Miracles, Visions, and Dreams

The Anthropology of the (Extra)Ordinary

Anthropology 98z
Junior Tutorial in Social Anthropology
Fall 2008
3-5pm WJH 422
Instructor: Anthony Shenoda
email: shenoda@fas.harvard.edu

Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-4pm

Course website: can be accessed via my.harvard

Course Description
This course is concerned with the category of the extraordinary and how anthropologists define,
study, and write about it. We put the concept of the extraordinary into question by exploring
extraordinary phenomena. While there are many such phenomena we will be mostly concerned in
this course with religious encounters, namely miracles, dreams, and visions, as they pertain to
Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam. The goal this semester is to think critically about the
anthropology of people who encounter the extraordinary and how such encounters have been
studied, theorized, and written about. We begin by thinking generally about this process, then move
on to consider the skepticism and anthropological atheism that many anthropologists have come
to adopt in their studies of extraordinary matters. We will then ask how particular conceptions of
rationality have shaped the anthropology of what might be called extraordinary. After this we will
critically engage with a variety of literature on miracles, dreams, and visions. While Christian
religious imaginaries make up the majority of the readings in the course, we will also look to some
works on Muslims to counter-balance the Christian emphasis of the course. Finally, we come full
circle by ending with works by anthropologists who have been changed by doing fieldwork on
extraordinary matters.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to write a total of ten two page, single-spaced (maximum) responses to the
readings each week. It is up to each student to choose which ten weeks for which they will write
responses. These responses should not simply summarize the readings, but critically engage the
materials. Such engagement can range from asking questions that the readings raise for you,
suggesting points of contention or confusion, highlighting themes common across the readings,
considering the theoretical propositions made, linking readings from one week to another, etc.
Students are expected to discuss at least three of the assigned readings for each week.
Weekly responses are due to the instructor via email by midnight the day of class.
Each student is also required to write a final paper of 20 to 25 pages that deals with a theme relevant
to the course. The topic of choice is up to you, but should be done in consultation with the
instructor. The mid-term will consist of a prospectus outlining the final paper project alongside an
annotated bibliography relevant to the final paper. Separate handouts detailing the mid-term and
final paper requirements will be made available during our first class meeting (24 Sep).

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Grading
Weekly Responses (10 @ 2pts. each)
Midterm
Final Paper
Attendance & Participation

Shenoda

20%
30%
40%
10%

Readings
Except for the four required books (available at the COOP under ANTH 98z Section SHE),
electronic copies of the readings will be made available on the course website. The required books
can also be found on reserve in Lamont library. Recommended readings are not required reading.
They are included for those interested in exploring in more detail any of the particular topics raised
throughout the course. Students are responsible for locating the recommended readings on their
own, although the instructor can help with some of them.
Required Books
Markides, Kyriacos
2001 The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality. New York: Image.
Rothenberg, Celia
2004 Spirits of Palestine: Gender, Society, and Stories of Jinn. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.
Stewart, Charles
1991 Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
*Note: Demons and the Devil is out of print and therefore not available at the COOP. There
are, however, several copies available in Harvard libraries, and at least one copy is on reserve
at Lamont. You can also find copies at various online booksellers. Those who choose to
use a library copy of the book are asked to be courteous to their colleagues and share.
Tambiah, Stanley J.
1990 Magic, Science, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
*Note: This book will not be available at the COOP until the end of September.

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Week 1 (17 Sep): Introductions

