RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
1
RE220 RELIGION AND POPULAR CULTURE
Course Description and Aims
The interaction of religion and popular culture is as old as these two categories themselves. But
while it is relatively easy to pinpoint blatant interactions—Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks”, CBC’s
Little Mosque on the Prairie, Deepa Mehta's Water, Bobble head figures of the Pope, Buddha
and Moses—others are more subtle. As the introduction to our main course text, Religion and
Popular Culture in America, points out, Christian sermons are shaped by the medium of
television when preaching workshops advise ministers to “accommodate the televisioninfluenced attention span of seven or eight minutes between commercials” (Forbes and Mahan
2005, 1). David Chidester has problematized comfortable definitions of religion by suggesting
that sports such as baseball, consumer products like Coca-Cola and music genres including rock
and roll can be viewed as religion because they “do authentic religious work by negotiating
what it means to be a human person in relation to transcendence, the sacred, or ultimate
human concerns” (Chidester 2005, viii). Further, a close look at George Lucas’s magnum opus
Star Wars (or Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings…) will illustrate how the story of the Skywalker
family closely resembles what Joseph Campbell has dubbed the “hero’s journey,” a common
archetypal myth found in religious texts and sacred stories around the world.
The relationships between religion and popular culture are numerous, diverse, sometimes
problematic and sometimes controversial. RE220 uses a range of disciplinary perspectives to
examine the ways religious themes, symbols, icons and language are used in expressions of
popular culture and also how religion itself is influenced by popular culture. Using the 4-part
typology found in Forbes and Mahan’s Religion and Popular Culture in America (2005), this
course will survey several kinds of interactions between religion and popular culture from
diverse cultural and religious examples and across many media platforms and forms of popular
culture. RE220 will challenge students to read popular culture “texts” through a critical lens that
takes into account issues such as orientalism, appropriation, and racial, gendered, and sexual
identities.
This course will ask:
1. What is the function of religion when it shows up in popular culture?
2. How has popular culture shaped religion?
3. How do people use popular culture like religion to make meaning in their lives?
4. What, indeed, is religion and what is popular culture?
5. Are there ethical implications when western popular and consumer culture adopts,
parodies or even ridicules religion?
6. How can an interrogation of this topic lead to a greater understanding of religion and
religious people, of secular society and of popular culture itself?
The scholarship in this field is overwhelmingly American-centric. Most books on the topic
include some sort of qualification in the title that tells the reader the primary focus of study is
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
2
American popular culture (Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture), American
religion (God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture) or America itself (Religion and
Popular Culture in America). Following this, “religion” often proves to be “Christianity,” and
“America,” more often than not, is white, heterosexual and male. Given that this course is
offered in Canada from a department of Religion and Culture that emphasizes diversity, an
underlying theme of this course will be to interrogate the biases of scholars in the field and to
expand the scope of religion and popular culture to include examples from Canada, from nonChristian traditions, from female points of view and from locales other than North America.
Course Learning Objectives
At the end of this course you should be able to:
1. Evaluate popular culture texts through a critical framework drawing on critical social
theory, Religious Studies and Cultural Studies
2. Apply the typology found in Forbes and Mahan's Religion and Popular Culture in America
to examples of religion interacting with popular culture
3. Summarize key theories and terms in the fields of the study of religion and the study of
popular culture
4. Identify general characteristics of world religions such as Christianity, Hinduism and
Islam
5. Discuss the representation of non-dominant religions in western popular culture in
relation to orientalism and appropriation
6. Describe and historicize the ways that defining national myths have developed in Canada
Course Texts and Online Learning Tools:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Forbes, Bruce David, and Jeffrey H. Mahan. Religion and Popular Culture in America.
Rev. ed. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005.
MacDonald, Sarah. Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure. New York: Broadway Books,
2002.
The Tales of Durga. Amar Chitra Katha Vol. 514. Bombay: India Book House Pvt. Ltd,
2000.
Course reader available through Laurier bookstore:
a. Clapp, Rodney. “Holiness and Hedonism” in Johnny Cash and the Great
American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation.
Westminster John Knox Press. 2008.
b. McLain, Karline. “Sequencing the Tales of the Goddess Durga” in India's
Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings and Other Heroes. Indiana University
Press: Bloomington, 2009. Pp. 87-113.
c. Root, Deborah. “’White Indians’: Appropriation and the Politics of Display” in
Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, edited by Bruce Ziff and
Pratima V. Rao. Rutgers University Press: New Jersey. 1997. Pp. 225-233.
DVD: Redford, Robert dir. The Legend of Bagger Vance, 2000. Twentieth Century Fox
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
3
Film Corporation. (to be picked up at the Centre for Online Learning)
Note: Students will be expected to regularly check MyLearningSpace for course content. Here I
will post links to outside websites (that may include, for instance, videos, music, art, blogs),
electronic readings, and discussion questions.
