Welcome students to RELG 2413 Ritual Studies! My name is Dr. Alexandra Bain, and I am an Associate Professor, in the Department of Religious Studies at St. Thomas University.
You have been registered in my Ritual Studies course beginning January through April 2021.
Our class will be holding online meetings (to be recorded on Teams and shared to Moodle) – every Tuesday from 1-2pm, and I will be holding online office hours on Thursdays from 1-2 pm, or by appointment.
OUR FIRST MEETING WILL BE A TEAMS MEET AND GREET DURING MY OFFICE HOURS this THURSDAY, January 14th from 1 to 2 pm.
Because we are still living through a pandemic, this three-credit course, focusing upon the study of ritual, will be delivered entirely online. Typically, when I teach this course, the material is NOT comparative, for example studying the role of baptism in Christianity vs that of circumcision in Judaism, but instead focuses upon the role of ritual in one religious tradition, that of Islam, and the various cultures it has embraced. I do this first because the Islamic world is my own area of expertise, and second because I believe that the acquisition of even a basic understanding of ritual, or religious action, requires a knowledge such things as a religion’s belief systems, it’s history…in short the ritual’s context. Without this context, or background to ritual, students are left wondering as to the ritual’s purpose, or meaning.
In the Ritual Studies courses that I have taught in the past, students have examined the foundational role of Islam’s “Five Pillars” as acts (or rituals) that express the believer’s submission to the Will of the One God (this submission is the literal meaning of the word “Islam”). These five pillars are: bearing verbal witness that there is but one God; praying five times daily; fasting all day for the entire month of Ramadan; performing a once in a lifetime pilgrimage, or hajj to Mecca; and the giving of annual alms. These rituals are all prescribed actions that are embodied symbols of the believer’s “Islam” or submission to God. In performing these rituals Muslims seek to recreate the exact movements and speech as ordered by God through the Qur’an and taught by the Prophet Muhammad. Depending upon the year, students have focused upon rights of passage (birth celebrations, marriages, death, conversion etc), or upon daily rituals such as prayer or even the role of food practices in Islam, and of the role of ritual in particular groups such as Sufi teaching orders or in movements such as modern Salafi-Jihadism (e.g. ISIS).
Because of the necessarily modified nature of courses and teaching in this time of pandemic (online and asynchronous), this course will examine the role of ritual as it pertains to the Muslim world, but it will NOT require a demonstration of expertise in Islamic subject matter other than what may be gained by attending or later listening to the recordings of class meetings to be held once a week during class hours on Tuesdays. Students are free to read (listen, or view podcasts and documentaries) into their own areas of interest and include their observations in weekly journal entries. I will also make myself available during class hours Thursdays to answer student’s questions or to have a discussion.
There will be NO TESTS OR EXAMS in this course. Students will be required to create a journal that will be uploaded once a week to Moodle for grading. This journal should contain ALL of the work done by students, and should include:
One page reflections on each of the weekly class meetings and tutorials they have attended (minimum of at least 10 - Worth 50%) (Due no later than one week after our meeting.)
Two page responses (minimum of at least 5) of the prompts that I will assign throughout the course. (Worth 50%) (Due within one week of assignment.)
Examples of Prompts:
PROMPT #1 will ask students to provide a working definition of ritual from a scholarly source and discuss it using your own experiences as primary data. HINT: seek out (and read!) the article on “Ritual” in the Encyclopedia of Religion at the HIL library.
PROMPT #2 will have students write a reflection describing the usual ritual celebrations of their families and friends over the winter holidays, as well as a discussion of how those rituals were changed or replaced under COVID regulations and how those changes may have affected themselves and the people around them.
Should a student prefer to write a formal 12-15 page research paper on some aspect of ritual in the Muslim world (there are several students registered with a specific interest in studying Islam) they may choose to do so, replacing the journal and prompt responses. I would be delighted to work with these individuals, helping to find resources, narrow topics and flesh out outlines. Students should advise me of their wish to pursue this option by the beginning of February, with a preliminary bibliography, research questions and rough outline due February 15th.
- Teacher: Alexandra Bain