REL 298: Conflict & Sacred Space:

Archaeology, Politics & Religion MW 12:30-1:50

Science Center B301

Above: one of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (before and after), built 6th c. CE, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001

Course Description Who owns history? What role do archaeology and archaeological artifacts play in the political arena and religious life? From the sack of the Temple in Jerusalem in the first century CE, to the recent events in Zuccotti Park and Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, archaeology (both secular and religious) has had a complex interrelationship with the political sphere. Landscapes, architecture and material culture have often served as indicators of the relative strength or weakness of regimes, religious traditions or of changing ideological narratives. Archaeology has also been put to political and religious use with interested stakeholders exploiting convenient associations with the past in order to authorize their particular visions of society. This course will explore the complex interplay between history, politics, religion and archaeology by drawing on a number of pertinent themes in archaeological studies today, among them: cultural erasure, ethics, identity theory, and international and national approaches to archaeological heritage management. Is plunder merely an unfortunate byproduct of conflict or a strategic act of cultural erasure? When are artifacts the property of their native contexts and when do they belong to the common heritage of mankind? We will answer these and other questions as we investigate the ways in which material culture and politics are and have been mutually sustaining and contested fields from antiquity to the present. In addition to our readings and class discussions, each week we will consider a set of specific archaeological case studies in-class, aimed at providing useful comparanda from which we can draw as we begin to articulate our positions on the questions and themes of the course. Prerequisites: None. This subject matter might especially appeal to students in archaeology, history, classics, religious studies, political theory/government or media studies; however, students from all disciplines are welcome.

Course Goals and Objectives

The goal of this course is to introduce you to some of the issues in the field of archaeological study and the extent to which archaeology intersects with the political and religious spheres. Through our work together, you will have the opportunity in this course to learn to: critically analyze scholarly texts and material data improve your research, academic writing and communication skills develop a creative individual research project that makes an original contribution to the field Instructor information Robyn Faith Walsh walsh_robyn@wheatoncollege.edu Office: Knapton 215 508-286-3699
Course Requirements

Office hours: Thus. 2-5 and by appointment or Skype I strongly encourage you to come visit during my office hours if you have any questions or concerns.

Attendance and Participation: (20%): You are expected to come to all class meetings prepared to discuss the assigned readings and to participate actively in discussion with your questions and ideas. We will also have a discussion board on onCourse. I will check this forum frequently, so please feel free to post questions, concerns and to talk to one another. Extra credit will be assessed for those who are active participants online (as well as in the classroom). A rubric explaining how your A&P will be graded is appended to this syllabus and is available on our course website. Response Papers & Oral Presentations (25%): You are required to submit 7 short response papers throughout the semester, in advance of the class for which the paper is written. In essence, these papers are an opportunity for you to reflect on the topic of the week, the readings and for you to put forth some discussion questions for the class. You are free to choose the weeks for which you will write a paper (limit 1 per week), but you must complete at least 3 before mid-semester. There are also opportunities built into the syllabus for you to do a formal oral presentation on a particular (usually political) issue that is of issue in the course (e.g., giving the class an update on the happenings in Tahrir Square). If you elect to volunteer to give one of these presentations, it will act as a substitute for a response paper. Look for the symbol for these opportunities. More details on this assignment will follow. Midterm (25%): A take home midterm will be handed out on Oct 2nd in-class and will be due, in-class, on Oct 16th. It will consist of several short answers and an essay question. More details to follow. Final Project (30%): There are 3 options for your final. You are free to choose whichever option best caters to your learning style and strengths:

1) Research Paper: A 10-15 pp. (aprox. 3000-4500 words) research paper on a subject of your design, in consultation with me. This option will also require approval in advance via a research proposal. This option is strongly recommended for Ancient Studies, Classics and Religious Studies majors. 2) Special Project: If you have a creative idea for a relevant project related to your major, come see me. Similar to the research paper, this will require a proposal in advance and close consultation with me along the way. Some examples of an appropriate final project might include an art study, creative writing, interviewing notable scholar, translation and commentary, and so on. 3) A traditional final, held during finals week. It will consist of short answers, matching and/or multiple choice and two short essays. More detailed information on each of these assignments will follow.

Finally, please feel free to openly discuss these course requirements, readings and assessments with me if you have other ideas, feel that a particular kind of assignment is useful, helpful or, on the other side of the coin, overly difficult. While we must have fair and thorough assessments in this course in order for me to give you the appropriate grades, this is ultimately your course and I want to work with you to make it practical, constructive and enjoyable!
Required Books & Other Course Materials

The majority of our readings will be made available on onCourse and e-reserves.
Weekly readings & assignments

All readings are required for each class meeting, unless otherwise specified. Recommended Readings are not required, but you may find them useful. Assigned readings should be completed before class. Please bring all readings with you to our sessions.

