Theories and Methods
in the Study of Religion
The Wheel of Existence, early 20th century Tibetan painting, Rubin Museum of Art
Professor Cape (She/her/hers)
Office Hours: T/R 1pm-5pm, and by appointment
Course Description
How we think about religion has been shaped by a long and violent history, much of it rooted in European colonialism. Therefore, this course locates the study of religion within key issues such as race, gender, whiteness and the European historical development of colonialism, writings on intersectionality, modernity, postmodernism, indigeneity and Islamophobia. This course trains students to think carefully and critically about religion based on interdisciplinary approaches, engaging history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology and hermeneutics. It explores landmark texts in religious studies and key themes framing religious studies. It relies primarily upon reading and class discussions, but this is supplemented by other learning aids including, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries and looking at religious art.
REQUIRED TEXTS
All readings will be provided as pdfs. They are available on in our online course page.
Overview of Topics
Course Description……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Section I: Major Themes in the Study of Religion…………………………………………………………. 2
Week One What do we mean by religious studies?…………………………………………………………. 2
Week Two Religion and Mythology……………………………………………………………………………… 3
Week Three Religion and Sociology……………………………………………………………………………… 3
Week Four Religion and Power…………………………………………………………………………………… 3
Week Five Religious Purity, Taboo and Transgression……………………………………………………… 4
Section II: Reinterpreting Religious Studies…………………………………………………………………. 4
Week Six Religion, Culture, Orientalism & Ethnocentrism……………………………………………. 4
Week Seven Eurocentrism in the Study of Religion………………………………………………………. 4
Week Eight Religion, Postcolonialism and Decolonization……………………………………………… 5
Week Nine Religious Studies and Gender Part I…………………………………………………………… 5
Week Ten Gender and Religion Part II………………………………………………………………………. 6
Week Eleven Intersectionality in the Study of Religion………………………………………………….. 6
Week Twelve Religion, Race and Racialization……………………………………………………………. 6
Week Thirteen Religion, Modernity, Post Modernism and Metamodernism…………………….. 7
Section III: Special Topics in Religious Studies……………………………………………………………… 7
Week Fourteen Religion and Mediation……………………………………………………………………… 7
Week Fifteen The Religion Scholar: Caretaker and Critic?…………………………………………………. 8
Schedule of Readings
Section I: Major Themes in the Study of Religion
Week One What do we mean by religious studies?
Brent Nongbri. “Chapter One: What Do We Mean by ‘Religion?’” Before Religion: a History of a Modern Concept. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 1-45.
J.Z. Smith. “Religion, Religions, Religious.” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Mark C. Taylor Editor. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269- 284.
Lopez, Donald. “Belief,” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 21-35.
Martin, Craig. “Preface” and “Religion and the Problem of Definition.” A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. (New York: Routledge, 2017), xv-18.
Week Two Religion and Mythology
Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005). ix-162
Wendy Doniger, The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Week Three Religion and Sociology
Durkheim, Emile, trans. Carol Cosman. “Introduction,” and “A Definition of the Religious Phenomena and of Religion.” Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), vii -46.
Weber, Max. “The Prophet” and “The Religious Congregation, Preaching and Pastoral Care.” Sociology of Religion. (Boston: Massachusetts, 1993), 46-79.
Geertz, Clifford. “Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power.” Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121-146.
Weber, Max. “Sociology of Charismatic Authority.” On Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968) 18-27
Week Four Religion and Power
Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power; Theories in Subjection. (Stanford, California: Stanford University of Press, 1997).
Foucault, Michel. “Excerpts from The History of Sexuality Vols. I and II.” The Foucault Reader. ed. Paul Rabinow. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984). 258-272; 292-339.
Foucault, Michel. 1999. “Pastoral Power and Political Reason.” In Religion and Culture.
Edited by Jeremy R. Carrette. New York: Routledge. 135-152.
Martin, Craig. “Ideology and the Study of Religion: Marx, Althusser, and Foucault,” Religion Compass, vol 7(9) (2013): 402–411.
Martin, Craig. “How religion works: Authority” and “How religion works: Authenticity.” A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 121-158.
Media Assignments
Watch Foucault Documentary:
Michel Foucault Beyond Good and Evil 1993.
Week Five Religious Purity, Taboo and Transgression
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1-50 and 117-159.
Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White. “The Politics and Poetics of Transgression.” A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 253-264.
Kelly, Raymond C. “Witchcraft and Sexual Relations: An Exploration in the Social and Semantic Implications of the Structure of Belief.” A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 238-252.
