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2012-13 Undergraduate Index A-Z
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Religious Studies [clear]
| Title | Offering | Standing | Credits | Credits | When | F | W | S | Su | Description | Preparatory | Faculty | Days | Multiple Standings | Start Quarters | Open Quarters |
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Marla Elliott and Joli Sandoz
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening and Weekend | S 13Spring | Music, history, and thinking about God and the human condition will center this 12-credit, one-quarter program exploring interweavings of experience and thought. Our focus will be the Second Great Awakening in the U.S. (1780-1850), a religious revival movement that helped energize the shift as the U.S. turned from political, economic, and intellectual dependence on Europe to becoming a country in its own right. We’ll also consider how religious trends begun before 1850 continue to shape our lives in the 21st century.Program lenses will include the founding of shape note singing (a uniquely American form of Christian sacred music), spiritual experiences as reported in art and autobiographical writings, camp meetings, and Christian theology presented through sermons and church rituals. Possible additional topics include relevant fiction from the time, and the founding and continuation of one or more of the churches begun or settled in the U.S. after 1770 (African Methodist Episcopal Church, Shakers, Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and others).Participants will attend a shape note All-Day Singing as well as a workshop and concert of traditional music from the republic of Georgia and will work together to organize and host the Fourth Annual Olympia All-Day Singing. Three additional visits to places of worship will be required. Reading, writing, singing and collaborative work will be important sites of instruction and attention as we draw from history, music, psychology, literature, and theology to inform our explorations. Credit may be awarded in music, history, literature, and religious studies. | Marla Elliott Joli Sandoz | Mon Wed Fri | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | ||||
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Ryo Imamura
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 8, 12 | 08 12 | Evening and Weekend | Su 13Summer Session II | Western psychology’s neglect of the living mind, both in its everyday dynamics and its larger possibilities, has led to a tremendous upsurge of interest in the ancient wisdom of Buddhism which does not divorce the study of psychology from the concern with wisdom and human liberation. We will investigate the study of mind that has developed within the Buddhist tradition through lectures, readings, videos, workshops, and field trips. Students registering for 12 credits will attend a meditation retreat and complete a research paper on meditation. | Ryo Imamura | Fri Sat Sun | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Summer | Summer | ||||
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Ryo Imamura
Signature Required:
Spring
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Contract | SO–SRSophomore - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | S 13Spring | This is an opportunity for sophomore, junior and senior students to create their own course of study and research, including internship, community service, and study abroad options. Before the beginning of spring quarter, interested students should submit an Individual Learning or Internship Contract to Ryo Imamura, which clearly states the work to be completed. Possible areas of study are Western psychology, Asian psychology, Buddhism, counseling, social work, cross-cultural studies, Asian-American studies, religious studies, nonprofit organizations, aging, death and dying, deep ecology and peace studies. Areas of study other than those listed above will be considered on a case-by-case basis. | Ryo Imamura | Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring | |||||
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Joli Sandoz, Rebecca Chamberlain and Suzanne Simons
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 12 | 12 | Evening and Weekend | F 12 Fall | W 13Winter | Religion, Society and Change is appropriate for students of any belief system, whether faith-based or secular. While students who enroll for all three quarters will receive the most depth of learning and experience, anyone is welcome to join the program at the beginning of fall, winter, or spring quarters.This program centers on historical, cultural, theological, literary, and artistic aspects of religion and spiritual practices. Each quarter will balance intellectual study with hands-on explorations of religious practice and sacred texts. Fall quarter will open with study of origins and development of the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—from their beginnings through the Medieval era. Visits to local faith communities, guest speakers, and a sacred art retreat in addition to lectures and workshops will deepen our understanding of these religions and their practices. Our work will draw on art, music, contemplative practices, and the literary qualities of sacred texts in addition to the political and socio-economic contexts of religious thinking and religious community development.We will consider cultural roles of institutional religion, especially U.S. Christianity, during winter quarter by focusing on two very different social justice movements. The Civil Rights Movement of the first half of the 20th century—started and sustained by African Americans, and organized in important ways by and through clergy and faith communities—is a landmark in U.S. religious and political history, and an exemplar of American efforts toward social justice. Our second winter topic, following on Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, will be religious organizing and thinking in relation to climate change, planetary health, and effects on individuals and communities. Here we will examine contemporary religious statements, Biblical texts, and additional materials as we contemplate the part religion currently plays in U.S. political and social affairs and as we reflect on responses to natural disasters (once called "acts of God") and the people most directly touched by them.Recognition and acknowledgement of human interrelationships and differences, including empathy and compassion, are important aspects of social justice work; program members will undertake faculty-supported service learning in local faith communities. We will also participate in a Tai Ji retreat held on campus. Reading, writing, reflection and collaborative work will be important aspects of instruction and of program energy, as we draw ideas and approaches from history, sociology, journalism and religious studies to inform our work. | Joli Sandoz Rebecca Chamberlain Suzanne Simons | Mon Wed Fri Sat | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | |||
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Rebecca Chamberlain