Week 1: Introduction Introductions and in-class PowerPoint highlighting the major themes of the course, material objects and sites we will consider. Wednesday, August 28th : Introduction to the Course Short in-class writing assignment: What do you hope to gain from this course? What are your particular interests in this subject?

Week 2: Religion and Politics as Social Practice Before we can begin exploring the elements of social life relevant to this course, we have to develop a common vocabulary for what we mean by categories like religion, society, political and so on. We will begin with some recent scholarly literature on religion as a social practice and consider how we might apply these same theoretical principles to other areas of study. No Class September 2nd Wednesday, September 4th : What is Religion? Willi Braun, Religion, and William Arnal, Definition, in Guide to the Study of Religion (2000): pp. 3-18 and 21-34. Recommended Reading: B. Mack, Social Formation, in Guide to the Study of Religion (2000): pp. 283-296. R.T. McCutcheon, This History of Religion (Chapter 2) in Studying Religion: an introduction (2007): pp. 15-19. Week 3: Who owns History? : Identity, Groups and the Preservation of Memory Who owns history? What do we mean by individual and collective memory? What do scholars mean when they talk about identity? These are theoretical problems that will undergird our investigations throughout the semester. We will begin to explore these issues with the aim of developing an increasingly nuanced grasp of how to address such questions going forward. Monday, September 9th : Memory & Identification(s) Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups, in Ethnicity Without Groups (2004): pp. 7-27. Allan Megill, History with Memory, History without Memory, in Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (2007): pp. 17-40. Also, please explore the University of Alabamas Culture on the Edge project at: http://edge.ua.edu/ Recommended Reading: Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, Beyond Identity, Theory and Society 29/1 (2000): pp. 1-47. Wednesday, September 11th : Negotiating Space Michael de Certeau, Walking in the City (Chapter 7) and Spacial Stories (Chapter 9) in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984): pp. 91-110 and 115-130.

Week 4: Spoils of War: Pillage & Plunder, Past & Present Building on our discussions of space, memory and identification, we will look at plunder as an act of political/cultural domination. Case Studies: the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 1st c. CE and the Iraq War (Baghdad), 21st c. CE Monday, September 16th: The Jewish War & Fall of the Temple (Guest Speaker: Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus) Ron E. Hassner What is Sacred Space? in War on Sacred Grounds (2009): pp.17-34. Susan Alcock, Archaeologies of Memory, Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories (2002): pp. 1-35. Recommended Reading: Ron E. Hassner & Gideon Aran, Religion and Violence in the Jewish Tradition, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence (2013): pp. 78-99. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (1992), selections. Wednesday, September 18th: Historical and Cultural Erasure in Iraq Matthew Bogdanos, Thieves of Baghdad, in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008): pp. 109-134. Donny George, The Looting of the Iraq National Museum, in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008): pp. 97-108. Recommended Reading: David Little & Donald K. Swearer, Introduction, Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective (2006): pp. 1-40. Phebe Marr, Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites: Can an Iraqi Identity be Salvaged? Religion and Nationalism in Iraq (2006): pp. 63-72. Neil Brodie, The Market Background to the April 2003 Plunder of the Iraq National Museum, in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008): pp. 41-54. Mariam Moussa, The Damages Sustained to the Ancient City of Babel as a Consequence of the Military Presence of Coalition Forces in 2003, in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008): pp. 143-150. Abdulamir Hamdani, The Damage Sustained to the Ancient City of Ur, in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008): pp. 151-156.

Week 5: Nazi Plunder of Europe We will continue to consider acts of plunder in the course of war, while also returning to how we want to define religion and how to distinguish this category from politics. In the case of the Nazis, for instance, might we fruitfully describe their campaign as religious in nature? Case Study: the National Socialist Party Monday, September 23rd: Hitlers Holy Relics Wayne Sandholtz, Nazi Plunder: Strengthening the Rules, Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change (2007): pp. 127-166. Kenneth Alford, Introduction, Operation Macabre and Theft of the Quedlinburg Church Treasure, Nazi Plunder: Great Treasure Stories of World War II (2000): pp. iii-vi, 101110 and 177-187. **Also look through periodicals like the New York Times for recent stories on Nazi plunder discoveries. Caches of art and so on are routinely found and debates over their proper ownership abound. Wednesday, September 25th : Is Nazism a Religion? Stan Stowers, The Concepts of Religion, Political Religion and the Study of Nazism, Journal of Contemporary History 42:1 (2007), pp. 9-24. R. Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Conclusion, pp. 261-267 in The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). ** You might find it useful to skim other portions of this book if you do not have much background on WWII. Recommended Reading: David Konstan, Anger, Hatred, and Genocide in Ancient Greece, Common Knowledge 13:1 (2007), pp. 170-187.