Section II: Reinterpreting Religious Studies
Week Six Religion, Culture, Orientalism & Ethnocentrism
Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a Cultural System,” A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Editors. Michael Lambek. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 57-76.
King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Post-colonial Theory, India and the Mystic East. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1-95, 143-160, 187-218.
Masuzawa, Tamoko. “Culture,” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Mark C. Taylor, Editor. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 70-93.
Rorty, Richard. “On Ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz,” Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 203-210.
Said, Edward. “Preface,” Orientalism. (London: Penguin Books, 2003), xi – 31.
Media Assignments
Watch Edward Said on Orientalism.
“Edward Said on Orientalism.” Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g
Week Seven Eurocentrism in the Study of Religion
Nongbri, Brent. “New Worlds, New Religions, World Religions,” Before Religion: a History of a Modern Concept. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 106-131.
Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. European Universalism: the Rhetoric of Power. (New York: New Press, 2006), xii-84.
Sayyid, Bobby S. A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism 2nd edition. (London: Zed Books, 2003), 7-51 and 84-154.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 1-137 and 309-328.
Week Eight Religion, Postcolonialism and Decolonization
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “’Can the Subaltern Speak?’ revised edition from the ‘History’ Chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason,” and “In Response: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” Can the Sub-Altern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 21-80 and 227-236.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. “Agency,” “Alterity,” “Anti-Colonialism,” “Appropriation,” “Center/Margin Periphery,” “Class and Postcolonialism,” “Colonial Desire,” “Colonial Patronage,” “Colonialism,” and “Decolonization,” Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd Edition. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 6, 9-10, 11-13, 15-17, 19-21, 32-43, 56-58.
Gurminder K Bhambra. “Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues,” Postcolonial Studies, 17:2: (2014): 115–121 DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2014.966414.
Media Assignments
Listen to Podcast:
Malory Nye and Christopher R. Cotter. “Decolonizing the Study of Religion,” The Religious Studies Project. June 30, 2020. http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/decolonising-the-study-of-religion/
Read and examine paintings used for religious conversion:
Suarez, Ananda Cohen. Painting Beyond the Frame: Religious Murals of Colonial Peru https://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/collections/painting-beyond-frame-religious-murals-colonial-peru
Week Nine Religious Studies and Gender Part I
Boyarin, Daniel. “Gender.” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Mark C. Taylor, Editor. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 117-135.
Burke, Kelsy C. “Women’s Agency in Gender-Traditional Religions: A Review of Four Approaches.” Sociology Compass Volume 6, Issue2, (2012) 122-133.
Hawthorne, Sîan. “Religion and Gender,” The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. ed. PB Clarke (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 134-151.
Monro, Surya. Transmuting Gender Binaries: The Theoretical Challenge,” Sociological Research Online, 12 (1), 2007. https://doi.org/10.5153/sro. 1514
Media Assignment
Watch Lecture Judith Butler: “Why Bodies Matter” – Gender Trouble. Youtube. September 30, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzWWwQDUPPM
Week Ten Gender and Religion Part II
Castelli, Elizabeth A..“Heteroglossia, Hermeneutics, and History; A Review Essay of Recent Feminist Studies of Early Christianity.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Vol. 10 No.2 (1994): 73-98.
Hollywood, Amy. “Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and her Hagiographer,” Gendered Voices, Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters. ed. Catherine M. Mooney, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 78-98.
Miles, Margaret R. “Nakedness, Gender and Religious Meaning,” Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1988), 169-186.
Santokh Singh Gill. “‘So people know I’m a Sikh,’ Narratives of Sikh Masculinities in contemporary Britain.” Culture and Religion, 15:3, 334–353(2014)
Krondorfer, Björn and Stephen Hunt. “Introduction: Religion and Masculinities – Continuities and Change,” Religion and Gender, 2:2 (2012): 194–206.
Week Eleven Intersectionality in the Study of Religion
Hill Collins, Patricia and Sirma Bilge. “What is Intersectionality?” and “Intersectionality as Critical Inquiry and Practice,”Intersectionality. (Malden, Massachusettes: Polity Press, 2016), 1-62.
Puar, Jasbir. “I Would Rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess,” philoSOPHIA Vol. 2 Issue 1 (2012): 49–66.
Mellor, Philip A. & Chris Shilling. ‘‘Re-conceptualising the religious habitus: Reflexivity and embodied subjectivity in global modernity.” Culture and Religion, 15: 3 (2014): 275–297.
