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HREL 30100: Introduction to and the Human Sciences

Spring Quarter 2007 Christian K. Wedemeyer T/Th 10:30-11:50 Swift 310B ([email protected]) Swift Hall Room 106 Office Hours: M 9:30–10:30 & T 12:00–13:00

Teaching assistants: Anne Mocko ([email protected]) Mandy Burton ([email protected])

Course description: This course is intended to give MA students in the Divinity School a glimpse of the history of the development of the “scientific” study of religion in the modern period, and to introduce a range of perspectives and methods employed in contemporary practice. The first half of the quarter will be devoted to analyzing two styles of approach to this study: what have been called the “naturalistic” and the “phenomenological.” These two roughly correspond to a) the impulse to explore religious phenomena as of a piece with (or, in a stronger form, “reducible to”) other cultural and social phenomena for which established disciplinary frameworks are sufficient, and b) the impulse to consider religion as distinct in a special way (what is sometimes called sui generis) and thus requiring a unique disciplinary framework for its proper study. An issue in the background here, of relevance to the concerns of the MA sequence, is: to what extent is the study of religion a discrete and/or unitary field of study? This latter question will be carried over to the second half of the course, which will consist of a series of guest lectures by faculty from the Religion and the Human Sciences Committee. Each lecturer will present one aspect or approach representative of work today in the humanistic and social scientific study of religion, frequently drawing from their own work. Requirements include: a) active (or at least attentive) participation in both the semi- weekly lecture/discussion meetings and the weekly TA discussion sections, b) completion of two open-book, self-timed take-home exams in which themes from the readings and presentations will be explored.

PQ: Open only to Divinity School MA/AMRS students

All readings will be available on reserve: principally electronic, but also regular in Regenstein Library.

Schedule of Meetings

27 March 2007: Orientation/Overview Topics: syllabus, course aims and structure Readings: none

Part One: Propædeutic

29 March 2007: Historiography of the Modern Study of Religion (Its “Pre-history”) Readings: Sharpe, : A History, pp. 1–26 Jordan, Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth, pp. 99–158

Introduction to Religion and the Human Sciences Spring 2007

3 April 2007: Founders (Naturalism): David Hume Readings: Hume, Natural History of Religion (entire)

5 April 2007: Founders (Phenomenology): F. Max Müller Readings: Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 1–82

Part Two: Naturalism

10 April 2007: and Praxis Readings: Tylor, Primitive Culture, pp. 1–25 Robertson-Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, pp. 1–27

12 April 2007: Durkheim & the Sociology of Religion Readings: Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, pp. 13–63

17 April 2007: Leuba & the Psychology of Religion Readings: Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, pp. vii–x, 3–54 and “Appendix” (pp. 339–361)

Part Three: Phenomenology

19 April 2007: Irenic and Evolutionary: The World Parliament of , 1893 Readings: Seager, The Dawn of Religious Pluralism, pp. 15–31, 43–51, 202–206, 251–280, 325–27, 331–344, 352–354, 397–450, 453–475.

24 April 2007: Otto and van der Leeuw (early 20th cent. Religionswissenschaft) Readings: Otto, The Idea of the Holy, pp. 1–40, 175–178 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, pp. 671–695

26 April 2007: Wach, Eliade and the “Chicago School” (late 20th cent. Religionswissenschaft) Readings: Wach, “The Meaning and Task of the History of Religions” Wach, “The Problem of Truth in Religion” Eliade, “History of Religions and a New Humanism” Eliade, “Foreword” to *Mid-term examination distributed*

1 May 2007: Discussion: Unity, Plurality, and the Scientific Study of Religions Readings: Fitzgerald, The Ideology of , pp. 3–32 *Mid-term examination due at the beginning of class*

3 May 2007: Literary Critical Methods in the Study of Religion (Michael Murrin) Topics: How does/can one distinguish between literary criticism and scholarship on religion? Readings: Murrin, “Athena and Telemachus”

8 May 2007: Semiological Analysis of Religious Discourses (Christian Wedemeyer) Topics: The semiological analysis of ritual and scripture Readings: Wedemeyer, “Beef, Dog, and Other Mythologies”

2 Introduction to Religion and the Human Sciences Spring 2007

10 May 2007: Studying Religion Civilizationally (Steven Collins) Topics: Texts and history; nirvāṇa and 'salvation'; asceticism, gender and the work of civilization Readings: Collins, “Civilization and the Single Woman” Collins, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities, pp.1–46, 72–117, 563–74

