Religion in Pre-Modern Societies and Cultures
Ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Asia, and elsewhere highlight the continuing importance of religion in modern societies. Study of the role of religion in the premodern world helps to historicize and problematize "religion" as a category, placing/testing it in diverse cultural, spatial and temporal contexts. This field is designed to introduce graduate students to a broad range of key issues in the vast scholarly literature on religion in the premodern world. Topics to be addressed include: the relationship between religion and other social institutions (gender and the family, class and economic institutions, ethnicity and race, the state and other political institutions); religious conflict (within and between religions); religious change (conversion, syncretism, reform and revival); religious culture (ritual, asceticism, mysticism, doctrine) and its relationship to other practices and the overall organization of knowledge.
Requirements
Two-three courses, covering at least two different geographical areas (e.g., Europe, Latin America, East Asia, North America). Students are also expected to undertake independent reading so as to achieve a coherent and sufficiently thorough understanding of the field as they have, in consultation with their two examiners, defined it.
Faculty
- KaiWing Chow
- Caroline Hibbard
- Craig Koslofsky
- Megan McLaughlin
- Gary Porton
- Cynthia Radding
- Carol Symes