Sirma Bilge. “Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women.” Journal of Intercultural Studies. 31:1 (2010): 9–28.
Mahmood, Saba. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 16:2 (2001): 202–236.
Week Twelve Religion, Race and Racialization
Omi, Michael & Howard Winant. “The Theory of Racial Formation,” Racial formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994).
Omi, Michael & Howard Winant, “Conclusion: Racial Formation Rules: Continuity, Instability, and Change,” Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Daniel Martinez HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 302-332.
Garner, S. (2010). “The idea of ‘race’ and the practice of racisms.” Racisms: An introduction (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010), 1-18. https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781446279106.n1
Johnson, Sylvester A. “Accounting for Whiteness in Mormon Religion, Reviewed Work: Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness by W. Paul Reeve,” Mormon Studies Review Vol. 3 (2016): 117-133.
Cramer, Janet M. “White Womanhood and Religion: Colonial Discourse in the U. S. Women’s Missionary Press, 1869–1904,” Howard Journal of Communications Vol. 14 Issue 4 (2003): 209-224.
Media Assignments
Read, examine images of Christ in:
Swartwood House, Anna. “The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European.” University of South Carolina. July 22, 2020. https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2020/07/conversation_white_jesus.php#.YE7Y55NKiao
Listen to a podcast:
Edward Blum, “’Color Of Christ’: A Story Of Race And Religion In America.” WBUR News, November 19, 2012. https://www.wbur.org/npr/165473220/color-of-christ-a-story-of-race-and-religion-in-america
Week Thirteen Religion, Modernity, Post Modernism and Metamodernism
Buenavides, Gustavo. “Modernity,” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Mark C. Taylor, Editor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 186-204.
Campbell, Colin. “Modernity and Postmodernity,” The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. Robert Segal. (Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 309-318.
Hinnells, John R. “All Generalizations are bad: Postmodernism on Theories,” The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 49-60.
Gleig, Ann. “American Buddhism in a ‘Post’ Age,” American Dharma; Buddhism Beyond Modernity. (New Haven: Yale University, 2019), 281-304.
Clasquin-Johnson, Michel. (2017). Towards a Metamodern Academic Study of Religion and a More Religiously Informed Metamodernism. HTS Theological Studies, 73:3 (2017): 1-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4491
Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle
Ages,” Speculum Vol. 65 No.1 (1990): 59-86.
Section III: Special Topics in Religious Studies
Week Fourteen Religion Media and Mediation
Morgan, David. (2008). “Introduction. Media, Religion, Culture: The Shape of the Field” Keywords in Media, Religion, and Culture. ed. D. Morgan (New York: Routledge, 2008) 1-19.
Hjarvard, Stig. “The Mediatization of Religion: A Theory of the Media as Agents of Religious Change.” Northern Lights, 6 (2008): 9-26.
Zito, Angela. “Culture,” Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture, ed. David Morgan. (New York: Routledge, 2008) 69-82.
Zito, Angela. “Religion as Media(tion)” Rethinking Religion 101: Critical Issues in Religious Studies, ed. B. Verter and J. Wolfart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Miles, Margaret R. “Image.” Critical Terms for Religious Studies. ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 160-172.
Zito, Angela. “Can Television Mediate Religious Experience? The Theology of Joan of Arcadia,” Religion: Beyond the Concept, ed. Hent deVries. (Fordham University Press, 2007).
Brasher, Brenda E. “The Ultimate Diaspora: Religion in the Perpetual Present of Cyberspace” Give Me That Online Religion. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 24-45.
Week Fifteen The Religion Scholar: Caretaker and Critic?
Cabezón, José Ignacio. “Identity and the work of the scholar of religion.” Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Religion. New York: Routledge. 43-58
McCutcheon, Russell T. “More Than a Shapeless Beast,” “A Default of Critical Intelligence?” and “Talking Past Each Other: The Issue of Public Intellectuals Revisited.” Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion. (New York: State University of New York, 2001), 3-21 and 125-154
Omer, Atalia. “Can a Critic Be a Caretaker too? Religion, Conflict, and Conflict Transformation.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 79, Issue 2, (2011): 459–496.
Helmer, Christine. “Theology and the Study of Religion: a Relationship,” The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies, ed. Robert A. Orsi. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 230-254.
Jones, Paul Dafydd. “Cheerful Unease: Theology and Religious Studies,” Religious Studies and Rabbinics. (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 69-81.
