602Z Fall 2026 Sacred Gravities: The Holy in a Disenchanted World Four sessions

This course explores how certain places across the world—mountains, cities, rivers, temples, cathedrals, and pilgrimage sites—accumulate enduring spiritual and cultural significance across millennia. Drawing on archaeology, religious history, cultural geography, and anthropology, the series examines why human civilizations repeatedly return to the same landscapes to build shrines, temples, monuments, and ritual centers. Sacred sites are not random. Across cultures and historical periods, human societies consistently identify and reuse places shaped by four recurring forces—elemental landscapes (mountains, springs, rivers, and caves), celestial alignments (solar, lunar, and stellar orientation), ancestral presence (tombs, relics, and memorials), and threshold spaces (borders, crossings, and ritual boundaries). These “sacred gravities” help explain why places such as Jerusalem, Mecca, Delphi, Varanasi, Chartres, Angkor, and Mount Kailash remain spiritually potent long after origin.

Edward Ingebretsen holds advance degrees in Theology and Ethics (JSTB 1982) and a Doctorate in American Studies/Theology (Duke 1986). His publications (books, journals) consider the intersection of gender, race, theology, and popular cultures. He specializes in non-human animal ethics.