Rites of Passage in Japan and the United States
Course Information
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Rites of Passage in Japan and the United States Course Information |
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Professor MaryJane Danan |
Professor David Douglass |
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Professor Mieko Miyaji |
Professor Wayne Gregory |
Required Materials:
Course Objectives:
Students in this course will: (1.) Gain an understanding of symbol, ritual, and myth drawn from interdisciplinary readings and lectures; (2.) consider the manifestation of these constructs in a cross-cultural investigation of birth, marriage, and death customs; (3) apply insights gained regarding these situated constructs to their own lives and experiences.
Description of the Course: This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of how we make sense of our lives through symbol, ritual, and myth. We will consider how these tools provide order and reason in our daily experiences, and, in particular, how they frame what for most people are the most profound and mysterious events of life: birth, marriage, and death. Because symbol, ritual, and myth serve an important conceptual function&endash;that is, they literally constitute many events for us&endash;it can be difficult to discern them in our own lives and culture. Consequently, this course considers their function in two cultural contexts, Japan and the United States. Contrasts between systems of meaning in these two countries may help us recognize dimensions otherwise obscure.
This course is not only cross-cultural in terms of content, but also in terms of form. The professors who created and will teach the course are from varied national and ethnic backgrounds, and they represent three institutions of higher learning. The students taking the course come both from Willamette University and from Tokyo University of America, and are also of varied cultural, national, and linguistic backgrounds. We hope to draw on this diversity as a source of curiosity and insight, and as a foundation for teaching and learning. Many of the projects that we will conduct over the course of the semester will require cross-cultural interaction, and most of our curriculum involves comparative analysis of cultures in one fashion or another. This approach requires patience and goodwill, but it more than compensates with the new perspective and rich understandings that result.
Our daily routines will include lectures, individual and collaborative project presentations, class and group discussions, and occasional guest speakers. The amount of reading for the course is relatively light, but the concepts can be challenging. We will spend the first four weeks of the term familiarizing ourselves with core concepts of symbol, ritual, and myth before turning to a consideration of their manifestation in the cultural institutions of birth, marriage, and death, respectively.
Evaluation: Your grade in the course will result from participation, a series of quizzes, examinations, and take-home projects. Participation includes your active engagement of professors and classmates in discussion of readings, exercises, and guest speakers. Quizzes take place on most Mondays of the semester, and cover only the readings assigned for that day. You may use your notes to take quizzes, but no photocopied material. Examinations test your comprehension of material, and will be given at the end of the theory section and each major unit. No notes or outside materials may be used in completing the examinations. A weight for each of these evaluative mechanisms follows.
Weights:
Due Dates and Attendance:
We expect you to attend class and to turn in assignments on time. Unexcused absences are warrant for lowering your final grade. Projects will be docked one letter grade for each day--not each class period--that they are late.