Theorizing Religion

3 credits · Graduate credit

Every historical or ethnographic description invoking "religion" contains within it a theory of that term, whether implicit or explicit. How has religion been configured as a comparative category in the West? To what purpose, and with what kinds of effects? This class has four objectives: 1) to acquire a modest control of key classical theoretical texts on religion which have provided, and continue to provide, much of the working vocabulary used in interpretations and analyses of religion; 2) to see religion as a key term that contains within it a genealogy of Western reflection and self-construction in relation to putative others; 3) to interrogate these classic texts and their contemporary heirs and evaluate their relative utility for interpreting religion in students? own project; and 4) to transform inherited theories of religion, often implicit or embedded, into conscious and deliberate choices that inform our work. The temporary trajectory covered will be from the mid-18th century (Hume) to the 1960s polarization between structuralism (Levi-Strauss) and critical theories like the Frankfort School (Adorno) along with selected departures to engage current critical responses to these "big" theories of religions.