RELST 3311

Ritual and Performance in Muslim Southeast Asia

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

Structured as a seminar, this course addresses ritual performances as expressed by Muslim communities across Southeast Asia (in both minority and majority contexts), from performativity of the five pillars of Islam to special events related to the Prophet and his family, rites of passage, and shrine veneration, to name a few. The course does not require specific knowledge of Islam, nor familiarity with Arabic, as students will be introduced to the fundamentals of Islam as a religious system as well as a historical phenomenon through the exploration of rituality. Besides geographic variations across the region, themes will include the combination of performances hailing from multiple religious traditions; the existence of shared patterns of rituality between different religious traditions; the impact of transnational networks and the conversation between local and foreign vocabularies of rituality.

When Offered Spring.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: one course in the humanities.

Breadth Requirement (GB)
Distribution Category (CA-AS)

Comments Co-meets with ASIAN 6611.

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