Enchantment and Modernity: Studying Religion in a Secular Age

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Imagine a world stripped of magic, where cold rationality reigns supreme and the supernatural has been banished to the realm of fiction. Now consider our own world, where Silicon Valley technocrats consult AI oracles, where political ideologies inspire quasi-religious fervor, and where the “spiritual but not religious” seek transcendence in everything from meditation apps to psychedelic retreats. Which of these worlds more accurately describes our modern condition? This course challenges the notion that modernity and secularization have disenchanted our world, proposing instead that enchantment persists and even thrives in unexpected corners of contemporary life. From Weber's Protestant ethic to UFO believers in the American Southwest, commodity fetishism in South America to Islamic modernities in Lebanon, we will ask fundamental questions: How do myths and rituals shape our understanding of the world, even in ostensibly secular societies? What role does enchantment play in science, technology, and politics? How do different cultures negotiate the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the rational and the magical? Drawing upon ethnographic studies and theoretical texts, we will explore how the categories of “religious” and “secular” are constructed, contested, and reimagined in various cultural contexts.