REL 299 Rituals to Riots: Why Religion Matters
Through religious traditions human beings have ordered their days, organized societies, and devised techniques for well-being. They created and found meaning in religious discourses, practices, art, and narratives, intertwining religion into all aspects of human life. Fostering connections and divisions, religion has been used to establish boundaries—insider/outsider, pure/impure, life/death, permissible/impermissible, sacred/mundane, male/female. It has been a tool of both the dominant and oppressed, a means of marginalization and liberation, and a resource for peacemakers and war-mongers, colonizers and colonized alike. Whether rituals or riots, politics or poetry, religion often provides context, comfort, rationale, strength, inspiration, or justification. Yet, ‘religion’ escapes simple definition. The diversity of religious traditions and cultures demands that we employ diverse and complex interdisciplinary approaches. In this course, we will explore various theories and methods in the study of religion—historical, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, feminist, queer—and come to better understand why religion matters.