15 May 2007: Narrative and the Study of Religion (Rick Rosengarten) Topics: The analysis of narrative; various schools (including Narratology) Readings: William Carlos Williams, “The Use of Force” E. Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar” P. Ricouer, “Emplotment: A Reading of Aristotle’s Poetics”

17 May 2007: Liturgy, Art, and Aesthetics (Robert Bird) Topics: Definition & defense of the icon; Orthodox Christian aesthetics & modern art; the role of narrative Readings: John of Damascus, “Three Treatises on the Divine Images” Pavel Florensky, "The Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery and Russia" Robert Bird, “Canonizing Andrei Rublev” Viewings: "The Face Not Made by Human Hands" Andrei Rublev, "Old Testament Trinity" Simon Ushakov, "Old Testament Trinity" Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin, "Trinity" Pavel Filonov, "The Three"

22 May 2007: Women, Dogs, and Other Subalterns in the History of (Wendy Doniger) Topics: The challenges of religious historiography of subaltern groups Readings: Doniger, “Introduction” to Hinduism: An Alternative History

24 May 2007: of Religion (Malika Zehgal) Topics: The “interpretative turn” in ethnographic method in the study of religion Readings: Ricoeur, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text” Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System”

29 May 2007: Contemporary Media and the of Religion (Richard Fox) Topics: The Geertz/Asad Debate Readings: Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System” (review) Asad, “Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category”

31 May 2007: Concluding discussion; final exam distributed

** Final, take-home exam due Tuesday 5 June at 3:00PM in Swift 204 **

3 Introduction to Religion and the Human Sciences Spring 2007

Bibliography

Sharpe, Eric J. Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd edition. London: Duckworth, 1986.

Jordan, Henry Louis. Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1905.

Hume, David. “The Natural History of Religion” in Four Dissertations. London: A. Millar, 1757.

Müller, F. Max. Introduction to the Science of Religion. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882.

Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. Volume one. New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1924.

Robertson Smith, William. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1894.

Durkheim, Émile. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. 1915. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

Leuba, James Henry. A Psychological Study of Religion: Its Origin, Function and Future. New York: Macmillan, 1912.

Seager, Richard Hughes, ed. The Dawn of Religious Pluralism: Voices from the World’s Parliament of Religions, 1893. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1993.

Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational factor in the Divine and its Relation ot the Rational. London: Oxford University Press, 1950. van der Leeuw, Gerardus. Religion in Essence and Manifestation, vol. 2. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1963.

Wach, Joachim. “The Meaning and Task of the History of Religions,” in Kitagawa, ed., The History of Religions: Essays in the Problem of Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 1–19.

Wach, Joachim. “The Problem of Truth in Religion,” in J. Kitagawa, ed., Understanding and Believing (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 146–154.

Eliade, Mircea. “The History of Religions and a New Humanism,” in M. Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 1–11.

Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), Foreword, pp. xi–xxii.

Fitzgerald, Timothy. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Murrin, Michael. “Athena and Telemachus” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 13, no. 4 (Spring 2007), pp. 499–514.

Wedemeyer, Christian K. “Beef, Dog, and Other Mythologies: Connotative Semiotics in Mahāyoga Tantra Ritual and Scripture” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (forthcoming, June 2007).

Collins, Steven. “Civilization and the Single Woman” (unpublished talk, 2006)

Collins, Steven. Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pali Imaginaire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Williams, William Carlos. “The Use of Force”

Auerbach, Erich. “Odysseus’ Scar” in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, (Princeton,

4 Introduction to Religion and the Human Sciences Spring 2007

Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 3-23

Ricouer, Paul. “Emplotment: A Reading of Aristotle’s Poetics” in P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 31-51.

John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images, trans. Andrew Louth (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003), pp. 19-58.

Florensky, Pavel. "The Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery and Russia" (pdf).

Bird, Robert. “Canonizing Andrei Rublev: Aesthetics, Ideology, and the Making of a Russian Saint.” The Trinity- Sergius Lavra in Russian History and Culture. Ed. Vladimir Tsurikov. Jordanville: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2005: 122-140.

Doniger, “Introduction” to Hinduism: An Alternative History (forthcoming from Penguin)

Ricoeur, Paul. “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text” Social Research 38(3), pp. 529–62

Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” and “Religion as a Cultural System” in , The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3–30 and 87–125.

Asad, Talal. “Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category” in Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in and ( and London: Press, 1993), pp. 27–54.

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