This course looks at the relationship between the built environment and spiritual space with special focus on Southeast Asia. Over the course of the semester we will look at a range of spiritual practices and the forms they take including temples, mosques, shrines, and symbols. How does religion shape and connect cities in different ways? How is globalization transforming and transformed by spiritual space? Each week examines debates surrounding these questions through cases within and beyond Southeast Asia. Topics we will unpack range from ghost films to heritage sites.

Students are not only expected to leave this course with a stronger understanding of the religious and spiritual practices, global processes and political events shaping Southeast Asia, but they should also develop visual analysis skills necessary to read and write about spiritual space in a variety forms. Course discussions and assignments unpack the aesthetic traditions, politics, and morals surrounding specific cases in order to complicate what it means to be global, regional or local. As a result, content will go beyond Southeast Asia and the assigned readings for each week cut across disciplines, drawing from Art and Architectural History, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Geography.