[back to main course list]

REL 501:  Seminar in the Study of Religion

A scholar observes a funeral in Bali or a baptism in Mt. Pleasant, making careful records.  Now what?  Is it enough to publish a summary report of what religious people say and do?  Or, should the scholar--and can the scholar--offer theoretical interpretation and explanation of the religious event?  For more than one hundred years, some scholars of religion have been systematically creating, criticizing and refining theoretical explanations of human religious experience and behavior.

This course will survey and invite critical reflection upon this tradition.   Students will read, discuss, and write essays responding to theories of religion devised by Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, William James, Mircea Eliade, Karl Marx, James Frazer, Clifford Geertz, and others.