Geography of the Sacred: Religious Meanings of Land and Space

Catalog description

This course is an exploration of sacred space in religion. We will work with the concept of sacred geography by reading Mircea Eliade, David Brown, Gaston Bachelard, and Michel de Certeau (and others) and study the dynamics of sacred spaces in various religions. The course focuses on sacred geographies (such as the Ganges River, Mount Meru, the Tuxtla Mountains, Delphi, and others), examining the texts, practices, and representations of these places, with special focus on the idea of pilgrimage. We also focus on the temple as sacred space, by comparing cultures such as Hindu, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian, ancient European, and Mayan. Modern examples of geography and the sacred, such as Ground Zero and spaces of everyday life, will be considered.