General Information:
- Philip Harland: pharland – at – yorku – dot – ca.
- Meetings: HUMA 3803, meets Thursdays 11:30-2:20 in Stong College, room 224
- Zoom link for online meetings in cases of professor illness, snow-days or similar: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/92070904400
- Office hours: TBA or by appointment (Vanier 248). Zoom link option: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/92070904400
Course Description: This course explores interdisciplinary approaches to the study of religion and culture through an examination of a variety of methods. You will learn how to:
- Interpret human cultures using a range of tools from various disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and postcolonial studies.
- Explore cultural practices and ideologies in a variety of contexts throughout the world.
- Analyze how modern preconceptions or assumptions of scholars and students affect the study of human cultures.
- Confront difficulties with defining and studying “religion” in postcolonial contexts.
- Understand the origins and nature of Religious Studies as an interdisciplinary field.
- Learn how to critically analyze scholarly writing and argument.
- Improve your writing and presentation skills.
Required Readings:
- Linked readings (in pdf form) throughout the course outline below.
- Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). (ebook link; you will need to download each chapter separately).
- Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999). (ebook link)
Other library resources we use for readings:
- John Hinnells, ed., The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (London: Taylor and Francis, 2005) (ebook link)
Evaluation (all written assignments due BEFORE class by email attachment, preferably PDF):
- Attendance, engagement and participation in class discussions: 15%
- Quizzes on weekly readings at 11:35am sharp x 10: 20%
- Fishbowl discussion (6 students per week) for 15 minutes (students are marked individually): 10%
- Article presentation, 10
15minutes maximum: 15% - In-class essay 1 (on Nongbri): 20%
- In-class essay 2 (on King): 20%
Important things to know:
- Readings and participation: Read and study materials before meetings.
- Penalties for lateness: Assignments are due at the beginning of class (hardcopy). Late submissions will be penalized by one full grade (e.g. from a B to a C) and a further grade for each additional day beyond the due date.
- Academic honesty and plagiarism policies: Absolutely no form of plagiarism will be tolerated. Study York’s policies here and here. The use of any form of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to produce or modify text for an assignment is plagiarism and will not be tolerated.
- Password protected files for the course, which are used under fair dealing provisions for the purpose of education, are for course use only and should not be redistributed in any form.
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Key Questions to engage throughout the course in the fishbowl, in discussions, and in article presentations:
- Overall, we want to think about: what is a scholar doing, how does she go about it, what tools is she using, and what are the results? Also, where are some of the strengths and weaknesses in this overall approach? What does the method highlight or miss? In other words, while we are interested in what scholars study or talk about, we are more interested in how they go about it, in the nuances of their procedure, and in what types of things come out of the procedure.
- How would you describe the scholar’s approach? What is the primary discipline in which a scholar is trained and how does that affect their approach? What disciplines do these tools come from and is there interdisciplinarity? E.g.: What is sociology, anthropology, ritual studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, etc? What methods, tools, or approaches does a particular scholar take and what are the procedures involved?
- What assumptions and categories are at work? What theories or assumptions underlie the positions espoused? What categories, concepts or terms are used and how are they defined (or are they defined)? How self-conscious or explicit is a scholar about her stance, assumptions or the categories she employs? How might postcolonial studies help us to examine these dimensions of the issue?
- What impact does the scholar’s position have? How do the social and cultural settings of scholars affect how they approach their subject and what they do or do not see? What position does the scholar view the world from and how does this shape both the methods and results? In what ways may imperialism, colonialism and the postcolonial situation impact such studies?
- What problems do these studies raise regarding our use of categories, particularly “religion” and the “religious”?
- What theorizing is done? How careful is a scholar in moving from the specific to the general? How do they go about theorizing from case studies?
- What does the scholar argue and is it convincing? What are the principal aims of a scholar?
- What kinds of materials or evidence does the scholar employ? How does selection of evidence affect the results?
