Week 1: Introduction – What is Religion?

1.Geertz, Clifford, “Religion as a cultural system”. In: Banton, Michael, ed. 2004. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Optional:

Durkheim, Emile. 2003. “From the Elementary Forms of Religious Life.”  Understanding Religious Sacrifice : A Reader. Carter, Jeffrey, ed London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central. (pages 129-138)

Week 2: Symbols

1.Ortner, Sherry B. “On Key Symbols.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 75, no. 5 (1973): 1338-346. Accessed March 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/674036.

2. Wolf, Eric R. “The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol.” The Journal of American Folklore 71, no. 279 (1958): 34-39. Accessed March 16, 2021. doi:10.2307/537957.

Week 3: Worldview

1.Weber, Max. 2001. “The Spirit of Capitalism” in Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Florence: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

2.Montague, Susan P and Robert Morais “Football Games and Rock Concerts:  The Ritual Enactment of American Success Model” ” in The American Dimension: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, edited by W. Arens and Susan Montague.  Sherman Oaks, California: Alfred Publishing, 1981.

Optional:

Bellah, R.  “Civil Religion in America,” in Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, from the issue entitled, “Religion in America,” Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 1-21.

Week 4: Taboo

1.Douglas, Professor Mary, and Douglas, Mary. 2002. “The Abominations of Leviticus” in Purity and Danger : An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo Florence: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

( only read chapter 3 “ The Abominations of Leviticus” pp on printed page 42-58).

2.Tsitsos, William. 2018. “Race, Class, and Place in the Origins of Techno and Rap Music.” Popular Music & Society 41 (3): 270–82. doi:10.1080/03007766.2018.1519098

*Look at how this article applies Mary Douglas’ theory to the study of Music

Week 5: Totemism

1.Dundes, Alan. 1997. “Binary Opposition in Myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss Debate in Retrospect.” Western Folklore 56 (1): 39. doi:10.2307/1500385.

2.Phillips, Susan. 2021 “Gang Graffiti as Totemism” in American Anthropologist, Vol. 00, No. 0, pp. 1-15.

Optional:

Levi-Strauss, Claude. 2014 “Overture” in Myths and Mythologies : A Reader. Edited by Sinding Jensen, Jeppe. Sheffield: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central. (I will refer to Claude Levi-Strauss when I talk about Structuralism)

Week 6: Myth and Folktales

1.Malinowski, Bronislaw. 2014.  “Myth in Primitive Psychology,” in Myths and Mythologies : A Reader. Edited by Sinding Jensen, Jeppe. Sheffield: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed March 16, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

(Read pages 146- 157. Malinowski is known for his “functionalist” approach, and I will use this article as a springboard for discussion of functionalist theory.

2.Klaus, Simona. 2010. “Heroes in Virtual Space.” Studia Ethnologica Croatica 22 (January): 361–91. http://citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=57085379&site=ehost-live&scope=site

(I will discuss Joseph Campbell’s A Hero’s Journey as it relates to Klaus’ article)

Optional:

1Campbell, Joseph 2004 The Hero with a Thousand Faces Bolligen Series, No. 17. Princeton University Press.

Look especially at chapter 1 “The Adventure of the Hero” pages 45-233.  Look at the table of contents as it outlines his argument.  This is too long a piece to assign for a class, but if you want to browse it can be interesting.

2. . Deyneka, Leah. 2012.  “May the Myth Be With You Always” in Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars : An Anthology, edited by Douglas Brode, and Leah Deyneka, Scarecrow Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central.

(Read only Chapter 4 pages 35-48)

Week 7: Ritual

1.Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 134, no. 4 (2005): 56-86. Accessed March 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028014.

2.Li, Meng. 2014. “Ritual and Social Change: Chinese Rural–Urban Migrant Workers’ Spring Festival Homecoming as Secular Pilgrimage.”Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 43 (2): 113–33. doi:10.1080/17475759.2014.892896.

Optional:

Examples of ritual of reversal, race, power.

1.Mueller, J.C., Dirks, D. & Picca, L.H. Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Other. Qual Sociol 30, 315–335 (2007). https://doi-org.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1007/s11133-007-9061-1

2.McCoy-Torres, Sabia. 2018. “Alternative Spatiality and Temporality: Diasporic Mobilities and Queer West Indian Inclusion.” Global South 12 (1): 59–88. doi:10.2979/globalsouth.12.1.05.

Week 8: Rites of Passage

1.Turner, Victor “Liminality and Communitas”, in Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Edited by Michael Lambek. Blackwell Anthologies: New York, 2008.

2.Winslow, Donna. 1999. “Rites of Passage and Group Bonding in the Canadian Airborne.” Armed Forces & Society (0095327X)25 (3): 429–57. doi:10.1177/0095327X9902500305.

Optional :

1.Van Gennep, Arnold “The Rites of Passage” in  Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, 2nd Edition  edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben. Wiley Blackwell Press, pp 34-

2.MacWilliams, Mark W. 2002. “Virtual Pilgrimages on the Internet” in Religion, Vol. 32 (4), October 2002, Pages 315-335.

