Category: 12-13 Supplementary Resources

Professor Knepper’s Spring 2103 Philosophy of Religion course first examined religious responses to suffering in the abolitionist movement, post-Holocaust Judaism, and medieval Zen Buddhism. They also familiarized themselves with the religious responses to suffering that the Fall 2012 Comparative Religions class studied: the Sikh khalsa, Abd el-Kader’s jihad against the French, and Lakota responses to the Wounded Knee massacre. Below are some of their final papers in which they compare, explain, and evaluate many of these religious responses to suffering:

Anonymous student’s paper
Liz Kuker’s paper
Julien Lamberto’s paper

After studying Sikh, Lakota, and Muslim responses to suffering throughout the Fall 2012 Semester, students in Professor Knepper’s class were tasked with performing unique comparisons of their own design on some aspect of these three faiths and their responses to suffering. These papers were designed to ask students to think critically about the similarities and differences of religious responses to suffering between these three faiths, and to come to some insightful conclusions about what the implications of these similarities and differences are. Some of these essays, which were wide-ranging and creative, can be found below:

• Amelia Eckles’s Comparative Paper
• Makenzie Plonka’s Comparative Paper
  
• Mariah Marconi’s Comparative Paper

Our section on Lakota traditional ways began by exploring Lakota understandings of and responses to suffering (with the help of a local Lakota, Howard Croweagle).  We then considered the late nineteenth-century “Ghost Dance” as a (religious) response to suffering, followed by some late twentieth-century re-memorizations of and resistances to the 1890 massacre of Wounded Knee as (religious) responses to suffering.

Some students, whether individually or collectively, chose to write short, encyclopedic pieces on Lakota traditions in general, Lakota responses to suffering, and what the class learned about Lakota responses to suffering.

• Introduction to Lakota traditions (Lexi Hilgart, Lily Rotter)
• Responses to suffering in Lakota traditions (Kody Seaver)
• Class reflections on responses to suffering in Lakota traditions (Amelia Eckles, Nora, Sullivan)

Other students instead wrote papers on Lakota responses to suffering either as the late nineteenth-century “Ghost Dance” or in a variety of more recent re-memorizations of and resistances to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee such as the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, the reburial of Zintkala Nuni, and the Big Foot Memorial Ride (all of which we read about in the essay of The Comparative Project’s guest speaker on Lakota responses to suffering, Michelene Pesantubbee’s “Wounded Knee: Site of Resistance and Recovery”). Here are some of them:

• Makenzie Plonka’s Lakota paper
  
• Mariah Marconi’s Lakota paper