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//SACRED MUSIC OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC//**
 * IAH 211B - Area Studies Asia - Section 101

Integrative Studies at MSU seeks to assist students to become more familiar with ways of knowing in the arts and humanities and to be more knowledgeable and capable in a range of intellectual and expressive abilities. Our section will focus on sacred music of the Asia-Pacific region. Through readings, musical selections, and video clips, we will explore the ways in which people of Asia and the Pacific Rim have expressed their spiritual lives through music. We will investigate how cultural beliefs and practices have flowed through the Silk Road connecting the Middle East to East Asia and around the Pacific. In order to make sense of contemporary Asian religious practice, we will trace historical links between Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam across the region.
 * Objectives:**

//**Here are some major questions we will consider this semester:**//

➢ What sort of region is Asia? The Pacific Rim? What if anything holds them together? ➢ What is music? How do we distinguish music from other kinds of humanly-produced sound? ➢ What constitutes the sacred? How is the sacred related to religion? ➢ How can music better help us understand the religious beliefs and practices of the Asia-Pacific? ➢ How have cultural forms like music been shaped and changed by the flows of people, products and belief systems of a large region like the Pacific Rim?

➢ How can insights into music help us understand the role of religion in people’s lives? ➢ How can awareness of religious practice help us understand national and transnational identities? Sharpen our understanding of diasporas and diasporic identity? ➢ How might tracing flows of musical and religious practice help us historicize our understanding of transnationalism and globalization?