South East Asia Immersion Course

In January 2007, I will be joining a group of seminarians at the Pacific School of Religion on their Intersession trip to Southeast Asia. We will begin our trip on January 6th and return to the U.S. on January 21st. The itinerary of the trip will take us from San Francisco to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Kuala Lumpur, then to Saigon.

From the Course Description:
While Vietnam and Malaysia are both post-colonial Southeast Asian nations with a long history of colonial domination, they have very distinctive socio-cultural, political, and religious realities. This travel seminar seeks to introduce participants to the religious landscapes in these two distinctive contexts. Attention will also be given to the study of theology in Malaysia and Vietnam. There will also be short visits to theological institutions & sight-seeing opportunities in Hong Kong and Singapore. The seminar counts as a contextual learning course for PSR M.Div. students by providing experiences for cross-cultural and multi-relgious encounters and exchanges, as well as immersion in the cultures and everyday life of peoples and local communities in the regions which we will be visiting.

The trip will be an opportunity to visit the religious sites of these various locations to understand the cultural contexts of theology, religion, politics, economics, etc. in these places.

My particular interest in this trip includes the opportunity to research about places of religious significance being used/advertised as tourism sites. What are some of these sites? Where are they located? What similarities and differences can we note between these sites? Why are they of interest? Who visits them? What are the demographics of the groups that often frequent these sites? How do we define "religious sites"? Who advertises these sites? How do they manipulate the PR of these locations? What makes them so appealing? Who makes them so appealing? Why are they so appealing? What makes the difference between the interest of the locals and that of the tourists?