Assignments
Participation in Discussion Board: 10%
In order to encourage you to participate weekly in the course and to assist in building online
community, this course will have a discussion component managed through MyLearningSpace’s
Discussion board. There will be six lessons with discussion questions based on the lesson's
readings and lecture and each discussion is worth 2 marks (this means that you can have one
"free" class where you do not contribute to the discussion or have your lowest mark dropped).
Discussion groups will be comprised of up to 10 students. You are asked to respond to these
questions and to each other. Your grade will be based on your participation frequency and the
content of your posts.
Reading quizzes: 4x 5% = 20%
There will be four quizzes spaced throughout the term. These will be found on
MyLearningSpace and will test you on one assigned reading for that lesson. Each quiz will
feature 10 multiple choice questions and are designed to ensure that you do not fall behind on
readings. The time allowed for each quiz will be 10 minutes, which means that you will need to
be familiar with the course material before attempting the quiz. Each quiz will be available (to
be accessed only once) during a three day period from 9:00 p.m. Thursday to 12:00 midnight
Sunday. Check your assignment schedule below for the exact date of each quiz.
Pop culture analyses 2 x 20% = 40%
You will complete two assignments throughout the term. Each assignment should be doublespaced and about 1000-1400 words (4-5 pages) long, submitted electronically using the
MyLearningSpace dropbox. See MyLS for detailed instructions.
1. Pop Culture Analysis #1: Little Mosque on the Prairie (Due Lesson 4)
2. Pop Culture Analysis #2: A topic of your own choosing (Due Lesson 12)
Take-home final exam: 30%
Think of this as a research paper, only you have already done the research. I will give you a
popular culture “text” to examine and ask you to apply course theories and concepts to it. You
will have one week to complete this assignment. More details will be provided closer to the due
date.
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
4
Assignment Due Dates at a glance:
Lesson 1: online discussion
Lesson 2: online quiz on Chidester’s “The Church of Baseball” in Forbes and Mahan
Lesson 3: online discussion
Lesson 4: Pop Culture Analysis #1 on Little Mosque on the Prairie
Lesson 5: online quiz on the film The Legend of Bagger Vance
Lesson 6: online discussion
Lesson 7: online discussion
Lesson 8: online quiz on all assigned Holy Cow chapters up to and including Lesson 8
Lesson 9: online discussion
Lesson 10: online quiz on Rodney Clapp’s “Holiness and Hedonism” in course reader
Lesson 11: online discussion
Lesson 12: Pop Culture Analysis #2
Take Home Exam: Due date TBA
LECTURE AND READING SCHEDULE
Module 1: Thinkers, Theories and Trajectories
LESSON 1: THE FIELD OF RELIGION & POPULAR CULTURE
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
Forbes, Bruce David. “Introduction” in Religion and Popular Culture in America.
LESSON 2: THE VARIOUS RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS & THE POPULAR
Assignment: Reading Quiz #1
Reading:
Michael J. Gilmour. “Arcade Fire’s Parodic Bible.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
Volume 21: Special Edition – Religion and Popular Culture in Canada (2009). (all Journal
of Religion and Popular Culture articles are available for free online through Laurier
Library)
Chidester, David. “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of
Rock ‘n’ Roll” in Religion and Popular Culture in America.
Listen: Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible
Module 2: Working Through Forbes and Mahan’s Typology
LESSON 3: THE MONOMYTH (RELIGION IN POPULAR CULTURE)
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
Iwamura, Jane Naomi. “The Oriental Monk in American Popular Cinema” in Religion and
Popular Culture in America.
Read the Wikipedia entry for Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell#Monomyth)
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
5
http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html (this is an overview of Edward Said's
concept of Orientalism)
Surf the web: Search for film clips on YouTube.com of Star Wars. You can view these clips as you
read or listen to the lesson.
LESSON 4: THE USE OF POP CULTURE BY RELIGIONS (POPULAR CULTURE IN RELIGION)
Assignment: Pop Culture Analysis #1: Little Mosque on the Prairie
Reading:
Romanowski, William D. “Evangelicals and Popular Music: The Contemporary Christian
Music Industry” in Religion and Popular Culture in America.
Zine, Jasmin; Taylor, Lisa K.; Davis, Hilary E. “An Interview with Zarqa Nawaz.”
