Albert Bierstadt. Looking Down Yosemite Valley. 1863.

Nature and the Religious Imagination in America

Term: Spring 2007
Days: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time: 10:30 to 11:50
Classroom: Hamilton Classroom 7

Office: The Keating Center
Mailbox: Cook Hall 104
Cell: 941-685-6930
Office: 941-487-4681
Hours: Wednesday 10:30 to 2:00 pm & by
appointment.
Email: ghite@ncf.edu

Table of Contents

FINAL PROJECT EVALUATION

Course Description
Course Requirements
Goals
Obj ectives
Textbooks
Schedule
Suggestion s for Writing a Term Paper
Peer Review Form
Citations
Writing Center
Group Assignments

Course Description:

How have people of faith understood their relationship to nature? Is nature something to be transformed, restored, redeemed or dominated? This course will examine a number of religious traditions in the United States from First Contact to the present. Groups examined will include: Puritans, Mormons, Guilded Age Protestant Industrialists, various Natuve American groups, Transcendentalists, New Age groups as well as modern day Evangelical Christians. We will discuss the cultural and historical precendents that inform our understanding of nature, wilderness, health and the environment. In addition, we will address the debate over who is responsible for evironmental degredation as well as those who are working to transform our relationship to the world around us.

Students will work in small groups throughout the term. Each group will be responsible for contributing to each week's discussion and a final project and presentation. Each group will choose in conulation with the instructor a group to research and explore how it incorporates modern of ecological responsibility with its own religous traditions. In addition, each student will be required to write a short response to the readings each week (posted online). There will be no midterm or final exam.

Goals:

This course aims to encourage critical reflection about religious structures, ideals and practices; to develop empathetic insight into the fundamental ideas and values of other peoples, times, and places; and to foster critical self-consciousness about the values and commitments of one's own age and society. It aims to provide the student with an understanding of the complexity of religious phenomena and offers the advanced student a variety of methods appropriate to the study of religion.

Objectives:

To be able to identify major persons, texts, terms, and concepts relating to the academic study of religion.
To comprehend the internal logic and coherence linking various traditions' practices, history, social institutions and schools of thought as well as their development over time.
To be willing to discuss openly and analyze critically the presuppositions of ones world view, religious and cultural tradition or conventionally held ideas in society and to offer arguments for one's own belief and stances rather than accepting them without question.
To be proficient in writing analytic papers, expository essays and research papers that reflects standards of good writing and research, using appropriate literary skills.

Requirements:

The instructor will lecture on the first day of class in order to establish a context in which to frame the week's topic. On the second day of class students will discuss the readings with the instructor and in small groups.

All reading assignments should be completed prior to the class period for which they are assigned. Attendance therefore is mandatory, and will be taken at each class.

Students will be required to:

Each Week one group will be responsible as the Discussion Leaders for the week's readings and will be required to perform some work outside of the assigned materials,
FINAL Project: Assess the ways in which a particular group has understood its relationship to nature in religious ways. Compile not only secondary material but priary sources as well as interviews with leaders and members. Due Dates: Friday May 17th
Some weeks, students will be asked to write short two-page essays on a topic of the instructors choosing.
Each Group will be required to meet with the instructor at least one during the term in order to update him on their progress.
Students are asked to arrive at class having completed all reading assignments and prepared to participate in class discussions.
Each Group will be required to evaluate itself at the end of the term in conjunction with the instructor.
Attendance Policy: As participation is an essential component of my evaluation of your abilities attendance in class is mandatory. Attendence is helpful insofar as one participates in the discussions. Therefore, failure to regularly contribute in class is grounds for an Unsatisfactory evaluation.

Textbooks:

Catherine Albanese. Nature Religion in America: From the Algokian Indians to the New Age. University of Chicago Press. 1990.
Witold Rybczynski. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmstead and America in the Nineteenth Century. Scribner Press. 1999.
Thomas Dunlap. Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as a Religious Quest. University of Washington Press. 2004.
Rebecca Kneale Gould. At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America.University of California Press. 2005.

