Course Catalog: Magic, Science, Religion

Postdoctoral fellow Naveeda Khan, who
will join the Anthropology faculty in 2006, uses readings,
movies, response papers and class discussions to explore
modern-day thought processes.
PHOTO BY HIPS/WILL KIRK
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By Amy Cowles Homewood
Editor's Note: This is part of an occasional series in
which reporters drop in on interesting classes throughout
the university's eight academic divisions. Suggestions are
welcome at
gazette@jhu.edu.
The course: Magic, Science, Religion. 3 credits.
Offered by the Department of
Anthropology in the Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences. Cross-listed with
Humanities.
The instructor: Naveeda Khan is a postdoctoral
fellow in the Department of Anthropology; she will begin
her tenure as an assistant professor in 2006. She received
her master's in anthropology from the New School for Social
Research in 1995 and earned her doctorate in anthropology
from Columbia University in 2003, writing her doctoral
dissertation on how sectarian violence is folded into
everyday life in urban Pakistan. She is the recipient of
numerous research grants from foundations such as the
Social Science Research Council, National Science
Foundation and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research. Khan has worked for the Bangladesh Rural
Advancement Committee, United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees and Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
She is turning her dissertation into a book tentatively
titled "The Passage of a Promise: Spaces of Worship,
Sectarian Violence and Embodied Skepticism in Urban
Pakistan" and is co-editing a book of essays on
contemporary Pakistan titled Beyond Crisis: A Critical
Second Look at Pakistan.
Meeting time: 10:30 a.m. to noon, Thursdays and
Fridays, fall 2005
Syllabus: Scholars throughout the ages have spent a
lot of time conducting intellectual and experimental
research on the human thought process. The study of magic,
science and religion is perhaps anthropology's most
enduring contribution to this pursuit. By debating
rationality vs. irrationality, human relations to nature
and newness vs. tradition, this course draws for its
students a variegated picture of thinking and thought.
Throughout the semester, the readings, class discussions
and writing assignments encourage students to consider how
we think, what the predominant modes of thinking are and
what produces a change in thought. Students use the
information gleaned from theoretical readings to analyze
ethnographies and films of modern-day instances of magic,
science and religion to draw out the dominant pictures of
modern-day thought.
Course work: Students write six three-to-four-page
"response papers" tied to class readings. Specific
assignments guide the first four papers, but students
follow their own leads for the remaining two papers
discussing two of the three ethnographies to be read at the
end of the course. Deadlines are strict so that Khan and
her teacher's assistant, Andrew Bush, have time to grade
papers and incorporate students' thoughts and ideas into
relevant class discussions. The final grade incorporates
Khan and Bush's evaluation of class attendance and
participation and the cumulative letter grades on response
papers.
Required reading: In addition to many books and
articles on reserve in the library, students must read
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, by
E. E. Evans-Pritchard; On Creativity, by David Bohm;
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in
Contemporary England, by T.M. Luhrmann; Beamtimes
and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists, by
Sharon Traweek; and Landscapes of Jihad: Militancy,
Morality, Modernity, by Faisal Devji.
Required movies: Cabeza de Vaca, directed by
Juan Diego, 1993; Solaris, directed by Andrei
Tarkovski, 1971 (English subtitled version, 1989); Last
Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese,
1988; and Monty Python's The Life of Brian, directed
by Terry Jones, 1979.
Overheard in class: "For the ancient Greeks, Nature
was characterized by constant motion, which was taken to be
the energy of its soul. Organic life, vegetal and animal,
was taken to be its physical body. At the same time, it was
believed that Nature had a mind of its own that gave order
to this psychic and physical world. Thus to the Greeks
these disparate parts of Nature comprised a self-contained
totality, much like the human body ... . The modern view of
Nature is not concerned with what Nature's mind may be.
Rather Nature is characterized regularity, capturable by
laws. With the introduction of the biological theory of
evolution, the idea of life as a vital force that moved
Nature, that caused it to change, emerged."
Students say: "I decided to take this course because
I enjoyed Dr. Khan's class Anthropology of the
Senses last fall [2004]. Also, I am very interested in
spirituality, mysticism and the ways in which our human
perceptions of these topics affect our social structures
and our personal and collective thought processes. I enjoy
the class very much. Dr. Khan organized the course well, in
such a way that we have been learning to apply basic
concepts from the readings and movies to larger pictures of
the world. The readings, movies and assignments are all
very thought-provoking, and she encourages creativity.
Another wonderful feature of Dr. Khan's
teaching style is her desire and ability to connect her
anthropology classes to other fields of study. For example,
we often discuss philosophical issues, such as the
mind-body problem. Also, she invited a graduate student
from the Physics Department to speak to us during our
science portion of the course. She loves to learn as much
as she loves to teach, so she asks us to contribute our own
analyses of the readings to class discussions, and she
readily answers our questions while asking us to answer
some of her own. Her enthusiasm and incredible wisdom have
inspired me to eagerly pursue my academic interests and
enjoy the process of learning."
— Rachel Day, 20, a junior from Fishers, Ind., who
is majoring in anthropology with a minor in
psychology.
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2005
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