John S. Ott
Portland State University
HST 454/554: Holy Dead
Fall 2023
ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES : REFLECTIVE ESSAYYour first formal written assignment this term is designed to present you with the opportunity to reflect upon the role your religion, personal religious beliefs, and/or ideas about religion influence your assumptions about history and your practices of historical reading and interpretation. It is designed to complement and respond to our reading of Gavin Langmuir, Brad Gregory, and Tor Egil Forland, and cultivates (I believe) what is a useful practice for historians, regardless of the fields in which they work, namely, unmasking our assumptions about how the world works and why we believe what we believe, as a prelude to writing about the past.
Due in class Tuesday, October 10
200 Points (20%)
Your assignment for this essay, then, is to do the following. Write down, in around 4 typed, double-spaced pages, your thoughts on the questions below. I will assign a numerical grade based on the amount of detail and focused thought you put into this assignment, your referencing of the readings to date, and the quality of the writing (grammar, syntax, and so on). You must, in this paper, reference at least once the ideas presented by the scholars named above, and those references should include the title if the work and page number of the citation. This may be done parenthetically, e.g., (Gregory, "No Room for God?" 159).
I will not share the contents of these essays.
1. Do you hold beliefs that you consider spiritual and/or religious, or adhere to a specific religion or religious tradition? If so, what is it/are they, and how is your current worldview affected by your religious beliefs and practices? Are your beliefs relevant to your daily life?
2. Do you think that your personal beliefs affect your understanding of past (or different) religious beliefs, and/or the explanations given by believers in the past (or present) for their actions? If so, how? What are the implications of your beliefs for your approach to understanding and writing history?
3. How do you think historians can, or should, approach the study of historical religions, religious beliefs, and religious actors? Are you convinced by any of the approaches of Langmuir, Gregory, and/or Forland, and if so, why or why not? NOTE: These scholars' approaches may yield insights even if you disagree with them -- if so, what insights do you find helpful, and why?
Late paper guidelines:
Please refer to the syllabus for guidelines around paper extensions and late work.
Papers submitted after the deadline and without a prior extension of the deadline having been granted will be deducted 3 points per day (on a scale of 100, so 3%). This includes weekends. If you are submitting the paper late, and once the paper is complete, you may send it electronically to time stamp its completion. Please then bring a hard copy to the following class.
Additionally, late papers will be graded last, and may receive little or no comments from the instructor.