This course is an introduction to the study of religion in the social sciences. It examines what people do with religion and what religion does to people. The guiding thread of this course is to investigate how “religion” itself as a category is debated and contested. A question we will regularly return to is: what counts as religion and who gets to decide? The course is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the definitions of religion that have been provided by classical authors. Part 2 analyzes the intersections of religion with other social categories such as class, gender and race. Part 3 interrogates the politics of religion and how States, international organizations, political actors and citizens grapple with religion, how they seek to regulate it or how they use it to further political ends. The course is interdisciplinary and exposes students to various approaches of religion rooted in political science, sociology, history and anthropology. By the end of this course, students will be equipped with theoretical and methodological tools to best appraise the place of religion in contemporary societies and discuss such complex and debated issues as secularism, fundamentalism, religious freedom, religious discrimination.
Juliette GALONNIER,Elisabeth MILJKOVIC
Séminaire
English
There is no prerequisite for this course. Students should have some general knowledge in the social and human sciences and should be ready to engage in collective discussions on topics related to religion, secularism, inequality.
Spring 2023-2024
Participation (10%): oral participation in class and/or posting very short comments on Moodle about weekly readings.
Response paper (40%): Students will have to write a 4-page response paper to one of the readings of the course. Select one reading and explore how this reading can be used to make sense of an event related to religion in the most recent news or in recent contemporary history.
Collective case study (50%): Students will gather in groups of 5 to 6 students to work on a controversy involving different actors over the category of religion (a predetermined list of topics will be provided). They
will have to find relevant first-hand sources (archives, media articles, policy documents, courts rulings, social media posts, possibly interviews with key actors, etc.) to study the arguments made about religion by each side of the controversy and rely on secondary sources (academic articles and books) to frame the controversy. Mentorship sessions with the TA will be organized during the semester to help towards the completion of the project. Students will be evaluated on three outputs for this collective project:
1/ A 10-minute poster presentation on the last day of class (10%);
2/ A 12-page final report mapping the controversy (30%);
3/ A visual webpage that will be publicly available on the website of the course (10%).
Emile Durkheim, 1912, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The Free Press, 1995 (excerpts).
Ahmet T. Kuru, 2007, Passive and assertive secularism: Historical conditions, ideological struggles, and state policies toward religion, World Politics, vol. 59, n°4, p. 568-594.
Sean McCloud, 2007, Putting some class into religious studies: Resurrecting an important concept, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol.75, n°4, p. 840-862.
Anya Topolski, 2018, The race-religion constellation: A European contribution to the critical philosophy of race, Critical Philosophy of Race, vol. 6, n°1, p. 58-81.
Linda Woodhead, 2007, Gender differences in religious practice and significance," in The Sage handbook of the sociology of religion, edited by James A. Beckford and N. J. Demerath III, Sage, p. 566-586.