Master
2023/2024
Аnthropology of Religion
Type:
Compulsory course (Culture Studies)
Area of studies:
Cultural Studies
Delivered by:
Department of History
Where:
Faculty of Humanities
When:
1 year, 1 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Instructors:
Dmitriy Oparin
Master’s programme:
Culture Studies
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
3
Contact hours:
24
Course Syllabus
Abstract
Questions of religion have been central to anthropology from its beginnings and remain so today when religion (re)emerges as a global force. While early scholarship perceived religious phenomena through the skeptical lens of secular science, recent critiques have brought up anthropology’s own orthodoxies and the need for theoretical and methodological renewal. Every new paradigm took up the challenge to explain religion and its pervasiveness in human culture and society. The anthropology of religion emerged out of such creative tensions as a vibrant field of theoretical inquiry and impressive scholarship. The course is structured around major themes that have shaped the study of religion, exploring topics such as discipline, agency, gender, mediation, the secular and secularism, religious worlds, and the ethnography of religion, aiming for a deep and critical understanding of religion in various cultures and societies.
Learning Objectives
- The aim of the course is to introduce students into current theoretical debates in the filed of anthropology of religion.
- The aim of the course is to discuss anthropological approach to the study of religion
Course Contents
- Problems of definition
- Varieties of Secularism
- Morality, Ethics and Self-cultivation
- Religious Temporalities and Regimes of Historicities
- Religion, Mediation and Aesthetics s of Presence
- Secular sensibilities in a postsecular age
- Trading with God(s)
Assessment Elements
- presentation of a text at the seminar, organization of discussion in class
- home exam - two short essays
- homework
