Intro Cultural Ethnographies?

[Maggie Ronkin]

Hi,
I am a huge fan of a book for our times: Joyce Flueckiger's In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India. Below I pasted in a sample of opinion and Amazon's product description.
Best wishes,Maggie Ronkin

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"Only rarely are books powerful enough to capture the imaginations and emotions of our students: this is one such book." -- Susan Snow Wadley, Syracuse University
"In Amma's Healing Room is a terrific book. Well structured and well written, it will be a great addition to courses on religious ethnography, popular and contemporary Islam, South Asian religions, ritual studies, and gender studies." -- the Journal of Religion, 88.2"[I]t is extremely salubrious to see the ways Islam works in the lives of ordinary people who are not politicized in their religious lives.... No other book on South Asia has material like this." -- Ann Grodzins Gold
In Amma's Healing Room is a compelling study of the life and thought of a female Muslim spiritual healer in Hyderabad, South India. Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger describes Amma's practice as a form of vernacular Islam arising in a particular locality, one in which the boundaries between Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity are fluid. In the "healing room," Amma meets a diverse clientele that includes men and women, Muslim, Hindu, and Christian, of varied social backgrounds, who bring a wide range of physical, social, and psychological afflictions. Flueckiger collaborated closely with Amma and relates to her at different moments as daughter, disciple, and researcher. The result is a work of insight and compassion that challenges widely held views of religion and gender in India and reveals the creativity of a tradition often portrayed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as singular and monolithic.

> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2011 12:43:55 -0700
> From: leila.monaghan at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Intro Cultural Ethnographies?
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> 
> Hi, I am thinking of changing over my intro to cultural anthropology to an
> ethnography based course.  Do people have suggestions for modern or classic
> ethnographies that would be suitable for a large course open to all majors
> that will include freshman?
> 
> all best,
> 
> Leila
> 
> -- 
> Leila Monaghan, PhD
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Wyoming
> Laramie, Wyoming