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 Can you Love the Land Like
I do? Building Native –
Non-Native Alliances
Dorothy Christian (Okanagan-
Secwepemc) and Victoria Freeman
The War for Muslim Minds:
A Progressive Islamic Response
Farid Esack
Engaged Buddhism Across the Pacific
Kathryn Poethig
Fundamentalism in World Religions since 9-11
Namsoon Kang
Religion, Nationalism, and Human Rights:
Gendering South Asia and Its Diasporas
Angana Chatterji
Difficult Conversations Across Significant Differences: The Israel/Palestinian Conflict
Simona Sharoni
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Can you love the land like I do?
Building Native – Non-Native Alliances
Dorothy Christian (Okanagan-Secwepernc)
and Victoria Freeman
How do we decolonize Canada – the land we live on and our relationships to it and to each other? Dorothy Christian (Okanagan-Secwepemc) and Victoria Freeman (Euro-Canadian) have been puzzling over this for almost 20 years -- as friends, colleagues, and allies. In their struggles to treat each other with love and respect despite the colonizer/colonized dynamic they were born into, they have come to acknowledge their friendship and alliance as a microcosm of Native/Non-Native relations in Canada . They have learned that their relationship cannot be understood without reference to land.
In this experientially-based course, Victoria and Dorothy will share their personal experiences from “different sides of the fence” and in relationship with each other. They will explore with participants what it will take for all of us to become true North Americans. Participants will investigate their relationship to land from various perspectives, not just as contested property but as the ground of our humanness, and of all beings on the Earth, as well as the bridge connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada . We will explore our relation to land as physical and spiritual sustenance, as story, as teacher. Drawing on both Native and non-Native teachings, the class will consider the possibility of a loving relationship to this land as an intimate “I-Thou” relationship. At the end of the time together, participants will have some concrete notions of how to build Native, non-Native alliances.
Recommended readings:
Derrick Jensen. Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture and Eros. Chelsea Green Publishing: 2004
Victoria Freeman. Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America. Toronto : McClelland & Stewart 2000,2002), pp. 439-467
Jeannette Armstrong. “I Stand With You Against the Disorder,” on website: http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1346 .
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The War for Muslim Minds:
A Progressive Islamic Response
Farid Esack
We are living through an intense battle for the soul of Islam - The War for Muslim Minds (Gilles Keppel). For many non-Muslim Westerners Islam and Muslims have become the ultimate other. Many liberals, on the other hand, move from the assumption that "global harmonies remain elusive because of cultural conflicts" (Majid Annouar). Hence, the desperation to nudge Islam and Muslims into a more 'moderate' corner, to transform the Muslim other into a Muslim version of the accommodating and 'peaceful' self without in any way raising critical questions about that western self and systems that fuel the need for compliant subjects throughout the Empire. How do charity and philanthropy become tools in this war?
This course is intended to provide students with knowledge of and insights into debates in the Muslim world around some of the critical issues that this battle focuses on as Muslims struggle to remain faithful to tradition as well as to their own greater awareness of the inalienability of human rights and the inter-relatedness of the destiny of humankind. Issues are covered under the following four sub-themes: a) Islamic Tradition, Text and Authority, b) Democracy, Pluralism, Justice and Human Rights, c) Jihad and Non-Violence, and d) Gender and Sexual. While a critical overview of approaches to all of these is provided, a progressive Islamic approach to them will be a particular focus of this course.
Recommended reading:
Farid Esack. Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism. Oxford : Oneworld. 1997
Additional reading:
Farid Esack. On Being a Muslim. Oxford : One World, 1999 Additional articles will be provided in class.
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Engaged Buddhism Across the Pacific
Kathryn Poethig [Course Canceled]
Globalization has opened new space for transnational faith-based activist networks in the last 25 years. We will focus on "engaged" Buddhist peace networks linking North Americans with Asians (particularly Southeast and South Asia ). This new "engaged Buddhism" raises difficult questions in sites of conflict and important reflections about the nature of religious identity and doctrine as it travels out of its historic locus. How is engaged Buddhism changing and challenged as it shuttles back and forth across the Pacific?
We will look at a close reading of Maha Ghosananda and the Dhammayietra, a Buddhist peace walk in Cambodia to consider the strengths and weaknesses of Buddhist peacemaking.
We will consider such questions as:
How are these Buddhist "liberation movements" different than their predecessors? How do they compare with Christian "liberation movements"?
What are local debates on the role of the sangha to state repression, political action, franchise?
What is the role of Buddhist-based resistance?
What is the contribution of North American NGOs and other engaged Buddhists to Buddhist activism of Cambodia , Sri Lanka , Myanmar ?
