Assignments

 

1.     Lead, facilitate and participate in discussions and collaborative interdisciplinary group work, to critically think and reflect on their own individual quest for meaning and fulfillment in life and how spirituality/religion/ and their own métier practice, especially music, dance and the arts fit/not fit into that quest. Students will communicate ideas clearly, and make presentations using image and/or text.  Students will also reflect on how studying a religious tradition that may be other than "their own" fit into that quest? ( 30% of grade)

 

 

2.     Synthesize and contextualize key perspectives and methodologies of “al-insan-al-kamil” or  the “Perfect/universal being” and how this concept helps in achieving perfect “androgyny” as developed  and analyzed in key writings of Ibn Arabi, Al Ghazali,  Rabia, Attar, Hallaj, and Rumi.  

        Sight examples from their poetry/essays in support of your explanations and arguments.

 

 

FINAL PAPER

 Write toward mastering an inquiring approach through critical thinking and evidence base reasoning to clearly communicate how Attar’s, "Conference of the Birds" helps us understand what it means to be part of a “single shared humanity” even though our paths may be different. Do you think that his wisdom, on difference and diversity especially as expressed and developed   in “the seven Valleys” has much to offer us in our modern world which is torn down by barriers and walls of religious fundamentalism(s)? Use at least a group of 5 to six poems to provide evidence to support your analysis.

OR

In Sufi literature Divine Reality is spoken in terms of the beloved, feminine beauty, the unmenifest and Divine essence itself, " al -Dhat." Discuss this with reference to the metaphors of  the beloved,  women,  wine and the veil, does gender matter in  Sufi poetry

This Paper should be 10 full pages, Double spaced.
Include at least 6 sources of reference, at least two of which should be books  used in class and 2(two) from  a published Journal article .

The paper must have a clearly stated thesis statement in the first paragraph.. For help on constructing a Thesis Statement click here.