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | W 13Winter | This survey of the world’s sacred texts and spiritual traditions will explore their poetic and literary influence, past and present. From creation stories and wisdom traditions to prophetic revelations and teachings about transforming suffering, what impact have sacred texts had on the psyche, imagination, and social or political understanding of peoples, ancient and modern? How have sacred texts and stories evolved over time? How have they been passed on through oral and literary traditions and through words and images? What is their role in developing culture, identity, and community? How do they frame philosophical, moral, ethical, and spiritual insights? We will explore our topic through a variety of disciplinary lenses including comparative literature, religion, history, mythology, movement, and the arts, as well as through an ecumenical dialogue that affirms both religious and secular perspectives. We will combine academic inquiry and research with poetic insight, artistic production, performance, and contemplative practices such as Tai Ji, yoga, or meditation. | Rebecca Chamberlain | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | |||||
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Marianne Bailey
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SOS | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | S 13Spring | In this SOS, first year students will learn how to conceive, plan, structure and successfully carry through a major independent learning project. More importantly, they will have the pleasure and fulfillment of realizing their first major college level independent body of work. Students have an exciting array of humanities and artistic areas to work in. For example, I can foresee projects as different from one another as a well edited collection of stories or free form poetry, perhaps illustrated and bound in a beautiful book, or a research project in religious symbolism and ritual in Celtic or Haitian worldviews, or in archetypal characters such as the Trickster, the Underworld mediators, or the artist/Orpheus and his quest. A student could write and compile an innovative collection of essays and images dealing with a philosopher such as Nietzsche or Foucault; or with a philosophical topic, such as the human/nature relationship, or the power and nature of artistic language. Students could also plan and research a transformational, pilgrimage journey, keep a rich travel journal, make art quality photographs and present the pilgrimage experiences at the quarter’s end to your colleagues in the class. Students could plan a multimedia spectacle or a short film based on artistic work as a small group in the style of the Surrealists.In other words, if it is a challenging academic or artistic body of work which you find deeply fascinating and which will keep you going enthusiastically for a quarter, we can shape this idea and make it possible for you to carry it through. We will do this step-by-step, in close collaboration between professor and individual student, and with the support of a small group of other program students working in similar veins of inquiry or creation, who will serve as a critique and support group. At Evergreen this mode of intellectual and creative work is a hallmark of our belief in fostering self-direction, intellectual discipline and stamina, and in pursuing academic projects about which we are passionate. It is no easy feat, however, to master the fine art of writing and proposing, let alone bringing to fruition, a top quality independent learning project. The purpose of this SOS is first, to coach you through the conception stage, then, to help you to choose your readings and activities and make your schedule, and finally, to guide and support you along the path to completion of the best work of which you are capable.During the first eight weeks of spring quarter, students will meet every week with their professor as an individual, and as a member of a small work and critique group. We will meet as a large group, as well. Students will report in writing and orally on their progress every week. In the final weeks of the quarter, all students will present their completed work to the group.Students enrolling should have a first proposal of a project which they want strongly to undertake, including, at least, the kind of work you plan to do, for example: writing poetry, studying the work of a given writer or philosopher, and/or studying a particular kind of religious or mythic symbolism. This should be carefully written, typed and ready on the first day of class. The rest we will do during the first two weeks of the program. You may enroll in this program for 12 or 16 credits. | Marianne Bailey | Mon Wed | Freshmen FR | Spring | Spring | ||||
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Ryo Imamura
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Program | FR–SOFreshmen - Sophomore | 16 | 16 | Day | F 12 Fall | W 13Winter | Western psychology has so far failed to provide us with a satisfactory understanding of the full range of human experience. It has largely overlooked the core of human understanding--our everyday mind, our immediate awareness of being with all of its felt complexity and sensitive attunement to the vast network of interconnectedness with the universe around us. Instead, Western psychology has chosen to analyze the mind as though it were an object independent of the analyzer, consisting of hypothetical structures and mechanisms that cannot be directly experienced. Western psychology's neglect of the living mind--both in its everyday dynamics and its larger possibilities--has led to a tremendous upsurge of interest in the ancient wisdom of the East, particularly Buddhism, which does not divorce the study of psychology from the concern with wisdom and human liberation.In direct contrast, Eastern psychology shuns any impersonal attempt to objectify human life from the viewpoint of an external observer, instead studying consciousness as a living reality which shapes individual and collective perception and action. The primary tool for directly exploring the mind is meditation or mindfulness, an experiential process in which one becomes an attentive participant-observer in the unfolding of moment-to-moment consciousness.Learning mainly from lectures, readings, videos, workshops, seminar discussions, individual and group research projects, and field trips, we will take a critical look at the basic assumptions and tenets of the major currents in traditional Western psychology, the concept of mental illness, and the distinctions drawn between normal and abnormal thought and behavior. We will then investigate the Eastern study of mind that has developed within spiritual traditions, particularly within the Buddhist tradition. In doing so, we will take special care to avoid the common pitfall of most Western interpretations of Eastern thought--the attempt to fit Eastern ideas and practices into unexamined Western assumptions and traditional intellectual categories. Lastly, we will address the encounter between Eastern and Western psychology as possibly having important ramifications for the human sciences in the future, potentially leading to new perspectives on the whole range of human experience and life concerns. | Ryo Imamura | Tue Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO | Fall | Fall Winter |
