HDS Course Listing

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HDS 3858

Borderlands: Limit Situations and Religious Experience

Michael D. Jackson and David Carrasco

Description

This course explores the ambiguous and unstable borderlands - social, psychological, and spiritual - of human existence. Drawing on empirical studies of transnational migration, displacement, culture contact, the colonial encounter, rites of passage and limit experience, and using such key theoretical concepts as liminality, transculturation, indeterminacy, and plurality, we will explore the destructive and constructive dimensions of what Karl Jaspers calls 'border situations' (\grenzsituationen/) and Gloria Anzaldúa calls the 'new \mestizaje/'. Consideration will also be given to the transfigurative experience of carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in other societies, innovations in writing that do justice to borderland and borderline experiences, as well as the conditions of the possibility of genuinely mutual dialogue and understanding between people and societies that history has cast into relations of radical inequality.

Enrollment Limited: Limited to 15 (instructor's permission required)
Open to BTI Students: Yes

Course website

Scheduling

Half Course
Spring 2010
W., 10-12
Location to be announced.

Relationship to Program Requirements

Program Requirement	Area / Category / Art / Designation
MTS Area(s) of Focus	Comparative Studies Religion and the Social Sciences Religious Studies and Education
MDiv Distribution Category/ies	Comparative
MDiv Art(s) of Ministry	Pastoral Care and Counseling Religious Education Administration and Program Development Public Leadership Denominational Polity
ThM, pre-2007 MTS, and pre-2005 MDiv Area	Area 3
Language Course Designation(s)	n/a