Intercultural Education 18, no. 4 (Oct 2007): 379-382. (online)
Watch:
Little Mosque on the Prairie. (Season 4 Episode 16, “Keeping the Faith”), available to
stream at http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/episodes.php?sid=4&eid=416
The first 10 minutes of Zarqa Nawaz’s 2005 documentary Me and the Mosque (available
to stream or download at (http://www.nfb.ca/film/me_and_mosque)
LESSON 5: THE AUTHENTIC SWING (POPULAR CULTURE AS RELIGION)
Assignment: Reading Quiz #2 (on the film)
Reading:
Price, Joseph L. “An American Apotheosis: Sports as Popular Religion” in Religion and
Popular Culture in America
“Holy hockey sticks!” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article718919.ece
Watch: The Legend of Bagger Vance
LESSON 6: POP MUSIC’S MORAL IMPERATIVE (RELIGION & POPULAR CULTURE IN DIALOGUE)
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
Pinn, Anthony. “Rap Music and its Message: On Interpreting the Contact between
Religion and Popular Culture” in Religion and Popular Culture in America.
Petridis, Alexis. "Pride and Prejudice." The Guardian, Friday 10 December 2004.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/dec/10/gayrights.popandrock
“Murder Inna Dancehall” (website) http://www.soulrebels.org/dancehall.htm
Module 3: Critical Issues: Nationalism, orientalism, appropriation, decolonization,
identity politics (representing race, gender, sexuality), globalization, transnationalism
and diaspora.
LESSON 7: INDIA’S IMMORTAL COMIC BOOKS
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
6
McLain, Karline. “Sequencing the Tales of the Goddess Durga” in India's Immortal Comic
Books: Gods, Kings and Other Heroes. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2009. 87113. (in course pack)
The Tales of Durga. Amar Chitra Katha Vol. 514. Bombay: India Book House Pvt. Ltd,
2000.
McDonald, Sarah. Holy Cow, 1-67 and 132-147.
LESSON 8: WEST MEETS EAST
Assignment: Reading Quiz #3
Reading:
“The Hare Krsna Mantra: ‘There's Nothing Higher’: A 1982 Interview with George
Harrison.” http://members.fortunecity.com/pattiboyd/linx/divine/welcome.html
McDonald, Sarah. Holy Cow, 82-97 and 194-242.
LESSON 9: THE DISNEYFICATION OF RELIGION
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
“Jesus, CEO: America's most successful churches are modelling themselves on
businesses.” The Economist, Dec 20, 2005. http://www.economist.com/node/5323597
Hoover, Stewart M. “The Cross at Willow Creek: Seeker Religion and the Contemporary
Marketplace” in Religion and Popular Culture in America.
McDonald, Sarah. Holy Cow, 276-292.
LESSON 10: HOLINESS AND HEDONISM
Assignment: Reading Quiz #4
Reading:
Hay, Fred J. “The Sacred/Profane Dialectic in Delta Blues: The Life and Lyrics of Sonny
Boy Williamson.” Phylon Vol. 48, No. 4 (1987): 317-326. (online)
Clapp, Rodney. “Holiness and Hedonism” in Johnny Cash and the Great American
Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation. Westminster John
Knox Press. 2008, 43-62. (course pack)
LESSON 11: CANADIAN MYTHOLOGIES
Assignment: Online Discussion
Reading:
Francis, Daniel. “The Story of Canada” (p9-14) and “The Ideology of the Canoe: The
Myth of Wilderness” (p128-151) in National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian
History (1997) (available electronically through Laurier Library)
RE220: Online Syllabus
Brent Hagerman
7
LESSON 12: WRAP UP
Assignment: Pop Culture Analysis #2
Reading:
Root, Deborah. “’White Indians’: Appropriation and the Politics of Display” in
Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, edited by Bruce Ziff and Pratima V.
Rao. Rutgers University Press: New Jersey. 1997, 225-233. (course pack)
Mahan, Jeffrey H. "Conclusion: Establishing a Dialogue about Religion and Popular
Culture" in Religion and Popular Culture in America
UNIVERSITY POLICES:
Academic Integrity/Misconduct (cheating): Laurier is committed to a culture of integrity within
and beyond the classroom. This culture values trustworthiness (i.e., honesty, integrity
reliability), fairness, caring, respect, responsibility and citizenship. Together, we have a shared
responsibility to uphold this culture in our academic and nonacademic behaviour. The University
has a defined policy with respect to academic misconduct. You are responsible for familiarizing
yourself with this policy and the penalty guidelines, and are cautioned that in addition to failure
in a course, a student may be suspended or expelled from the University for academic
misconduct and the offence may appear on their transcript. The relevant policy can be found at
Laurier's academic integrity website (www.wlu.ca/academicintegrity) along with resources to
educate and support you in upholding a culture of integrity. Ignorance of Laurier’s academic
misconduct policy is not a defense.
Accessible Learning: Students with disabilities or special needs are advised to contact Laurier’s
Accessible Learning Centre <see: http://www.mylaurier.ca/accessible.htm > for information
regarding its services and resources. Students are encouraged to review the Calendar <see:
http://www.wlu.ca/page.php?grp_id=1365&p=5123> for information regarding all services
available on campus.
Plagiarism: Wilfrid Laurier University uses software that can check for plagiarism. Students may
be asked to submit their written work in electronic form and have it checked for plagiarism.