Department of Religious Studies

What does it mean to interpret religion? In this course we will read and analyze some classic and recent interpretations of religion in order to think about the act of interpretation itself within the context of a conversation about religion that stretches over time and space. The authors who have influenced the study of religion in the academy speak from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds: sociology, anthropology, psychology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory. In each case, one effect of their work is to delimit “religion” as an object of observation, analysis, and critique. This is not a methods course: the goal is not to 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 interpretation through thoughtful encounters with some grand examples—some strange, some outrageous, some familiar, and all, in my experience, intriguing.