This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The focus of this module is on major contemporary developments in the study of religion. Topics to be dealt with include (without being confined to): gender/sexuality; postcolonialism; poststructuralism and critical theory; media; economy; the construction of ‘the secular’; and the contestation of religion as a category of analysis.
Students will focus on key thinkers and debates and key terms and key words (for example, ‘What controversies have developed around terms like “culture” and “belief”?’) The course will also examine the latest developments and controversies in methodologies and theories of religion. These include (without being confined to) textual studies; anthropology; sociology; comparative religion; psychology of religion; media theory; philosophy of religion.
Total contact hours: 20
This module is compulsory for students studying on the MA in Religion.
Essay (4000 words) - 80%;
Critical analysis (1000 words) - 20%
Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press;
Bender, C. and Ann Tayes (2012). What Matters? Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age, New York: Columbia University Press;
King, R. (1999). Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the "Mystic East", London and New York: Routledge;
Lynch, G. (2014). The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press;
Sherwood, Y. (2012). Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
Taylor, M. (ed.) (1998). Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press;
de Vries, H. (ed.) (2008). Religion: Beyond a Concept, New York: Fordham.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will have gained a critical awareness of the of the major recent debates and controversies in the contemporary study of religion;
Students will have gained a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of major theories and methodologies in the study of religion, as they have developed post-1945;
Students will have gained the ability to apply these contemporary techniques and apparatuses to the study of religion, and to critically analyse those techniques and critical approaches;
Students will have gained the ability to discuss the complexities and controversies attached to keywords (for example 'culture' and 'belief');
Students will have gained the ability to apply these debates and controversies to the student's own area of interest (for example Hinduism, Biblical Studies) and to work out what these debates mean for their own particular area of expertise;
Students will have gained the ability to begin to design one's own personal methodological framework and vocabularies for the study of religion in general, as well as for their own specialist field
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