Department of Religious Studies

What is religion? What does it mean to interpret religion? Broadly conceived, this is a conversation that stretches over time and space.

This class is not a survey or a methods course: the goal is not to introduce you comprehensively to the study of religion or equip you with a toolkit of ideas and methods. Nor is it intended to enable you to identify the “best” theory of religion or to learn the decisive reasons for rejecting most of the ambitious theories from the past. It is instead an invitation to think deeply about what we mean by religion through thoughtful encounters with some contemporary studies of religion with particular attention to the legal and political structuring of religion.