Courses

Required Seminar

RLR 700R: Introduction to the Interdisciplinary Study of Religious Practices

This course serves as an introduction to the study of religion through an examination of religious practices. We look comparatively at a variety of approaches and lenses, within religious and theological studies, reading both work describing theory and method and works studying religious practices. Throughout we keep trying to be attentive to how religions are lived and practiced and how best we can understand these practices. As their major project, students study one religious practice, drawing upon one or more of the theoretical and methodological frameworks presented. The course is conducted in seminar format. Students are expected to participate in seminar discussions, be co-presenters of the weekly topics, and prepare a research project.

The seminar is offered each year in the spring semester, normally co-taught by two faculty from different courses of study in the Graduate Division of Religion

Bibliographies of previous versions of the course have included

Dorothy Bass and Miroslav Volf, Practicing Theology
Courtney Bender, Heaven's Kitchen, Living Religion at God's Love, We Deliver
Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice or The Logic of Practice
Thomas Csordas, The Sacred Self
Marie Griffith, God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission
Laurel Kendall, The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman
Saba Mahmood, The Politics of Piety
Dianne Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey
Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Let the Children Come
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam
Joyce Flueckiger, In Amma's Healing Room
Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church
Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts
John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research
Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols
Unni Wikan, Managing Turbulent Hearts
Claire Wolfteich, Lord Have Mercy

Course Faculty

Spring 2004: Liz Bounds & Tom Long
Spring 2005: Liz Bounds & Joyce Flueckiger
Spring 2006: Liz Bounds & Bobbi Patterson
Spring 2007: Liz Bounds & Don Seeman
Spring 2008: Liz Bounds & Joyce Flueckiger
Spring 2009: Thomas E. Frank

Course Syllabi

Spring 2007
Spring 2008
Spring 2009