REL483.001
Asian Religions
in Motion

Installation of Shiva at a
Hindu temple in Atlanta.

Professor
Dr. Steven Ramey
sramey@bama.ua.edu

Fall 2007
Office: 202 Manly Hall
Office Phone: 348-4218
Course number: 36849
Course: W 3:00-5:50
Location: 210 Manly Hall

About Online Readings

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Description

Despite rhetoric of "tradition," religious communities and practices change constantly. These changes are most evident in situations of migration, as people must create their "traditions" in a new socio-cultural environment. Concentrating on case studies of migration in and from South Asia, this seminar will investigate the dynamics of religions and processes of change as their practitioners move. What is the impact of the culture of the new location? How do changes in social status for communities of migration impact their sense of community and identity?

Syllabus

Fall 2007 Syllabus (PDF)

Fall 2007 Reading Schedule (PDF)

General Writing Guidelines (PDF)

Books (required)

Dempsey, Corinne G.
The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York: Breaking Conventions and Making Home at a North American Hindu Temple.
Oxford University Press 2006
ISBN 019518730x

Kalita, S. Mitra
Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families And Their Passage from India to America
Rutgers University Press, 2005 2nd revised ed., paperback
ISBN 0813536650

Korom, Frank J
Hosay Trinidad: Muharram Performances in an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003
ISBN 0812218256

Readings

Bourgeois Vedanta

Nationalism by Proxy

Disjuncture and Difference

Sikh Gurus, Hindu Deities, and Sufi Masters (PDF)