ANTHRO 738

Anthropology & World Religions


Please note: this is archived course information from 2019 for ANTHRO 738.

Description

This course engages classic and contemporary issues in the anthropology of globally connected and locally practised religions. This global–local concurrence embeds world religions in key contemporary issues: connections and hybridity; cultural change, continuity and alternate modernities; power, inequality and agency; experience, embodiment and emotion; reflexivity and disciplinary possibilities; and so on.

Religion, a key topic in anthropology since its beginning, has become an increasingly prominent aspect of our world and, given its ever-more vexed place in public consciousness and political action, is likely to remain a central topic. And, since the majority of human beings belong to one of the world religions, it is unsurprising that these have dominated disciplinary approaches to religion in recent decades.

In any given year, the course will focus on one of the world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and so on) or on a particular issue involving one or more of them (e.g., religious nationalism, issues in conversion, and so on). In 2019, the focus will be on Anthropological Approaches to Islam.

Classes consist of linked seminar sequences addressing a key theme or debate as approached in selected ethnographies.

View the course syllabus.

Availability 2019

Semester 2

Lecturer(s)

Coordinator(s) Dr Christine Dureau

Reading/Texts

TBA

Points

ANTHRO 738: 15 points