Week 6 Research

Identifying a Research Topic on Religion and the Land

Next week you there will be no readings and no class meeting. Students in this course will be exploring potential research topics for completing the Substack Podcast and the final 4 Posts for the course.

Suggested Approach

You may have come to this course with a specific question or research interest in mind from your interests in the history of religion and/or in environmental history. I encourage you to pursue this interest if possible.

You might choose to begin with a particular religion or spirituality and then explore primary sources for evidence that helps you understand how that spiritual community (Christians or pagans or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, or Hindus, or people form a specific culture, etc.) engaged spiritually through their relationship with land.

We have looked at some examples of Indigenous and pagan relations. We will be exploring mostly early modern Christian relations with land as the course continues.

Begin with a spirituality or an object or location and timeframe. We will use an example in Buddhism below. You could explore…the eucharist, the bread, and sixteenth-century Brazil and come up with an interesting bunch of sources for example.

A good approach would be to use library resources to identify secondary sources: articles and books on that spirituality and its relationship with nature, land, the elements, wilderness, the stars, the environment, climate, water, the natural world, sustainability, and earth. (This list offers possible search terms.)

From the secondary source, build a bibliography of primary sources using footnotes.

Seek those primary sources in digital form or as pdfs available online. If you cannot find them, use Worldcat to find the primary sources and then order those primary sources be delivered to you through Document Delivery.

I encourage you to go to the Cline Library Website and try searching there. Be sure to ask the Chat for help. You might also want to schedule an appointment with the Librarian. If you are doing research outside of my area of expertise, you will also need to schedule an appointment with another faculty member.

All of the guest faculty on the syllabus have agreed to help you if your interests overlap.

A Sample Search

A sample search using * to capture all possible word endings: Buddhis* and environment*

This search turns up 5,555 items through NAU’s Cline Library. It is probable that you will need to learn more in order to narrow your search.

One search item that appears is available as an ebook:

Abrahms-Kavunenko, Saskia. Enlightenment and the Gasping City : Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray. 1st ed. Ithaca, New York ; Cornell University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501737664.

Notice the title identifies a specific form of Buddhism and a historic period, labelled “a Time of Environmental Disarray.” These are ways to focus and narrow your search or to decide this book does not go to your interest.

Another search item that appears is also available as an ebook:

Capper, Daniel. Roaming Free like a Deer : Buddhism and the Natural World. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501759581.

This appears to be a much more general story that could help you ground yourself in the topic, find other secondary material, and identify primary sources or sections in Buddhist philosophical writings that will inform your research.

Seeking to narrow my search, I added the word history and pulled up the following article: Buddhis* and environment* history

Song, Hee‐Chan. “Sufficiency Economy Philosophy: Buddhism‐based Sustainability Framework in Thailand.” Business Strategy and the Environment 29, no. 8 (2020): 2995–3005. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2553.

The abstract for the essay sounds promising in that it takes on a specific case in Thailand.

“Drawing upon institutional theory, sustainability scholars have demonstrated that various institutional factors, such as environmental regulations, national business systems, and global sustainability standards, shape legitimate sustainability frameworks. However, most of the studies have focused on formal institutions that have law‐like regulations and procedures. Owing to the skewed attention, the role of informal institutions in shaping sustainability frameworks has remained largely unexplored. The present study suggests that an informal institution, particularly religion, can play a significant role in developing a locally driven sustainability framework. In particular, this study investigates Thai context where Buddhism has shaped people's mindset, moral principles and day‐to‐day economic activity. For the past few decades, Thailand has theorized its own unique sustainability framework—sufficiency economy philosophy—based on Buddhist worldview on interrelationships of economy, society, and environment. By shedding light on how religion is formalized as a sustainability framework, this research contributes to institutional approach to sustainability.”

Reading this article might ground me in the topic and give me further reading. Here, however, I might end up frustrated.

Will I be able to find primary sources in a language I can read?

Requirements

Remember, for this project, whatever topic you choose, you will need to the following:

1. 1. A spiritual relationship with land that interests you

2. 2. A specific historical time frame and/or case study that provides a topic narrow enough to study in depth (rather than a broad general timeframe)

   • Example: Early Modern Understandings of Shapeshifting

   • Example: Seventeenth Century Puritan Ideas of Wilderness vs. the English Garden and The Garden of Eden

   • Example: Protestantism and Paracelsian Artisans in 18^th C America

   • Example: Sodomy and the Occult in Representations of Indigenous Spiritualities

   • Example: A Maypole at Merrymount and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritans

   • Example: Ancient Climate Science, Astrology, and God’s Providence

   • Or other topics suggested by Course Readings

3. 3. 5 Secondary sources with at least 3 from academic journals or monographs. In addition, you may use Substacks, YouTubes, Wikipedia, Encyclopedias, Documentaries. But these would be additional resources.

4. 4. 2-3 Primary Sources in a language you can read. You will be prompted to offer scans and translations of 2-3 Primary Sources.

As you prepare to explore this research project and identify a topic, comment below with ideas and curiosities you have for the project. What do you already know? What are you curious about? What questions do you need to answer?

In addition, connect with classmates who have related interests. You will be creating a podcast. This will be a good way to find a group of 4 to work with.

What you will Produce with this Research:

1. A Substack Post on Your Research Proposal

2. A Substack Podcast in which you share your research with a Group of 4 Classmates

3. 4 Substack Posts with Pdfs of Primary Sources