Week 2 (24 Sep): The (Extra)ordinary
1 Young, David E. and Jean-Guy Goulet
1994 Introduction. In Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters: The Anthropology
of Extraordinary Experience. David E. Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. Pp.7-13.
Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
2Fabian, Johannes
2007 Preface. In Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. Jean-Guy
Goulet and Bruce Miller, eds. Pp.ix-xii. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
3Goulet, Jean-Guy and Bruce Miller
2007 Embodying Knowledge: Steps toward a Radical Anthropology of Cross-cultural
Encounters. In Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. JeanGuy Goulet and Bruce Miller, eds. Pp.1-13. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska
Press.
4Geertz, Clifford
2000 The Pinch of Destiny: Religion as Experience, Meaning, Identity, Power. In
Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Matters. Pp.167-186.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
5Mitchell, Jon
1997 A Moment with Christ: The Importance of Feelings in the Analysis of Belief. The
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3(1):79-94
6Straight, Belinda
2006 Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Authors Note and Chapters 1 &2; pp.ix-xiii, 1-36
*Recommended
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Steven Randall, trans. Berkeley:
University of California Press. Part I; pp.1-29.
Fabian, Johannes. 2001. Ethnographic Objectivity: From Rigor to Vigor. In Anthropology with an
Attitude: Critical Essays. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. 1996. Suffering and Its Professional Transformation. In
Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Michael Jackson,
ed. Pp.169-95. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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William, James. 1994 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
New York: Modern Library.
Week 3 (1 Oct): Faith & Skepticism
1Markides, Kyriacos
2001 The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality. New York: Image.
Chapters 1-4; pp.1-40
2Ewing, Katherine
1994 Dreams from a Saint: Anthropological Atheism and the Temptation to Believe.
American Anthropologist 96(3):571-583.
3Blanes, Ruy
2006 The Atheist Anthropologist: Believers and Non-believers in Anthropological
Fieldwork. Social Anthropology 14(2):223-234.
4McIntosh, Janet
2004 Maxwells Demons: Disenchantment in the Field. Anthropology and Humanism
29(1):63-77.
5Taussig, Michael
2006 Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic. In Walter Benjamins
Grave. Pp. 121-155. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
*Recommended:
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. Believing and Making People Believe. In The Practice of Everyday Life.
Steven Randall, trans. Pp.177-189. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Delaney, Carol 1998. Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. Introduction and Chapter 2; pp.5-14, 35-68
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1976 [1937]. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1964 [1959]. Religion and the Anthropologists. In Social Anthropology and
Other Essays. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 1980 [1977]. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Catherine Cukker,
trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Part 1: pp.3-28.
Harding, Susan. 2000. The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 10

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Week 4 (8 Oct): Rationality & the (Extra)ordinary

1 Douglas, Mary
2002 [1966]

Magic and Miracle. In Purity and Danger. Pp.72-90. London: Routledge

Classics.

2Tambiah, Stanley J.
1990 Magic, Science, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Chapters 1, 2, 6, & 7; pp.1-36, 111-154. Skim: Chapters 3-5
*Recommended:
Berman, Morris. 1981. The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Translating Life-Worlds into Labor and History. In Provincializing
Europe: Postcolonial thought and Historical Difference. Pp.72-96. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Daston, Lorraine. 1991. Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe.
Critical Inquiry 18(1):93-124.
Daston, Lorraine and Katherine Park. 1998. Wonders and the Order of Nature. New York: Zone
Books.
Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.
Hacking, Ian. 2006. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about
Probability, Induction, and Statistical Inference. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lambek, Michael. 2008. Provincializing God? Provocations from an Anthropology of Religion. In
Religion: Beyond a Concept. Pp.120-138. Hent de Vries, ed. New York: Fordham
University Press.
Lett, James. 1997. Science Reason, and Anthropology: The Principles of Rational Inquiry. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC.
Poovey, Mary. 1998. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of
Wealth and Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Schneider, Mark. 1993. Culture and Enchantment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Stigler, Stephen M. 1986. The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Weber, Max. 1946 [1919]. Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology.
Pp.129-56. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. & eds. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Week 5 (15 Oct): Miracles, Apparitions, & Catholicism
1Pannenberg, Wolfhart
2002 The Concept of Miracle. Zygon 37(3):759-762.
2Mullin, Bruce R.
1996 Miracles and the Modern Religious Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Introduction & Chapter 1; pp.1-30
3Turner, Victor and Edith Turner
1978 Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Chapter 6; pp.203-230
4Orsi, Robert A.
1996 Thank You, St. Jude: Womens Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Preface & Chapter 7; pp.ix-xviii, 185-211
5Vsquez, Manuel A. and Marie F. Marquardt
2000 Globalizing the Rainbow Madonna: Old Time Religion in the Present Age. Theory,
Culture, & Society 17(4):119-143.
6 Bax, Mart
1995 Medjugorje: Religion, Politics, and Violence in Rural Bosnia. Amsterdam: VU
Uitgeverij.
Prologue & Chapters 1-3; pp.xv-xix, 1-42
Film Screening: Miracles & Visions: Fact or Fiction?
*Recommended:
Aquinas, Thomas. 1265-1274. Summa Theologica
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/aquinas/summa/sum436.htm
Goodich, Michael. 2007. Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle,
1150-1350. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Davis, Phillip W. and Jacqueline Boles. 2003. Pilgrim Apparition Work: Symbolization and Crowd
Interaction When the Virgin Mary Appeared in Georgia. Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography 32(4):371-402.
Dempsey, Corinne. 1999. Lessons in Miracles from Kerala, South India: Stories of Three Christian
Saints. History of Religions 39(2): 150-176.

