Alison Belyea
office: ADM 310
office hours by appointment , call 452-0616
e-mail: belyea@stu.ca
 
You will need to find and bookmark our Course Website http://people.stthomasu.ca/~belyea/2008/Interrite2/Interrite2.html

Overview
Ritual Studies is a relatively new area in the academic study of religions.  Anthropologists have long documented the ritual lives and practices of "others" and yet it is only very recently that any scholars have paid close attention to ritual apart from the larger ethnographic contexts.  Anthropology and Religious Studies are linked fields, and especially with regard to ritual.

Rituals are what people do when they're being religious, right?  That is a pretty common assumption which holds true some of the time, but there are secular rites.  One thing that's exciting about a field as young as this one is that scholars rarely seem to agree about much.  What we'll be doing in this course is eavesdropping on the conversations of various scholars.  We'll do this by way of using one scholar, Ronald Grimes, as mediator.  You may read reputable authorities who say that ritual behaviour is the very foundation of human religiousness, and you may read other reputable authorities who are equally convinced that rites are activities completely devoid of meaning.  Speaking of reading, that may well be why rites were not studied by religion scholars — sacred texts and beliefs about them are at the heart of the religious traditions that have influenced many scholars.  The study of religions has, until fairly recently, been the study of sacred texts.  What people did when they claimed to be being religious — their singing, dancing, bathing, chanting, building, meditating, eating, hurting themselves in various ways, walking sweeping, making tea, making and birthing babies, even telling stories — was somehow not really what the study of religions was about.  The relative newness of ritual studies, then, contributes to the quality of our inquiry.
 
Method
Two things follow from what you just read.  One is that we would be foolish to limit ourselves to the rites described in texts; and two is that we would be equally foolish to try to figure out which scholar is “right” about ritual behavior.  As with most things in the study of religion, we aren't concerned with right and wrong.  What you will do in this course will be informed by these two tenants and by one other:

Introduction to Ritual Studies will be collaborative.  Because we will be sharing our learnings, working with and learning from each other — in writing and in oral discussion — the work of this course will become collaborative.  One aim of the course is to encourage each participant to become a class colleague — to teach and learn from one another.  One of the advantages of Intersession is how the frequency of our schedule allows the possibility of a learning community to develop quite quickly.  Typically, you can expect to spend much of your time during class reading each other's work, working in the library, or in the computer labs, in groups of differing sizes.  At first we will use the computer lab together until you understand how to post your work to a forum..  This is in order to learn the "tools" part of the course.  The lab is located in the basement of Edmund Casey.   When we aren't in these places we will be outside as much as possible.

For most classes I will write a letter which I am used to calling a “prompt”.  These prompts are intended to guide you in your cycle of inquiry, highlighting the work of the previous class, providing direction for the class that day, and giving you direction on what we will do in the next class.

The prompts will ask you to do academic sorts of things — reading, writing, webbing, thinking.  You will keep a record of these academic endeavors in files and folders on the computer system --
 

Evaluation and Learning
The usual university course requires students to write tests, exams, and essays.  This course does not.  Without these requirements, I cannot evaluate your work by usual methods.  Thus, your evaluation will consist of three parts.

Part I, the minimum or base grade which reflects your attendance and your responses to the prompts.  If you attend consistently and respond to the prompts consistently, you will earn for a “base grade”, a grade in the “C” range.  What's “consistently” mean?  For this course it means missing no more than two (2) classes.  It also means responding to all the prompts.  If you do not attend class consistently and/or do not respond to the prompts consistently, your base grade will go down.  Regardless of how you do in the other two areas of evaluation, your final mark will not be lower than your base grade.  It may, of course, be higher.  You can earn a higher-than-base grade by doing well in the other two areas of evaluation. (The exception is if you earn an F as a base grade.  Missing lots of classes earns you and F; so does not responding to lots of prompts.  You cannot pass the course if you earn an F as a base grade; if there are other marks they are not counted).

Part 2, a mark, added to this minimum, based on my assessment of the quality of your work with groups, individual responses to readings, and class participation. 

Part 3, a mark, added to the minimum, based on my assessment of the quality of your portfolio, including your learning reflections.  This will especially include what and how you write about what you have learned from your class colleagues.

 I will ask for your learning reflections at the end of the course.  The questions for reflection will all be based on the work you have done and you will be able to use the website we create to help you respond to those questions.

Please note that it is certainly possible to earn a mark in the “A” range with this method of evaluation.
 

Information and Suggestions
1. Late assignments and excused absences.  When I'm asked if someone may be excused from class or an assignment, what I now understand I'm being asked is for forgiveness.  I'm pretty forgiving and usually find I do forgive absences and lapses in responding to prompts; but I cannot excuse them.   There are no excuses in RS 2423.  If you can't be here, fine, but no matter what the reason is, I cannot recreate what you missed.  Often when students miss lots of classes for "good" reasons, they expect me to not count the absence.  Again, I cannot do this.  You can miss 2 classes without penalty, after that it counts, and if you can't be here you just have to accept your personal limitations.  Dr's notes are not equivalent to attendance.

2.  Save all of the work of this course on a memory stick, and keep a copy on your home computer.  This is not an option.  If something happens to your electronic work it will be your responsibility to be able to produce it from copy.   This means getting a memory stick on which to copy electronic files.  Ignore this at your peril!

3. Textbooks.  There is one common text, Ronald Grimes' Deeply Into the Bone: Reinventing Rites of Passage.  This year the text is available online on e-brary through the Harriet Irving Library's Electronic Resources.  You will want to set aside upwards of $15.00 for printing or paper.  For Ritual Studies I you will use The Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.   You will also want to have the Notes for those pages.  You'll find the Notes at the back of the text.

Tests and exams.  There are none in the traditional sense.  Please plan on spending the time you would cramming for an exam in this course working consistently throughout the session.  The *test* is everyday, every assignment, without exception.  All of what you do counts.  If you find this disturbing then maybe ritual studies isn't for you.

After reflecting on the outline, you may feel you are not comfortable with the style of learning in RS 2423.  Or you may feel you're not ready to take on the kind of commitment to learning that this course requires.  That's perfectly ok.  There are plenty of other courses you can still register in. 

**Today is mostly an information session, I'll take the first attendance tomorrow.  I do this because we sometimes get "refugees" from other courses starting the second day, and the first thing we do in class important.  If you are aware of anyone wanting to join this course, they need to get in touch with me immediately.