Word: eck
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...integral part of the course, and of Eck's research, is to understand how the Hindu religion survives and changes in today's world...
...core course, which attracted 278 students this semester, grew out of Eck's own research. It encompasses her earlier work in Benares and her continuing study of the relationship of the myths of Hindu gods with their visual representations and the sacred geography of India...
...really believe that people are the best at teaching the things that they're working on and are interested in," says Eck, who has also taught a Foreign Cultures course on the sources of Indian civilization. "It's probably a mistake to say that you're going to finish that book while teaching this core class; it never quite works out that...
...Eck says much of the course is devoted to trying to understand a culture in which the gods are presented visually, "since most of us--Christian, Jewish, or secular--grew up in a context in which the gods didn't have 5 heads and 10 arms." Eck adds that Hindu myths are "not abstract stories that you learn at your mother's knee, like Greek mythology, but are actually imprinted on the landscape...
According to Eck, the course appeals both to students who have grown up surrounded by these myths and to those for whom Hindu culture and religion is entirely new material...