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Hume, David. 1907 [1777]. Of Miracles. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and
Selections from a Treatise of Human Nature. Pp.114-138. Chicago: The Open Court
Publishing Company.
Santner, Eric L. 2005. Miracles Happen: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Freud, and the Matter of the
Neighbor. In The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press.
Spinoza, Benedict de. 2007 [1670]. On Miracles. In Theological-Political Treatise. Jonathan Israel,
ed. Michael Silverthorne & Jonathan Israel, trans. Pp.81-96. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ward, Benedicta. 1987. Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory Record, and Event 1000-1215.
Revised ed. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Williams, T.C. 1990. The Idea of the Miraculous: The Challenge to Science and Religion. London:
Macmillan.
Zimdars-Swartz, Sandra. 1991. Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Week 6 (22 Oct): Studying Apparitions & Visions
1Christian, William
1984 Religious Apparitions and the Cold War in Southern Europe. In Religion, Power and
Protest in Local Communities. Eric Wolf and Herbert Lehmann, eds. Pp.239-266.
Berlin: Mouton Publishers.
2Christian, William
1987 Tapping and Defining New Power: The First Months of Visions at Ezquioga, July
1931. American Ethnologist 14(1):140-166.
3Christian, William
1996 Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Prologue, Introduction, & Chapters 7, 15 & 16 ; pp.xx-xxii, 1-9, 13-40, 163-213,
373-402
4Bitel, Lisa
Forthcoming Looking the Wrong Way: Authenticity and Proof of Religious Visions.
Visual Resources.
5Matter, E. Ann
2001 Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Late Twentieth Century. Religion 31:125-153.

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*Recommended:
Apolito, Paolo. 2005. The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Christian, William. 1981. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
-----------. 1998. Six Hundred Years of Visionaries in Spain: Those Believed and Those Ignored. In
Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics. Michael Hanagan et al.,
eds. Pp.107-119. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Romn, Reinaldo L. 2007. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto
Rico, 1898-1956. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Wojcik, Daniel. 1996. Polaroids from Heaven: Photography, Folk Religion, and the Miraculous
Image Tradition at a Marian Apparition Site. The Journal of American Folklore
109(432):129-148.
Week 7 (29 Oct): Demons & the Devil: An Orthodox Christian Perspective
1Markides, Kyriacos
2001 The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality. New York: Image.
Chapters 7-9, pp.78-130
2Stewart, Charles
1991 Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Preface, Introduction, and Part 1; pp.xv-xix, 3-134
Week 8 (5 Nov): Demons, the Devil, and Evil
1Stewart, Charles
1991 Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Part 2 & 3; pp.137-249
2Bax, Mart
1995 Medjugorje: Religion, Politics, and Violence in Rural Bosnia. Amsterdam: VU
Uitgeverij.
Chapter 5; pp.53-65

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*Recommended:
Dubisch, Jill. 1995. In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kapferer, Bruce. 1991. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri
Lanka. 2nd edition. Oxford: Berg.
Naumescu, Vlad. 2007. Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social
Change in Western Ukraine. Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia Bd. 15, Berlin:
Lit Verlag.
Pina-Cabral, Joo. 1986. Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: The Peasant Wolrdview of the Alto
Minho. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Week 9 (12 Nov): Dreams & Dreaming
*Mid-term due in class
1Pick, Daniel and Lyndal Roper
2004 Introduction. In Dreams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient
Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis. Daniel Pick and Lyndal Roper, eds. Pp.1-21.
London: Routledge.
2Stewart, Charles
2004 Introduction: Dreaming as an Object of Anthropological Analysis. Dreaming
14(2-3):75-82.
3Ewing, Katherine
1990 The Dream of Spiritual Initiation and the Organization of Self Presentation among
Pakistani Sufis. American Ethnologist 17:56-74.
4Crapanzano, Vincent
1975 Saints, Jnun, and Dreams: An Essay in Moroccan Ethnopsychology. Psychiatry
38:145-159.
5Siegel, James
1978 Curing Rites, Dreams and Domestic Politics in a Sumatran Society. Glyph 3:18-31.
6Hacking, Ian
2001 Dreams in Place. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59(3):245-260.
*Recommended:
Aristotle. 1990. Aristotle on Sleep and Dreams. David Gallop, ed. & trans. Peterborough,
Ontario: Broadview Press.