Week 6: Ethnicity, Race/Nations, Nationalism Rather than focus on what an ethnic or racial group or nation is, we will focus on whether we can specify how ethnicity, race, and nation work. That is, we will consider whether practices/performances can help us understand how persons identify with particular groups or social formations. We will then turn to our primary case study for this week: the rise of the National Fascist Party in Italy under Benito Mussolini and the appropriation of Augustan Rome by that regime. Case Study: Mussolinis Rome

Monday, September 30th : The Rhetoric of Nationalism Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939 (2013), selections. The Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) (1935), directed by Leni Riefenstahl Recommended Reading: Adolf Hitler, State Selection of the Fit, and Personality and the Conception of the Folkish State, in Mein Kampf (1962), pp. 428-435 and 442-451. Manufacturing Reality: Slavoj Zizek and the Reality of the Virtual (2004), directed by Ben Wright Wednesday, October 2nd : Mussolinis Rome Ann Thomas Wilkens, Augustus, Mussolini, and the Parallel Imagery of Empire, in Donatello among the Blackshirts: history and modernity in the visual culture of Fascist Italy (2003): pp. 53-65. Christopher Hibbert, Roma Fascista, in Rome: the biography of a city (1987): pp. 286-303. Recommended Reading: Borden W. Painter, Architecture, Propoganda, and the Fascist Revolution, in Mussolinis Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (2005), pp. 59-90. Week 7: Forgery, Theft and Amateurism Themes for this week will include: the manipulation of the past, the manipulation of cultural heritage and archaeological ethics. Case Studies: the so-called Minoan Snake Goddess (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Native American archaeological sites; special presentation on Elche, Spain Monday, October 7th : Revisionist History & The Curious Case of Elche, Spain Ross Kraemer, Jewish Tuna and Christian Fish: Identifying Religious Affiliation in Epigraphic Sources, The Harvard Theological Review 84:2 (Ap 1991): pp. 141-162. Js Elsner, Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art, The Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): pp. 114-128. **this is a little dense, but see what you can do with it Recommended Reading: Margarita Daz-Andreu and Manuel Ramrez Snchez, Archaeological Resource Management Under Francos Spain: The Comisara General de Excavationes Arqueolgicas, in Archaeology Under Dictatorship (2004), pp.109-130. Wednesday, October 9th : The Snake Goddess Kenneth Lapatin, Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire and the Forging of History (2003), Chapter 1,The Boston Goddess, (pp. 4-29) **feel free to read more if interested!
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Patrick Radden Keefe, The Jefferson Bottles, The New Yorker (2007), on course page, also available online through the New Yorker website.

Week 8: Antiquity and Authenticity We will consider how the past has been, and continues to be, used as a resource for establishing authenticity and continuity among various stakeholders. Case Study: Roman Gaul October 14-15 Long Weekend Wednesday, October16th : Roman Gaul Michael Dietler, Our Ancestors the Gauls: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe, American Anthropologist 96/3 (1994): pp. 584-605.

Week 9: Empire and La Mission Civilisatrice The focus of this week is the relationship between landscapes as both the product of social realities and the means by which certain social relationships are reproduced (e.g., the empire and the colonized). We will also consider how certain spaces can be transformed into expressions of political control in the breech. Some of the questions we will consider are: How is political control articulated through architecture/material culture and who is able to recognize these symbols? How are these controls disrupted? To what extent are terms like empire, nation, and heritage ideological constructs or abstractions? Is the USA an imperial republic? Case Studies: Delhi, India; Washington D.C.; Tahrir Square (Cairo, Egypt); Syria Monday, October 21st : Washington D.C. Mark Crinson, Imperial Panorama: panorama of architecture, in Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (2003): pp. 1-25. Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (2007), listen to Murphys interview on NPR: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11156034 Walter Scheidel, Republics Between Hegemony and Empire: How ancient city-states built empires and the USA doesnt (anymore), Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, Version 1.0 (2006): pp. 1-16. Edward Said, Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories: Empire, Geography, and Culture, in Culture and Imperialism (1993): pp. 3-14.

