First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-21)
Topic
Personal Narratives/Religious History
Instructors
Robert A Orsi
847 4675175
Crowe Hall, 1860 Campus Drive, 4-141
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-329: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
This course explores how personal narratives—the stories people (we) tell or write about themselves in different circumstances and addressed to varied interlocutors, real and imaginary—may serve as sources for understanding religious histories. Such narratives may be about encounters with religious authorities or special beings (angels, gods, ancestors, and so on); or about the story-teller's involvement in religious movements; or his, her, or their religious crises. Pairing personal narratives with adjacent historical sources and critical essays, we open with questions about narrative itself and end with the role of stories—as told by humans and non-humans—in the climate crisis. How do the stories people tell about religion(s) help us understand not only the tellers of these stories but also the religious and social worlds in which these stories arise and to which they refer?
The questions sound straightforward enough! But personal narratives are complex things. There is the matter of the details story-tellers choose to leave in or take out; the relative emphases they place on one aspect or incident over another; even the reasons they tell the story at all, in the first place, which may be conscious or unconscious. There is always an aspect of manipulation about story-telling! Then there are questions about setting, the literal, physical circumstances in which a story is told, from prison, for instance, or in a courtroom, and so on.
Finally, there is the fact that some stories and story-tellers are valued and trusted over others, for reasons having to do with power, race, gender, and social class. Behind the current controversy over public library holdings and access, for example, is the determination that certain stories—about gender transition, for instance, or about the lives of drag performers, or accounts of racial oppression or violence against women—ought not to be told. There are religious dimensions to such stories, often enough, as well as to the campaigns to censor them. In a perverse way, such efforts to prohibit certain stories underscore the unique efficacy and potency of narrative! But we need to ask ourselves what is feared, what is silenced, when a particular story is forbidden? What makes a story dangerous? What makes a religious story especially dangerous?
We will read critical accounts of narrative as practice (by Audre Lorde, Simone Weil, Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and others); personal narratives in various genres (including autobiography, autobiographical fiction, film, creative non-fiction and theater); and history and historical documents.
Critical skills to be emphasized are close reading; critical analysis; seminar participation (creating knowledge intersubjectively); and writing in various genres. Evaluation based on class participation and writing assignments. There is no final exam in this course.
Learning Objectives
Close critical reading of different sorts of texts; seminar participation; writing skills.
Teaching Method
Class Attributes
WCAS Writing Seminar