Reflect on what you have learned and the skills you have gained this semester. Do this in the form of a letter to future students in the class. Use academic writing, and cite class readings, assignments, and activities as evidence for your points. You will need to answer each of the following five questions in your essay/letter:
1)What are the most important things that you have learned this semester and why?
2) What were the most insightful readings for you, and why?
3) What remains unclear at the end of the semester? What questions do you still have?
4) How has your own understanding of religion changed because of the class?
5) Finally, what advice would you give them (a future student) for achieving success in this course?
Readings from the course:
Russell McCutcheon “What is the Academic Study of Religion?”
Stephen Prothero, Religion Matters:
Introduction, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam
Shampa Mazumdar and Sanjoy Mazumdar “Creating the Sacred: Altars in the Hindu American Home”
Scott A. Mitchell, Buddhism in America: “US Chan/Pure Land Traditions of China and Taiwan”
“Visiting a Buddhist Temple” (Fo Guang Shan, Hsi Lai Temple)
Peter Gottschalk, “A Race Apart: Jews in the Eyes of the Ku Klux Klan, Henry Ford, and the Government”
John Corrigan and Lynn Neal, “Anti-Semitism”
Baptism Readings and Videos
Rose Aslan, “Salah: Daily Prayers in Muslim America”