Recommended Reading: Cynthia R. Field, Interpreting the Influence of Paris on the Planning of Washington, D.C., 1870-1930, in Paris on the Potomac: The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington D.C. (2007): pp. 117-138. Wednesday, October 23rd : Tahrir Square (Cairo, Egypt) Fran Tonkiss, The Politics of Space: Social Movements and Public Square, in Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms: pp. 59-79. Wendell Steavenson, "Who Owns the Revolution? The Army or the People?" in the New Yorker (8/1/2011): pp. 38-57. ** At the time of the writing of this syllabus, Egypt remains in upheaval. We may choose to expand our readings based on current events. Recommended Reading: Frontline did a special on the original revolution in Egypt Revolution in Cairo that you might find useful: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/ Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, in Four Essays on Liberty (1969): pp. 1-32. http://edge.ua.edu/russell-mccutcheon/the-alchemy-of-circumstances/ http://edge.ua.edu/russell-mccutcheon/the-c-word/#more-1247 Week 10: The Hybrid City Building in particular on our work last week on Tahrir Square, we will ask: How is it that two people inhabit the same space at the same time, or observe the same artifact or monument, and still understand it in radically different ways? We will discuss how human activity/practices give(s) meaning to space and how certain spaces/places can represent political systems, capitalism, nations, religions and so on in the eyes of an observer (e.g., The World Trade Center). We will then relate our discussion to questions of religion and the state. Some of the topics we will raise include how to understand the role of so-called terrorism in comparative perspective: can religion ever be justifiably violent? How do we classify terrorism? How do we make sense of the notion of violence in pursuit of peace? Case Study: New York City; Boston Bombing; Guatemala; drones. We might also bring in examples of non-violent resistance. Monday, October 28th : Synecdochical Space Gibler, Hutchison and Miller, Individual Identity Attachments and International Conflict: The Importance of Territorial Threat, Comparative Political Studies 45:12 (Dec 2012): pp. 1655-1683. Steinberg, M. K. and M. J. Taylor, "Public Memory and Political Power in Guatemala's Postconflict Landscape." Geographical Review 93.4 (2003): pp. 449-68. Recommended Reading: http://edge.ua.edu/craig-martin/shifting-identification-strategies/
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Fran Lebowitz, City Limiting: The New Geography, in The Fran Lebowitz Reader (1994): pp. 110-111. Also watch Lebowitz commenting on the new New York: www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2538576153/ Wednesday, October 30th : Religion & Violence Mark Juergensmeyer & Mona Kanwal Sheikh, A Sociotheological Approach to Understanding Religious Violence, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence (2013): pp. 620-643. Richard B. Miller, Is Attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda Justified? (Just War Doctrine & On Attacking Afghanistan), in Terror, Religion and Liberal Thought (2010): pp. 143-179. Recommended Reading: Hans G. Kippenberg, Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization (selections). R. Scott Appleby, Violence as a Sacred Duty: Patterns of Religious Extremism, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (2000): pp. 81-120. (long but do your best!) Week 11: Inventing History & Myths of Origin How do religious (and political) movements define themselves and their beginnings? Is there such a thing as an origin for a religious or political entity? To what extent are texts artifacts chronicling a concrete history and to what extent are they themselves political documents? Case Studies: the State of Israel; the Cyrus Cylinder; the early Christian gospels and Acts Monday, November 4th: (Religious) Texts as Artifacts Burton Mack, On Redescribing Christian Origins, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 8-3 (1996): pp. 247-269. William Arnal, The Collection and Synthesis of Tradition and the Second-Century Invention of Christianity, presentation version of a paper prepared for Redescribing Early Christianity Group, SBL Meetings, San Diego. Acts of the Apostles (NSRV), selections Wednesday, November 6th : The Cyrus Cylinder Neil MacGregor, 2600 Years of History in One Object, TED Talks (Jul 2011): http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_macgregor_2600_years_of_history_in_one_object.html