- How does the approach of one scholar compare to others we have encountered? What difference does methodology make for the results of what we find? How does the scholar engage the findings, arguments, or theories of other scholars, particularly with regard to methods and theories?
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Discussion schedule:
Week 1 (Jan 8): Introduction
- Reading distributed in class: portions of Nongbri, “What do we mean by religion?” (link); Arnal and McCutcheon, “On the Definition of Religion” (link)
Week 2 (Jan 15): Sociological approaches 1 – Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) on religion as society
- Readings (everyone):
- Durkheim, “Origins of These Beliefs (Conclusion),” excerpts (link)
- Matthias Koenig, “Emile Durkheim and the Sociology of Religion” in The Oxford Handbook of Émile Durkheim, pages 1-9 up to “Durkheimian Legacies” (link)
- Riesebrodt and Konieczny, “Sociology of Religion” in Routledge Companion, focussing on pages 125-134 as an overview of how the discipline of sociology approaches things (link)
- Documentary film (in class): “Edward Said On Orientalism [1998]” (first 28 minutes of video; link)
Week 3 (Jan 22): Framing our exploration of methods in the study of religion, with insights from postcolonialism
- Readings:
- Video in class to prepare us for anthropological approaches: “Strange Beliefs – Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard” (53 minutes; link)
Week 4 (Jan 29): Cultural anthropological approaches 1 – Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) on “witchcraft” and “religion”
- Readings (everyone):
- Fishbowl (students who together begin our discussion for the first 15 minutes of class): Nasra, Nike, Alessia, Abraham C.
- Article presentation options (only the presenters read the article):
- Presenters:
- Bianca on Arens, “Evans-Pritchard and the Prophets” (link)
- Possible audio podcast: “Descriptions of Religion as Explanations of Religion with Kathryn Lofton and John Modern” (link)
Week 5 (Feb 5): Cultural anthropological approaches 2 – Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) on culture and symbolic systems
- Readings (everyone):
- Fishbowl: Mikayla, Grace, Emily, Eniola, Edouard, Jedidiah,
- Article presentation options (only the presenters read the article): Bacigalupo, “The Mapuche Man Who Became a Woman Shaman” (link)
- Presenters:
- Michael on Johnson, “Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, and the Sudan Political Service” (link)
- Joseph on Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (link)
- Samantha on Schlehe, “Concepts of Asia, the West and the Self in Contemporary Indonesia” (link)
- Pavanpreet on Geertz, “‘Internal Conversion’ in Contemporary Bali” (link)
- (Christopher) on Fox, “Why Do Balinese Make Offerings?” (link)
Week 6 (Feb 12): *In class essay on Nongbri’s Before Religion*
- Readings: Nongbri, Before Religion (ebook link)
*Reading week Feb 14-20*
Week 7 (Feb 26): Sociological approaches 2 – New Religious Movements in modern contexts
- Videos (watch before meeting):
- “Sociology of Religion (Prof. Peter Kivisto of Augustana College)” (15 minutes; link);
- Readings (everyone):
- Fishbowl: Samantha, Brooklyn, Giuseppina, Bianca, Jessica, (Gurleen)
- Article presentation options (only the presenters read the article): Trinh and Hall, “The Violent Path of Aum Shinrikyō” (link); Feraro, “The Return of Baal to the Holy Land” (link)
- Presenters:
- Video (to watch together in class, if there is time):
- “Patocka Memorial Lecture: Peter L. Berger – Toward a New Paradigm for Modernity and Religion” (starting at 15:45, watching 1 hour; link)
Week 8 (March 5): Social Psychological approaches: Intergroup relations and processes of identification
- Videos (watch before meeting):
- Readings (everyone):
- Verkuyten and Yildiz, “Muslim Immigrants and Religious Group Feelings: Self-Identification and Attitudes Among Sunni and Alevi Turkish-Dutch” (link)
- Cherry, “Differences of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation” (link), for some definitions to help you understand the article by Jackson and Hunsberger
- Jackson and Hunsberger, “An Intergroup Perspective on Religion and Prejudice” (link)
- Fishbowl: Jasmine, (Luke,) Joseph, Marrie, (Christopher,) (Adam,) Pavanpreet, Michael