Schedule:

Week

Topic:

Introduction

Genesis

East Meets West

Film:

Black Robe

The Puritans

The New Republic: Enlightened Nature

Trancendentalism

Health and Nature

Nature and the City I

Nature and the City II

Film: New York: A Documentary

Muscular Christianity

Faith and Science in the 20th c

Film:

Never Cry Wolf

Environmentalism as a Religion

The Greening of American Evangelicals

Homesteading as Spiritual Practice

Research Week

Note: You may click on each week's topics to view each lecture's PowerPoint presentations.

Week 1
February 6, 8

Introduction and Genesis and the Judeo-Christian Understanding of Nature

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Introduction
Book of Genesis
Mircea Eliade, Sacred S pace and the Making of the Sacred World

Online Guide to Eliadian Terms

Assignment: Short Essay: What Wilderness Means to Me.

Week 2
February 13, 15
Native American Concepts of Nature

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Chapter 1 Native Ground.

Film: Black Robe
HCL 7 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Assignment: Short Essay: Discuss the ways in which the religious traditions frame the ways in which the characters use and understand their environment.

Week 3
February 22
The Puritans

NOTE: No Class Tuesday February 20th

Andrew P. Williams. Shifting Signs: Increase Mather and the Comets of 1680 and 1682. Early Modern Literary Studies 1.3 (1995): 4.1-34

Week 4
February 27, March 1
The New Republic

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Chapter 2 Republican Nature: From the Revolution that was Lawful to the Destiny that was Manifest

Week 5
March 6
Trancendentalism

NOTE: No Class Thursday March 8th

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Chapter 3 Wilderness and the Passing Show: Trancendental Religion and Its Legacies
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Week 6
March 13, 15

Health and Nature in 19th Century America

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Chapter 4 Physical Religion: Natural Sin and Healing Grace in the 19th century

Week 7
March 20, 22
Nature and the City Part I

Witold Rybczynski. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmstead and American in the 19th century. (First Half)
Joisah Strong. Our Country.

Spring Break
No Class March 27, 29

Week 8
April 3, 5
Nature and the City Part II

Witold Rybczynski. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmstead and American in the 19th century. (Second Half)

Week 9
April 10, 12
Muscular Christianity: The Y.M.C.A. and the Rise of Outdoor Education

David Strauss. "Toward a Consumer Culture: "Adirondack Murray" and the Wilderness Vacation" American Quarterly Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 270-286

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Saints and Their Bodies. Atlantic Monthly (1858)

Week 10
April 17, 19
Faith and Science

Albanese, Nature Religion in America, Chapter 5 Recapitulating Pieties: Nature's Nation in the Late 20th century and Epilogue

William Cronon. The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

Film: Never Cry Wolf
HCL 7 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Week 11
April 24, 26

Environmentalism as a Religion

Thomas Dunlap. Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as a Religious Quest. (All)

Week 12
May 1, 3

The Greening of American Evangelicals

Lynne White. The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. Science (1967)
Evagelical Environmental Network. On the Care of Creation: An Evangelical Declaration
Leigh Eric Schmidt. From Arbor Day to the Environmental Sabbath: Nature. Litury and American Protestantism. Harvard Theological Review Vol. 84. No. 3 (July 1991) pp. 299-323

Week 13
May 8, 10
Homesteading as Spiritual Practice

Rebecca K. Gould. At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America. (All)

Week 14
May 15, 17

Research Week for Final Projects

No Class

Final Projects Due Friday 5 pm

Final Projects:

Please review these papers and address how each was able to incorporate the ideas and concepts we explored this term, particularly in light of our discussions regarding Albanese's idea of Nature Relgiion in America. Dose the project successfull make the case for viewing the group/community and its understanding of nature in a religious context?

Please send you comments to me in an email by June 4 at 5 pm.

Elaine Fritschie & Gretchen Specht
Macrobiotics

Rachel Renne & Layla Byrd
Resacralizing Childbirth-Midwifery as Nature Religion

Allie Weiss & Dawn Yukus
Freeganism as a Religion

Nancy Rose Spector and Peter Hess
Humanist Religious Naturalism in Unitarian Universalism

Montana Ikemire; Francisca Casal
Nature Religion in New Age Energy Healing

Victoria Barnett & Jared Dyer
Accupuncture & the Spirituality of Traditional Medicine

NOTE: One paper is in a formnoat that I cannot open anmd I will post as soons as I can and another has been granted an extension due to extenuating circumstances. Should it arrive in time I will post.

THANKS, I very much enjoyed working with you all!

Greg Hite