What is Religion?

4 credits

Religion is both the crowning achievement of the human imagination and the epitome of its most self-destructive impulses. It is simultaneously a force for oppression and liberation, creativity and constraint. How can we understand this powerful domain of human experience with its transformative practices, authoritative institutions, and compelling rhetorics of world-making? The seminar examines this question from the standpoints of religious studies and the anthropology of religion. Prerequisites: graduate standing.