- Article presentation options (only the presenters read the article): Hakola, “Social Identities and Group Phenomena in Second Temple Judaism” (link)
- Presenters:
- Giuseppina on Saroglou, Yzerbyt, and Kaschten, “Meta-stereotypes of Groups with Opposite Religious Views” (link)
- Grace on Esler, “Social Identity and the Epistle to the Galatians” (link)
- Emily on Curtis and Olson, “Identification with Religion” (link)
- Alessia on Sedgwick, “Sects in the Islamic World” (link)
Week 9 (March 12): Ritual studies approaches / Extra student presentations
- Readings (everyone):
- Bell, “Basic Genres of Ritual Action” (link) – Group discussion of Bell, but no fishbowl due to additional presentations
- Article presentation options (only the presenter reads the article):
- Presenters:
- Video (in class, if there is time):
- Ronald Grimes, “Ritual Studies: Practicing the Craft” (16 minutes; link)
Week 10 (March 19): Postcolonial approaches, 1 – “World Religions” and other problematic categories
- Readings (everyone):
- Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, page xi-xiv, 1-21, 107-120 (link)
- Fishbowl: Everyone
- Videos (watch in class):
- Article presentation options (only the presenter reads the article): Chidester, “Ritual and Magic” (link); Kitiarsa, “Beyond Syncretism: Hybridization of Popular Religion in Contemporary Thailand” (link); Chidester, “Classify and Conquer” (link); Covington-Ward, “Unearthing the Stories of Kongo Female Prophets in Colonial Belgian Congo, 1921–1960” (link)
- Presenters:
Week 11 (March 26): *In class essay on King’s Orientalism and Religion*
- Readings: King, Orientalism and Religion (link)
- Read the following for preparation and to understand key scholarly concepts, particularly “orientalism” and “mysticism” (as a subcategory of “religion”): introduction (all), chapter 1 (pages 7-14, 28-34), and chapter 4 (all)
- Study and analyze in detail the arguments of chapters 5 (on “Hinduism”) and 7 (on “Buddhism”) so that you can clearly explain them to someone else in a written essay. (If you wish, you are permitted to bring a print-out of chapters 5 and 7 with only your own markings and written comments on them. If you do bring the chapters, I will need to examine your print-outs to ensure that no AI was used and that all notes are your own).
Week 12 (April 2 — MEETING BY ZOOM: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/92070904400): Postcolonial approaches, 2 – Canadian and African contexts as examples
- Readings (everyone):
- Niezen, “Learning to Forget [at residential schools],” pages 46-76 (first 31 pages of the pdf) only (link)
- Video (watch together on zoom):
- Birgit Meyer (anthropologist), “What is ‘Religion’ in Africa?” (first 47 minutes; link)
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ASSIGNMENTS, PRESENTATIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS
Fishbowl discussion (first 15 minutes of meeting, students marked individually):
- For most weeks, four or five students as a group will begin discussion of that weeks main readings with the rest of us observing quietly and, eventually (after 15 minutes), joining the discussion. Our focus questions for the course may be a guide for some issues to explore in the fishbowl. You will also want to show how the current week’s readings relate to other things we have been learning in the course.
- There is no need for the group to meet or discuss things in advance. In fact, it is preferred that you don’t since this is not a coordinated presentation but rather a somewhat spontaneous discussion based on your own careful readings of the materials.
Article presentations (usually in the second half of class):
- Focussing on the scholar’s approach or methods, explain the main arguments of the author while also demonstrating what sorts of subjects and sources occupy the scholar (10 minutes maximum). Be sure to provide concrete examples of how the scholar approaches evidence.
Two in-class essays
- Before the essay week, carefully read and study the assigned book, taking careful notes that focus on the scholar’s:
- main arguments
- methods or approach, and
- use of evidence to support his or her points.
- A week or two before the essay, we will discuss what to look for and think about in preparation.
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