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May 03, 2024
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REL 510 - Theory and Method
What is religion? What is the nature of religious experience? Are religion and its experiences open to critical scrutiny? If so, how do we study them? This course seeks to answer these questions while raising many more concerning the academic study of the human phenomenon we call religion. After introductory material on defining/identifying religion, the course proceeds with a look at three broad period-themes within the study of religion: One, None, and Done. “One” is a look at the early comparativists and phenomenologists who sought to understand worldwide religion by positing a universal “religious experience”. “None” then introduces the concepts and figures that have suggested that religion is socially constructed and/or is a human construct intended to assist with the survival of the species. The third section of the course, “Done”, surveys the ongoing scholarly debate over secularization: is the world becoming less and less religious? In so many words, is religion “done”? The course ends with a brief introduction to contemporary approaches to studying religion such as gender theory and the “subjective turn. ”
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