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Week 12: Heritage and Commoditization At the beginning of the semester, we asked the question: Who owns history? We will return to this question as we examine the often-troubled relationship between indigenous peoples (who hold particular religious or cultural claims on material culture) and archaeologists (interested in the professional, scientific enterprise of archaeology). We will also consider commercial aspects of archaeology, including the tourism industry and the marketing of romanticized notions of the past, the homeland, the exotic and the indigenous. Case Studies: Bogot; tourism of ancient Greco-Roman sites; Holy Land tourism Monday, November 11th : Commodifying History Felipe Gaitn Ammann, With a Hint of Paris in the Mouth: Fetishized Toothbrushes or the Sensuous Experience of Modernity in Late 19th Century Bogot, in Archaeologies of Materiality (2005): pp. 71-95. Joe E. Watkins, Beyond the Margin: American Indians, First Nations, and Archaeologists, American Antiquity 68/2 (2003): pp. 273-285. Alice Walker, Everyday Use, in A Celestian Omnibus: Short Fiction on Faith (1997): pp. 317324. Recommended Reading: Stephen A. Brighton and Charles E. Orser, Irish Images on English Goods in the American Market: The Materialization of Modern Irish Heritage, in Images, Representations and Heritage: Moving beyond Modern Approaches to Archaeology (2006), pp. 61- 88. Wednesday, November 13th : Tourism & Fetishizing the Past Uzi Baram and Yorke Rowan, Archaeology after Nationalism: Globalization and the Consumption of the Past, in Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past (2004): pp. 3-26. J. Wharton, Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (selections). Recommended Reading: Aaron K. Ketchell, These Hills Will Give You Great Treasure: Ozark Tourism and the Collapse of Sacred and Secular, in The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History (2002): pp. 156-175.

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Week 13: Local Heritage/World Heritage When does a monument, object or even body belong to a local environment and when does it become global? We will examine two interesting examples this week: dead bodies and UNESCO. In the former case, we will look at examples of corpses and statuesusually of political and religious figuresthat are publically displayed and/or abused in certain ways by local groups as an expression to the outside world of their relative pleasure or displeasure with a death, political shift or other significant (sometimes global) moment. We will then consider the mission of UNESCO and the concepts of world culture and heritage and globalization. Our special case study will be the destruction of the so-called Buddhas of Bamiyan. Do the cultural and historic relics and monuments of Afghanistan belong to the common heritage of mankind as the General Conference of UNESCO claims? Case Studies: the Buddhas of Bamiyan; South Africa Monday, November 18th: The Political Lives of Dead Bodies Katherine Verdery, Introduction: Corpses on the Move, in The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (2000): pp. 1-22. Wednesday, November 20th: Treaties, Stewardship and the Rule of Law Roger OKeefe, World Cultural Heritage: Obligations to the International Community as a Whole? British Institute of International and Comparative Law 53/1 (2004): pp. 189-209. Daniel Shoup and Lyra Monteiro, When Past and Present Collide: The Ethics of Archaeological Stewardship, Current Anthropology 49/2 (2008): pp. 328-333. Hassner, Mismanaging Conflicts over Sacred Places, & Lessons from Conflicts over Sacred Places, in War on Sacred Grounds (2009): pp. 69-90, 153-180. Recommended Readings: Take a look at the text for the Hague Convention of 1954, the UNESCO Convention of 1970, World Heritage Convention of 1972, the ICOMOS Charter of 1990, and the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 (handouts and/or internet links to be provided) Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism, The Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): pp. 21-40. Rogers Brubaker, et al. "Ethnicity as Cognition," Theory and Society 33/1 (2004): pp. 3164.

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Week 14: Thanksgiving No Class Monday, November 25th (professor at a conference) November 27-30 Thanksgiving Break

Week 15: Final Project Presentations Monday, December 2nd Wednesday, December 4th (last class)

Final Project Suggestions

the Suez Canal and the emergence of the oil industry the preservation of memory and the Holocaust the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (the fury over its location and why) Christian relics in Late Antiquity how have certain movies (e.g., Amelie, 2001) projected old world ideologies by featuring particular national landmarks or landscapes in strategic ways? British imperialism, the end of empire and its effects on landscape Banksy graffiti in the UK the Roman catacombs the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome and the response of the state the romanticized landscapes of Fran Lebowitz and Woody Allen the political lives of dead bodies (e.g., destruction of statues as replacement for bodies, treatment of bodies of political/religious leaders after death) terrorism and archaeology texts as artifacts/relics womens bodies as religious and political territory space and nonviolent movements the debate around Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs Rolling Stone cover women and Tahrir Square (abandoned) Bible Theme Parks

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Helpful Resources

University of Alabamas website Culture on the Edge http://edge.ua.edu/ (check out their podcast to get a sense of their project) UNESCO site (https://en.unesco.org/) http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/ http://www.religiondispatches.org/ (particularly the politics section) Search through Charlie Roses website for interviews with notable political figures and theorists Frontline also has a number of recent programs on Egypt and Syria (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/) Sociological Images website: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages Bulletin for the Study of Religion website: http://www.equinoxpub.com/blog/

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