Course Requirements
Attendance
Attendance and participation are required to optimize your learning experience and foster a learning community. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class. Students are expected to arrive promptly, be attentive and participate in class discussions and exercises. Weekly quizzes will include material covered in class, so missed attendance will also effect one’s quiz grades. There is no penalty for missing three classes. If a student misses more than three classes, then three points off the final grade will be deducted for each subsequent absence. There will also be a lower mark for participation after missing three classes.
Class Participation
This class requires a critical engagement. To study religion is to engage in a cross-cultural encounter and therefore to encounter the unfamiliar. To study religion is also to engage with topics that one may have already formed strong opinions about. Students should be open minded enough to allow the assignments to challenge their ideas and preconceived notions. Students should also actively be questioning the arguments and ideas advanced in the texts. This type of critical reflection is expected during the discussions and in your assignments.
Weekly Reading Quizzes
Every student will be asked to answer questions about the reading in every class, so preparation is essential. In order to foster lively discussions in class, every week there will be a quiz which covers topics discussed in class, subjects from the reading and assignments. The quiz will focus on reading comprehension, featuring the main ideas and main arguments of the author. Additionally, the final question in each quiz will be to ask you what you found interesting, strange or meaningful in that week’s readings. There are no make-up quizzes or late submissions. Quizzes must be completed by 11:59pm on Friday night. The two lowest quiz grades will be dropped.
Class Decorum
- Students must arrive on time and stay until the end of the period to receive full attendance points. Students who arrive more than ten minutes late to class are considered absent.
- Cell phones and laptops must be turned off before class begins. Students may use technology in a way that is relevant to class. During group discussions, computers will also be closed. Please be aware that if you use technology for non-class activities, this will result in a lowered participation grade.
- Gender inclusive language is encouraged in this class.
- Respect for oneself and ones fellow students is required, this includes listening and being attentive when other students speak.
- Students are expected to try to understand other’s points of views, even when they are different than one’s own. Some religious concepts may be difficult to understand, especially when they contradict dearly held beliefs. Our task in religious studies is to understand how those ideas make sense for the people who believe them, and why they make sense to them, to ask what contexts are in place that cause them to make sense. You are not asked to change your beliefs, only to become familiar with other beliefs, customs and practices.
Assignments
Students must complete reading assignments before coming to class. While reading, make notes to answer at least three of the following questions in preparation for class: What is the author’s agenda (explicit or implicit)? When was this text written? What is the function of this text – How does it function didactically to convey philosophy or make arguments? Who is this text written for, who is the audience? Who is missing from the text, what voices or perspectives are present and what voices or perspectives are absent? What are the counter arguments that this text is responding to? How does the author’s positionality show up in this text? What morals or ethics are expressed in this text or absent in this text? What questions does this text raise for you? How does this text relate to your own experience or current events?
Multimedia discussions.
Weekly assignments include review of paintings, recordings, maps, videos and artifacts related to the readings. This media will briefly be discussed at the beginning of each class. The discussion is meant to engage curiosity, powers of observation and to exercise interpretative skills. To prepare for these discussions, look in the “assignments” section of your schedule, review and examine the materials provided.
Criteria for Evaluation
Attendance and Participation 10%
Reading Quizzes 30% (2% Per quiz)
Oral Presentation 10%
Paper Proposal and Outline 10%
What is Religion Photo Essay 10%
Final Paper 30% (8-10 double-spaced pages)
- Grading System
A + 99-100 A 93-98.99 A- 90-92.99
B+ 87-89.99 B 83-86.99 B- 80-82.99
C+ 77-79.99 C 73-76.99 C- 70-72.99
D 60-69.99 F 59.9 and below
Accommodations
I am committed to creating a welcoming and effective learning environment for all students. If you have any type of disability or require accommodations for another reason, please see me during office hours and note that requests may be made through the Disability and Learning Resource Center.
Sensitive Topics.
The study of religion and its history may raise difficult topics including race, class, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, war and violence. If you ever feel that a topic may be too distressing, please notify me and you will be excused from that class.
Academic Integrity
All students are required to observe the Academic Integrity policy.
Students may collaborate in assigned partner exercises, however plagiarism and cheating are not tolerated and will be addressed by established procedures. If you have any questions about the Honor Code, please do feel free to ask. Any paper that fails to include appropriate citations and quotations will receive an F.
Final Paper
A grading rubric to follow as you write your paper proposal, paper outline and final paper will be distributed separately.