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Crapanzano, Vincent. 1973. The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley:

University of California Press.
-----------. 2001. The Betwixt and Between of the Dream. In Hundert Jahre Die Traumdeutung:
Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven in der Traumforschung. Burkhard Schnepel, ed.
Pp.232-259. Kln: Rdiger Kppe Verlag.
Epstein, A.L. 1998. Strange Encounters: Dreams and Nightmares of High School Students in
Papua New Guinea. Oceania 68:200-212.
Freud, Sigmund. 1999 [1899]. The Interpretation of Dreams. Joyce Crick, trans. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kilborne, Benjamin. 1981. Moroccan Dream Interpretation and Culturally Constituted Defense
Mechanisms. Ethos 9(4):294-312.
Maranho, Tullio. 2001. The Dream Outside the Dreamer. Freud Turned on his Head in the
Amazon Forest. In Hundert Jahre Die Traumdeutung: Kulturwissenschaftliche
Perspektiven in der Traumforschung. Burkhard Schnepel, ed. Pp.49-65. Kln: Rdiger
Kppe Verlag.
Tedlock, Barbara. 1987. Dreaming and Dream Research. In Dreaming: Anthropological and
Psychological Interpretations. Barbara Tedlock, ed. Pp.1-30. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Tylor, E.B. 1874. Animism. In Primitive Culture. Pp.417-502. New York: Henry Holt and
Company. [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.FIG:001670599]
Week 10 (19 Nov): Dreams, Visions, & Miracles in Egypt
1Green, Nile
2003 The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam. Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society 13(3):287-313.
2Hoffman, Valerie
1997 The Role of Visions in Contemporary Egyptian Religious Life. Religion 27:45-64.
3Gilsenan, Michael
2006 The Operations of Grace. In Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern
Middle East. Rev. ed. Pp.75-94. London: I.B. Tauris.
4Gilsenan, Michael
2000 Signs of Truth: Enchantment, Modernity and the Dreams of Peasant Women. The
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6(4):597-615.

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5Mittermaier, Amira
2007 The Book of Visions: Dreams, Poetry, and Prophecy in Contemporary Egypt.
International Journal of Middle East Studies 39:229-247.
6Nelson, Cynthia
1973 The Virgin of Zeitoun. Worldview 16(9):5-11.
7Nelson, Cynthia
1974 Religious Experience, Sacred Symbols, and Social Reality. Humaniora Islamica
2:253-266.
8Finnestad, Ragnhild B.
1994 Apparitions, Icons, and Photos: A Study of Modern Coptic Visions of the Holy
World. Temenos 30:7-34.
*Recommended:
al-Ghazzali, Abu Hamid. 1997. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Michael Marmura, trans.
Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.
Hoffman, Valerie. 1995. Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt. Columbia, SC: University
of South Carolina Press.
Meinardus, Otto. 2002. Dreams, Visions, and Apparitions. In Coptic Saints and Pilgrimages.
Pp.93-99. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Reynolds, Dwight. 2005. Symbolic Narratives of Self: Dreams in Medieval Arabic Autobiographies.
In On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature. Philip Kennedy, ed. Pp.261-286.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Viole, Brigitte. 2004. Les coptes d'gypte sous Nasser: Saintet, miracles, apparitions. Paris: CNRS
ditions.
Week 11 (26 Nov)
NO CLASS
Week 12 (3 Dec): Spirit Possession
1Boddy, Janice
1994 Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality. Annual Review of
Anthropology 23:407-434.
2Rothenberg, Celia
2004 Spirits of Palestine: Gender, Society, and Stories of Jinn. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books.

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*Recommended:
Taves, Ann. 1999. Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience
from Wesley to James. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-----------. Forthcoming. Channeled Apparitions: On Visions that Morph and Categories that Slip.
Visual Resources
Week 13 (10 Dec): Anthropologists Encounters with the (Extra)ordinary Revisited
1Rethmann, Petra
2007 On Presence In Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. JeanGuy Goulet and Bruce Miller, eds. Pp.36-52. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska
Press.
2Lanoue, Guy
2007 Experiences of Power among the Sekani of Northern British Columbia: Sharing
Meaning through Time and Space. In Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations
in the Field. Jean-Guy Goulet and Bruce Miller, eds. Pp.237-253. Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press.
3Goulet, Jean-Guy
1994 Dreams and Visions in Other Lifeworlds. In Being Changed by Cross-Cultural
Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. David E. Young and
Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. Pp.16-38. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
4Swartz, Lise
1994 Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters. In Being Changed by Cross-Cultural
Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience. David E. Young and
Jean-Guy Goulet, eds. Pp.209-236. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Final Paper Due: 12 January 2009 by 6pm

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