable.
Vodou is the system they have devised to deal with the suffering that is life, a system whose
purpose is to minimize pain, avoid disaster, cushion loss, and strengthen survivors and survival
instincts.” ~Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola
04/08 Catholicism, Suffering and the Afterlife
Mama Lola, pp. 80-138
04/11 Voodoo, Suffering and the Afterlife
04/13 Film: “Divine Horsemen” (shown in class)
**04/15 Reflection Paper #5 on Vodou (in general) and the film “Divine Horsemen”
Mama Lola, pp. 142-217
04/18 Voodoo and Women
Mama Lola, pp. 220-270
04/20 Film: “Public Vodon Ceremonies” (shown in class)
“…both Maggie and Alourdes were confronted with the most basic of questions: who are my
people?” Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola
04/22 Blood and Memory: “Who are my people?”
04/25 Last Day of Classes
Third Exam: 10:00 Class-- Wednesday, May 4 @ 8:00
12:00 Class—Wednesday, May 4 @ 12:00
** This syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.