Week 9: Witchcraft

 1.Evans-Pritchard, EE “Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events ” in  Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach edited by William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt.  New York: Harper & Row, 1979

2. Start to read book: McCarthy Brown, Karen  Mama Lola:  A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1991.

Mama Lola #1

Optional:

Bleyenberg, Eva, and Koen Stroeken. 2018. “When a Rash Has Two Names: Pese Sorcery and Kisigo Spirits at Lake Tanganyika.” Anthropology & Medicine 25 (2): 206–19. doi:10.1080/13648470.2017.1308187.

Week 10: Magic

1.Tambiah, Stanley.  2017 “Form and Meaning of Magical Acts,” Reprinted by HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (3) 451-473.

2.Gmelch, George 2000 “Baseball Magic”  Revised version of “Superstition and Ritual in American Baseball” in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1992, pp 25-36.

3.(Continue to read book)  Karen McCarthy Brown Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Mama Lola #2

Optional:

Bronislaw Malinowski “The Role of Magic and Religion” in Reader in Comparative Religion: The Function of Religion in Human Society,4th Edition, Lessa and Vogt, pp37-46, 1979.

Frazer, James (1878) The Golden Bough, Temple of Earth Publishing. Look at Chapter 3: Sympathetic Magic. (pages 19b-52a)

or

Frazer, James 2010. “Sympathetic Magic” In Ritual and Belief : Readings in the Anthropology of Religion. in Hicks, David, ed. Blue Ridge Summit: AltaMira Press. Accessed March 23, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Week 11: Identity, Memory and Belief Systems

  1. Chong, Kelly H. “What it means to be Christian: The Role of Religion in the Construction of Ethnic Identity and Boundary Among Second-Generation Korean Americans” in Sociology of Religion, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn 1998), pp. 259-286).
  2. Hobsbawm, Eric “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” in The Invention of Tradition, Eds. Eric Hobsbawm, & Terence Ranger. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-14, 1983.
  3. (Continue to read book)  Karen McCarthy Brown Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Mama Lola #3

Optional:

1.Behar, Ruth 2008. “Folklore and the Search for Home (American Folklore Plenary Address, October 2008).” Journal of American Folklore. Summer 2009, Vol. 122 Issue 485, P. 251-266. 16p.

2.Myerhoff, Barbara 1978. “Jewish Comes up in you from the Roots , in Number Our Days. Touchtone Book: New York, 1978, pp232-268

3.Murthy, Dhiraj. “Muslim Punks Online: A Diasporic Pakistani Music Subculture on the Internet.” South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 8, no. 2, July 2010, pp. 181–194. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14746681003797997. (Also about virtual communities)

Week 12: Religious Practitioners, Religion & Healing

Book: McCarthy Brown, Karen  Mama Lola: 1991. A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1991

Other articles by Karen McCarthy Brown:

McCarthy Brown, Karen. 1999. “Telling a Life: Race, Memory, and Historical Consciousness” in Anthropology and Humanism 24(2): 148-154.

McCarthy Brown, Karen . 1996. “Altars Happen.” African Arts 29, no. 2 (1996): 67. Accessed March 24, 2021. doi:10.2307/3337369.

McCarthy Brown, Karen. 1987. “”Plenty Confidence in Myself”: The Initiation of a White Woman Scholar into Haitian Vodou.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 3, no. 1 (1987): 67-76. Accessed March 24, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002057.

Optional:

1. Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, Ann “Energy healing and the placebo effect. An Anthropological perspective on the placebo effect” Anthropology & Medicine, Vol. 19, No. 3, December 2012, 327-338.

2.Poss, Jane and Mary Ann Jezewski (2002) “The Role and Meaning of Susto in Mexican Americans’ Explanatory Model of Type 2 Diabetes” Medical Anthropology Quarterly , New Series, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 360-377.

Week 13: Ghosts and Spirits

1.Bosco, Joseph. 2003. “The Supernatural in Hong Kong Young People’s Ghost Stories¹.” Anthropological Forum 13 (2): 141–49. Accessed March 17 ,2021. doi:10.1080/0066467032000129806.

2.Freed, Stanley A., and Ruth S. Freed. 1990. “Taraka’s Ghost.” Natural History 99 (10): 84.

Week 14: Syncretism, Power, Resistance & Cultural Change

1.Taussig, Michael. “The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labor and the Baptism of Money.”Comparative Studies in Society and History 19, no. 2 (1977): 130-55. Accessed March 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178173.

2.Herriman, Nicholas. 2015. “The Morbid Nexus: Reciprocity and Sorcery in Rural East Java.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 26 (2): 255–75. doi:10.1111/taja.12110.

Week 15: Revitalization Movements

1.Wallace, Anthony 1956 “Revitalization Movements” in American Anthropologist Vol. 58 (2). April 1, 1956

Optional:

Bonilla, Heraclio. “Religious Practices in the Andes and Their Relevance to Political Struggle and Development: The Case of El Tío and Miners in Bolivia.” Mountain Research and Development 26, no. 4 (2006): 336-42. Accessed March 24, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4540653.

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