Daoism

Catalog description

In an effort to see and experience Daoist thought and practice on its own terms, approximating the worldview of its practitioners, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach, examining three distinct kinds of religious phenomena: 1) ritual performance, 2) sacred scripture, and 3) art and material culture. Through this interdisciplinary approach, students will learn how to investigate these phenomena according to corresponding sets of methodologies, namely 1) ethnography; 2) translation and hermeneutics; and 3) art-historical and visual and material analyses. Because both scripture and art cannot be removed from liturgy in the Daoist tradition, students will also learn to engage with and employ frameworks from the field of ritual theory, specifically anthropological approaches to ritual practice.