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Material Culture in Religious Studies IN THIS ISSUE Teaching about May 2003 Published by the American Academy of Religion Vol. 18, No.3 Material Culture in www.aarweb.org Religious Studies Teaching Religion and Material Culture . .ii Teaching about Vivian-Lee Nyitray Material Culture and the Varieties of Religious Imagination . .iii Ivan Strenski Material Culture Teaching Religion and American Film . .v Judith Weisenfeld Teaching with Food . .vi in Religious Studies Daniel Sack Teaching Biblical Archaeology and Vivian-Lee Nyitray Material Culture as Part of Teaching Judaism . .vii University of California-Riverside Richard A. Freund Guest Editor Teaching Religion and Learning Religion through Material Culture . .ix holding prayer beads in his hands and ble to do one to the exclusion of the Jonathan Huoi Xung Lee another of Muslim men sitting in an other as well as to address both without Egyptian café talking while they fin- theorizing the intimate yet ambivalent Complicating Things: gered and counted their beads. A web- relationship between the two. For Material Culture and site called “Islam for Children” lists instance, until a few decades ago, occi- the Classroom . .x prayer beads among various essential dentalist versions of Islam rooted exclu- Leslie Smith Islamic artifacts including the prayer sively in textual, normative sources rug, prayer compass to determine the managed to represent this cumulative direction of Mecca, prayer caps, and historical tradition without any refer- Qur’an stand (http://atschool.eduweb.co. ence to how Muslims in different parts uk/carolrb/islam/artefacts.html). of the world actually expressed their faith in everyday life and practice. The The AAR Committee on So much for simple descriptions and pendulum now swings in the other Teaching and Learning catalogues of religious symbols in Islam. direction as attention is drawn to the (Eugene V. Gallagher, Chair), Things matter. At times, things matter many discrete and varied cultural mani- Tazim R. Kassam sponsors Spotlight on Teaching. more than the ideas from which they festations of Muslim life. This peda- take shape. This hit home when I gogy is founded on the assumption that It appears twice each year in Spotlight on Teaching Editor heard an elderly Muslim woman being Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and so Religious Studies News, AAR instruct her husband not to carry his on generates a particular type of materi- Edition and focuses on tasbih on their flight from Toronto to al culture which embodies and replicates teaching and learning around New York a year after the tragic events the teachings and requirements of a spe- a particular theme, concern, YPICALLY, MUSLIMS have a of 9/11. This unexpected precaution cific faith. It also emerges from the or setting. tasbih at hand to remember God. poignantly problematized the tension pressing need, voiced by our students, T Tasbih means to exalt, praise and and ambiguity of reckoning with reli- to understand other people’s religious glorify God; and the prayer beads used gious symbols and artifacts in different symbols in a pluralist society. Editor to aid this glorification are also called contexts. In between the idea (as in tasbih, subha or misbaha. Like Hindu thought and desire) of the tasbih (to Yet, how to tackle both descriptively Tazim R. Kassam and Buddhist malas and Catholic glorify God) and its materiality (prayer and theoretically the visible aspects of Syracuse University rosaries, their essential function is to beads) is a constructive and deconstruc- religion remains. The edifice of disci- concentrate the mind to count devo- tive space, which continues to require plinary-specific language used to con- Guest Editor tions, prayers, and divine attributes. critical reflection. struct diverse explanations of religious Each religious tradition has its own objects itself requires constant re-exami- Vivian-Lee Nyitray local lore about the beads, their crafts- The focus of this issue of Spotlight on nation. Terms used in the classroom to University of California- manship, and their talismanic powers. Teaching, guest edited by Vivian-Lee “handle” religious objects including Riverside Tasbihs are made of ninety-nine beads Nyitray, is material culture in religious manifestation, sacred, hierophany, rep- that signify the asma al-husna, the nine- studies. A longstanding debate in the resentation and so on are themselves ty-nine most beautiful names of God field of religion has been the relation- implicitly structured on a dualistic mentioned in the Qur’an. ship between religious beliefs and prac- metaphysics of reality. Thus, within the Spotlight on Teaching tices or the classic philosophical prob- context of coming to understand reli- is published by the The ubiquity of tasbihs in mosques, lem