Course Syllabus
MA Seminar IST1003 1
Jacob N. Kinnard Phone: 765-3164
Office: I-303 Email: jkinnard@iliff.edu
Thursdays 1:-4:30 Office Hours: By Appointment
Course Description
This course examines several of the major, what we might even call “foundational,” theoretical and methodological approaches to the study and practice of religion that have been put forth over the last century. The emphasis of the course is, first, on close reading and analysis of some key texts by the practitioners of these approaches and, second, on an extended discussion of both the theoretical and practical issues raised by these texts. Thus, we will both engage these foundational texts and also examine the contemporary debate about the academic study of religion, the place and purpose of “Religious Studies,” and even the very category of “religion.”
The purpose of this course is three-fold: One, to give students a solid grounding in the basic issues involved in the academic study of religion, by addressing the question, “What is religion and how should we study it?” Two, to examine the various consequences of our response to this question, in order to more sharply define our own theoretical and practical positions as active scholars and teachers in the field. Three, to help students formulate a viable MA Thesis project.
This is a four-credit course divided over two quarters. During the first quarter, we will attempt to gain an overview of the field and key issues in the academic study of religion; the second quarter will allow students to go into greater depth and to examine several key figures in depth.
Course Requirements
- Attendance.
- Participation.
- Careful completion of all reading.
- Leadership of class meetings – this entails setting the critical agenda for the day’s meeting, including a written summation of the central arguments of the particular readings and the questions that are to be considered during the class session.
This course is Pass/Fail only.
Required Texts:
Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology (Johns Hopkins)
Ivan Strenski, Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion (Wiley-Blackwell)
Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them (Princeton)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge)
Class Schedule and Readings:
September 11 What’s In A Definition?
Readings: 1. J.Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” pp. 269-84, in Mark C. Taylor, Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); 2. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press, 1993), 1-54; 3. David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (California: University of California Press, 2005), pp. vii-51.
September 18 Dead White Guys, Part One
Readings: Strenski, Thinking About Religion, pp. 1-90.
September 25 Dead White Guys, Part Two
Readings: Strenski, Thinking About Religion, pp. 91-197.
October 2 “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated…” Part One
Readings: Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology, pp. 1-115.
October 9 “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated…” Part Two
Readings: 1. Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology, pp. 116-213.
October 16 The Necessity of Comparison
Readings: 1. Mircea Eliade, “History of Religions and a New Humanism,” pp. 1-11, in Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 1-11; 2. Capps, Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline, pp. 209-266; 3. Wendy Doniger, “Other Scholar’s Myths: The Hunter and the Sage,” in Other Peoples’ Myths (New York: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 7-24; 4. Jonathan Z. Smith, “In Comparison A Magic Dwells,” in Kimberley C. Patton and Benjamin C. Ray, A Magic Still Dwells (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 23-44.
October 23 On Ethos and Habitus
Readings: 1. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge); 2. Pierre Bourdieu, “Structures, Habitus, Practices,” in The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 52-65.
October 30 No Class
November 6
The View from the Ground
Readings: Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them (Princeton).
November 13 Brunch at Kinnard’s Place - 920 East 17th Ave, #301
Course Summary:
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