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Home > Annual Newsletter 2000-01
Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space
The Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space (CASS) is a multidisciplinary research center that was recently established in the Department of Religious Studies to foster and coordinate research projects concerned with the analysis of sacred space, with a particular focus on the cultures and religions of Asia. The center’s three principal investigators are Professors Barbara Holdrege, the Project Director; Bill Powell; and Juan Campo. The center’s principal research project involves the design and construction of a geospatially-referenced, multimedia website for the study of sacred sites in Asia that will provide a research and instructional resource for scholars of Asian cultures and religions throughout the United States. The CASS website will center initially on eighteen sacred sites in Asia, including thirteen sacred sites in South Asia—Nepal, India, and Pakistan—and five sites located along the Silk Road in other parts of Asia—Iran, Central Asia, Tibet, China, and Japan. In a later phase of the project, the scope of the website will be expanded to include additional sites in Central and East Asia.
CASS has received funding from two granting agencies to support the development of the website: (1) an external grant from the Wabash Center, a program funded by the Lilly Endowment, and (2) an Instructional Improvement Grant from the UCSB Academic Senate Committee on Effective Teaching and Instructional Support. In developing the CASS website, Professors Holdrege, Powell, and Campo are being assisted by a team of graduate and undergraduate researchers who are specialists in South Asian or East Asian religions. Mark Elmore and Jeffrey Ruff, members of the CASS South Asia field team, are currently engaged in a six-month field expedition, from September 2000 to March 2001, for the purpose of collecting geopositioned visual, audio, and ethnographic resources pertaining to eight sacred site complexes in India and Nepal: Uttara Khanda, Banaras, Braj, Prayag, Tirupati, Srirangam, Madurai, and Kathmandu Valley. Justin O’Jack, a member of the CASS China field team, recently returned from a summer field expedition in which he collected multimedia resources on Chinese sacred mountains. Other members of the CASS development team include Jennifer Gertwagen, Aaron Heisler, Suzanne Stillman, Carlos Pomeda, and Jill Hudgins.
