This thesis offers an exploration of how one brings a Tibetan sacred text to being - and to voice - in the unfamiliar, and perhaps unlikely, landscape of Northern California. Through 16 months' fieldwork with a Nyingma Buddhist community based in Berkeley, California I ask how the production of the sacred is undertaken here by American volunteers who are largely neophytes to Tibetan Buddhism. Against a backdrop of the history of Tibetan textual production - largely populated by masters, monastics, and artisans - I explore what kind of work (both physical and imaginative) American volunteers must undertake in order to render themselves effective creators of the sacred in this American industrial setting. Drawing on current research that explores the adaptive capacities of Tibetan Buddhist traditional practices, I will offer a new facet to this flexibility through an investigation of the ways these texts and their surrounding practices are creatively deployed to meet the needs of their American makers. In this work I follow the sacred objects through their entangled physical and social creation in the various branches of this California community, from the construction of spaces ripe for sacred work, through fundraising, printing, and finally to the distribution of texts to the Tibetan monastic community in Bodh Gaya, India. In the conclusion I return to the question of how an American volunteer becomes an effective creator of a Tibetan Buddhist sacred text in Berkeley California, contributing a unique and rich case to the study of diasporic Tibetan text production. Ultimately, I will demonstrate that the very practice of creating and deploying Tibetan sacred texts offers a frame through which volunteers come to re-interpret and re-shape their spatial and temporal landscape. This dissertation seeks to bridge often disparate fields of study, allowing encounters between (and contributions to) such bodies of work as: the anthropological study of making, craft, and innovation; media and religious practice; the affective temporality of sacred relics; and the cross-culturally unique, agentive qualities of books.

Background – Enhanced social research interviews seek to engage interviewees in extended conversation-like dialogues where they are empowered to produce output by discussing themes of relevance to them. Photos, videos, vignettes and other enhancing tools have been used before in social sciences research interviews to contextualise the interview interaction. Initial Assumption – Sacred texts (such as excerpts from the Bible and the Quran) enjoy some features that make them potential tools to enhance research interviews. This study set out to answer the Research Question: ‘What are the benefits and challenges of using sacred texts as tools to enhance social research interviews?’ Methodology – Selected Biblical and Quranic verses were used in three sets each, to start social discussions with fifteen Christian and thirteen Muslim participants, respectively, in semi-structured interviews. Findings – The findings of this empirical study show that using sacred texts was perceived favourably by the participants, enhanced the dynamics of the interviews and provided a platform to produce data that are rich, varied and nuanced. Conclusion – This research points out the usefulness of sacred texts – as enhancing tools – when used in social research interviews to produce natural conversations that, in turn, lead to rich, nuanced data. This suggests that sacred texts can be added to the qualitative research interview-enhancing toolbox especially with exploratory studies that are open for emerging themes during interview settings. Research areas where sacred texts can be used in interviews include: ethics, social relations, gender roles, psychology, moral choices, cultural studies and spirituality, among other social sciences disciplines. Researchers as well as participants will be expected to have a degree of familiarity with the sacred book or texts to make both interviewers and interviewees interested enough in discussing it in an open and respectful setting.

ix, 226 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation argues that American women writers have revised sacred texts to challenge patriarchy, racism, and colonialism and rewritten American history to reveal how biblical scripture has been implicated in these processes. I focus on the literary strategies of Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Lucille Clifton to rewrite sacred texts and create myths for a new society. In different ways, these writers redefine Christianity, often by countering the erasures of women in biblical scripture, recovering suppressed texts such as those from the gnostic tradition, and creating new sacred texts. Chapter I traces the history of feminist scriptural revision from the early feminist movement to its resurgence in the late-twentieth century. In this period, a number of authors rewrote religious scripture from a pre-Christian tradition; Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels played a critical role in the attention given to scripture suppressed by Christianity and the potential it holds for writers interested in recovering alternative epistemologies. Chapter II focuses on Morrison's Beloved and Jazz , which are concerned with the way biblical theology is proliferated through apocalyptic narrative strategies and omniscient narration. This chapter investigates the shift Morrison makes between biblical and gnostic concerns in the first two books of her trilogy. Chapter III analyzes the final book in Morrison's trilogy, Paradise , and compares it to Silko's Gardens in the Dunes . Here, Morrison relies on gnostic sources to scrutinize the effects of biblical notions of utopia on literature and its implications for social relations. Gardens uses the same sources but puts them to different uses, subverting their authority in a rewriting that supports Native survival through a program of cultural syncretism. Chapter IV examines the poetry of Lucille Clifton, who, although initially revising Christianity through her refiguring of the Lucifer character, rejects that tradition following the events of 9/11. Clifton's work in Mercy marks a juncture in women's revisions of sacred texts in its departure from Christianity and its introduction of a new sacred text and moral code not predicated upon hierarchy. In conclusion, I consider how these writers extend feminist and anti-racist traditions of scriptural revision explored in the introduction. / Adviser: Shari Huhndorf

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the research situation regarding study visits and the use of sacred texts as a didactic method in religious education. With the help of the overview, the methods are combined to investigate whether they can be used in an advantageous way in religious studies teaching at the Swedish upper secondary school. The study is based on a theoretical framework consisting of hermeneutics and John Dewey's pragmatism. With the help of concepts and thoughts from these, the results of the overview and how the methods can be advantageous are discussed. The study shows that both study visits and the use of sacred texts in teaching can bring benefits for students' learning. In combination, many of the challenges that exist can be met, but this requires the teacher to take these into account. The use of a combination of methods of study visits and sacred texts in teaching can have positive effects on the school's educational mission and students role as citizens in a democratic society.

This thesis examines a specific type of instance that bridges the divide between seeing sacred texts as merely vehicles for content and as objects themselves: self-reference. Doing so yielded a heuristic system of categories of self-reference in sacred texts based on the way the text self-describes: Inlibration, Necessity, and Untranslatability. I provide examples of these self-referential features as found in various sacred texts: the Vedas, Āgamas, Papyrus of Ani, Torah, Quran, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the Book of Mormon. I then examine how different theories of sacredness interact with them. What do Durkheim, Otto, Freud, or Levinas say about these? How are their theories changed when confronted with sacred texts as objects as well as containers for content? I conclude by asserting that these self-referential features can be seen as ‘self-sacralizing’ in that they: match understandings of sacredness, speak for themselves, and do not occur in mundane texts.