of spirit and matter, essence and gious life through, not in spite of, mate- American Academy of Religion homes, and around the wrists of manifestation, noumenon and phe- rial culture, there is both opportunity 825 Houston Mill Road Muslim men and women illustrates the nomenon. In pedagogical terms, the and necessity to draw attention to the Atlanta, GA 30329 importance of dhikr or constant recol- dilemma surfaces in terms of striking limitations of epistemological notions Visit www.aarweb.org lection of God in Islam. Always in the right balance between teaching constantly at work in the acts of search of pictures and videos to use in about a religious tradition’s ideas and explanation. ❧ class, I found one of President Hamid principles versus teaching about its reli- Karzai in a meeting with Afghan leaders gious practices and artifacts. It is possi- Religious Studies News, AAR Edition Teaching Religion and Material Culture Vivian-Lee Nyitray expressive cultural artifacts that could be music, dance, and the production of in the field, as contributors Ivan Strenski seen, heard, and touched. Religion was implements all reveal aspects of a particu- and Jonathan H. X. Lee suggest. Lee high- neither solely cerebral nor an affair of the lar religious worldview and its associated lights the questions that arise as students heart; it was thoroughly embodied; anyone practices. Some of this focus was prompt- navigate religion in three-dimensions, and who would hope to understand it had best ed initially by the perceived paucity or he points out the rich paths that can lead be ready to study it in all its multifaceted absence of the classic subject and/or object onward from a single field experience. glory. When the class read The of study in religion, texts or scriptures. Strenski, in addition to adumbrating a the- Bhagavadgita, Smith brought in a set of Doctrinal discourses were then discerned oretical perspective on the importance of bronze Vaishnava devotional images that in oral tradition, and also in the overarch- material culture for the study of religion, he had acquired from friends in India. ing “narrative” of daily life. Belatedly but shares the questions he has devised to Oddly, at least to my eyes, each of the fig- happily, these insights have now come into guide his students’ forays into material reli- ures had a small piece of cloth wrapped the analysis of other religious traditions, gious spaces. In a somewhat different around it. Smith explained that he’d been notably the study of Christianity in gener- vein, contributor Richard A. Freund ana- given the images on condition that he al and its American variations in particu- lyzes some of the pitfalls of both mis- and would treat them with respect; thus, even lar. In this issue of Spotlight on Teaching, a overinterpretation that await students and though the images had been cast to show sampling of scholars and students share scholars alike in their encounters with the the deities as clothed and bejeweled, they their diverse experiences in mediating seemingly “objective” objects of biblical were not considered to be decently dressed material culture in the religious studies and rabbinical archaeology. unless real cloth at least partially classroom. enveloped them. For me, in the moment One might also bring the outside world Vivian-Lee Nyitray is an Associate of his explanation, those small twists of An instructor desirous of shifting pedagog- into the classroom. Contributor Leslie Professor of Religious Studies at the cloth were suddenly and palpably imbued ical attention beyond words on a page Smith recalls a guest practitioner: a University of California, Riverside. Her research within the field of with the sacrality of deep devotion and might reasonably turn the classroom gaze Wiccan who, in her choice of clothing and Chinese religions includes feminism respectful friendship. These images were toward other aspects of the page, namely, in the artifacts of The Craft that she and the Confucian tradition; not “gods,” but they were much more photographs and illustrations — an entry brought along for the students’ examina- Tianhou/Mazu studies; and the lay than symbols; their physical presence to the field of visual culture. Recent tion, taught volumes about her tradition, medical mission work of the Tzu Chi invoked and made warmly real the prac- Buddhist Compassion Foundation. tice of bhakti devotionalism. The Life of Chinese Religions, co-edited with Ron Guey Chu, is Since then, although trained in the tex- forthcoming from the University of tual study of classical Chinese traditions, California Press. I have nonetheless come to practice the study of religion in a manner significant- ly influenced by anthropology, ethnogra- phy, art history, and archaeology. Perhaps not unlike other fields,
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