What is the relationship of North American "new" Buddhists to Buddhism in Asia and ethnic Buddhism at home--and how does this affect transnational alliances?
Activists within various Buddhist support networks are especially encouraged to share their perspectives.
Recommended reading:
Engaged Buddhism in the West, Christopher S. Queen, ed. Wisdom Publications, 2000
Kathryn Poethig. “Movable Peace: Engaging the Transnational in Cambodia 's Dhammayietra,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41:1(2002) 19-28.
Download article
Additional Readings:
The Buddhist Peace Fellowship website offers a substantial bibliography on Engaged Buddhism
Go to website
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Fundamentalism in World Religions
Namsoon Kang
The surge of religious fundamentalism since the 1970s in culturally distinct areas of the globe has raised concern and interest among scholars and citizens. Regions of the world that have witnessed the rise of religious fundamentalism are as diverse as Algeria, Israel, the United States, Iran, India, and many other parts of Asia. Especially since the September 11, 2001, the world has learned a lot about the dangers of religious fundamentalists. It is necessary, however, to acknowledge that religious fundamentalism is not just within Islam or Christianity. All religions are based on fundamentals‚ and all have their fundamentalists. This course will first examine the theological/theoretical and historical sources, and the nature and rhetoric of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam, and further explore its theological and socio-political implications and practice.
Recommended pre-reading:
Marty, Martin and R. Scott Appleby. The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World. Boston : Beacon Press, 1992.
For further study:
Marty, Martin and R. Scott Appleby, ed., Fundamentalisms Observed . The Fundamentalism Project Volume 1. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1991.
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Religion, Nationalism, and Human Rights: Gendering South Asia and Its Diasporas
Angana Chatterji [Course Canceled]
This course will examine the intersections of religion and nationalism as they disable human rights and civil liberties in 'post'colonial South Asia and its diasporas. Focusing on competing religio-cultural nationalisms in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and, in particular, India and Indian administered Kashmir, this course will inquire into issues of institutionalized violence and chronic inequities that characterize nation-building in South Asia. Our explorations delve into the intersections of globalization and militarization, and sectarian, monolithic, and religious nationalisms as they sustain and engender violence against women. We will trace processes of state-building that have strengthened Hindu majoritarianism and supremacy in India and consolidated military dictatorship in Pakistan; the interactions between state and militant Islam in Bangladesh; and examine the fabric of Indian occupation in Kashmir as it escalates nuclear politics in South Asia. We will address how the above legacies impact South Asian diasporas in North America today, and, in particular, examine issues of gendered violence and long-distance Hindu nationalism in the United States and Canada. This will be situated within diverse social and political movements in South Asia and its diasporas.
Throughout the course, our examinations engage with the ideologies and discursive practices of nationhood and the ways in which they are gendered. We will look at some of the strategies used by human rights advocates to respond to group and state violence, and actions against religious and linguistic minorities and other disenfranchised groups, including women, sexual identity groups, and tribal peoples. And through a review of cases, strategies, processes, and outcomes, we will examine some of the legal and social aspects of state and group violence in national and international law. Looking at the organization of people's tribunals in India will provide a site for learning about reparation, justice, and rehabilitation.
How does the gendering of violence shift the spaces in which cultural citizenship is shaped? How does violence as political action reshape social structures? What are the legal, social, public, and private apparatuses of governmentalization within biopolitical states? In tracing the literal and figurative mechanisms that link everyday and episodic violence, this course will examine histories of the postcolonial present, attentive to democratizations of knowledge/praxis on the part of the citizenry that enable processes of justice.
Course Readings Package available in late July.
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Difficult Conversations Across Significant Differences: The Israel-Palestinian Conflict
Simona Sharoni
In this course we will explore new ways to study, understand, discuss, and effectively intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We will examine competing historical narratives as well as such key contested issues as refugees, Jerusalem, and final borders and contemporary issues like the Apartheid Wall, checkpoints, and the role of international organizations and entities in both fueling and trying to resolve the conflict.
Taught in an interactive manner with the aid of audiovisual materials, participants will have an opportunity to examine their own relationship to the conflict as they become aware of other viewpoints and perspectives. Special attention will be devoted to questions of identity and difference, especially those involving religion, and gender and their roles in the conflict and the prospects for its resolution.
In addition to acquiring a new analytical framework to examine the conflict, participants will learn basic conflict analysis and resolution skills. We will also examine critically the potential and pitfalls of various coalition-building and solidarity initiatives and develop creative strategies to work for a just and lasting solution to the conflict.
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