Welcome to our Smells and Bells Spring 2020 Blog

By -

Web Blog Sensory Interpretation Blog Prompt

or 6?


5 senses...

Sensory Interpretation Web Blog Posts (6 posts on each of the senses, 5% each, plus one summarizing blog post the last week of class 10%, for a total of 40%).  Short reflection writing assignments to be posted on a blog set up specifically for this class here. Students will "log" what they are learning about the relationship between the senses and "religious" experience throughout the term, and be able to comment on one another's questions and insights.  You should make at least 7 posts, @one every two weeks. Make sure you have one post each tagged with "taste", "smell", "hearing", "sight", "touch" or "6th sense."  To assure you will get credit for covering each of the six senses in your blog posts, edit them to make sure they have these tags.  
Also among your 7 or more posts you should respond specifically to each of the required books (even if it's as a starting point to make your own point), namely,
  1. Diane Ackerman, Natural History of the Senses, Vintage, 1990)
  2. Constance Classen, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (U. Illinois, 2012)
  3. Deborah Green, The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature (Penn State, 2011)
  4. Elizabeth Pérez Religion in the Kitchen : Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (2016) and Rachel Fulton, “ ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West.”
  5. Diana Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India
  6. Anne Rasmussen, Women, The Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia (U. California, 2010)
  7. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World (Vintage, 1997)
Likewise, tag the post that mention these authors with their last name, e.g., "Perez", "Eck", "Abram".
***In your posts, use images or sounds as well as words to convey your points! Finally, you must contribute at least ten comments to any of your fellow students' blog posts during the course of the term. These are both for your own benefit - to get you to begin to think analytically, to focus your thoughts on what you're learning, and for the class as a whole - to stimulate class discussions. (Preparation of the readings and class participation will be evaluated primarily on the basis of your contributions to our blog, and count for 40% [!] of the course grade.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more