Week 2 Assignment: Locating Scholarly Resources
Article 1:
Gooding, S. S. (May, 1996). At the boundaries of religious identity: Native American religions and American legal culture. Numen, 43(2), 157-183. Retrieved from JSTOR database.

Thesis Statement:
This essay attempts to build on the insights of these two great scholars-Felix Cohen, the legal scholar and “father of federal Indian law” and Lawrence Sullivan, the encyclopedic and graceful historian of religion-with regard to “Native America,” which is no less an imagined and located social-historical place than is “America.” I attempt to build on their shared claim that, although Native American communities may mark boundaries of social, political, and cultural difference in the US, the histories of these communities are neither “other” to nor on the periphery of American history, but at its heart. I also attempt to build on the present tense and dynamic sense of agency with which Cohen and especially Sullivan speak of Native Americans-a dynamic present tense too often missing in the historical frameworks given voice in scholarship. The relationship between religion and the law in Native America is an ideal subject through which to view this historical dynamism and to evaluate contemporary scholarly and legal frameworks for interpretation.

Article 2:
Bialecki, J. (2008). Between stewardship and sacrifice: agency and economy in a Southern California charismatic church. Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(2), 372-390. Retrieved from EBSCOhost database.

Thesis Statement:
Specifically, this article identifies the existence of three different, but interrelated, spheres (secular exchange, stewardship, and sacrifice), each of which has its own guiding assumptions regarding proper morality, agency, and subjectivity for these Charismatic Christians. These differing spheres are used, this