REL 105
Honors Introduction to Religious Studies
How has the European domination of non-Europeans
shaped our concept of "religion"?
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Dr. Tim Murphy
e-mail: tmurphy@bama.ua.edu
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Office: 209 Manly Hall
Office Phone: 348-8513
Office Hour: TBA
Course Number: 37373
Course: W 3:00-5:40
Location: 207 Manly Hall
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About Online Readings
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The online readings for this course are posted in the form
of PDF files (Portable Document Format), stored on the Department's
"secure" server, and are therefore not freely available
on the Internet.
To open these files you must click on the links and, when
prompted, enter your Bama ID and Password.
If you have forgotten your Bama ID, but know your Campus Wide
ID (CWID), then please go here.
If you still have difficulty accessing these readings, then
contact the instructor by email.
Those who need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0
to open PDFs (a free software available on the web and which
is already installed on all campus computers) can go here.
Note: larger PDFs can take a long time to download
(due to a slow Internet connection) and a long time to print
(depending on your printer). Some students may therefore wish
to download these files in a computer lab on campus, and then
either print them there or store them on a floppy disk or
zip/junk drive (to read/print them later at home).
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Description
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What is religion? How should it be defined? How should it
be studied or understood? This course will examine these issues
as they have arisen within the history of the study of religion.
For this semester, we will also look at the larger global,
historical context in which the study of religion began to
ask these questions. In particular, we will focus on the way
in which the study of religion has reflected the relationship
between European colonizers and non-European colonies. We
will read classic texts in the study of religion in light
of this context, as well as contemporary theorists who give
us tools to analyze this Eurocentric construction of a “power/knowledge”
correlation.
REL 105 carries a "Humanities" Core designation;
its goal is therefore to prompt students to learn to define,
accurately describe, and compare in a non-evaluative manner
so as to find similarities and differences in various forms
of human behavior--findings that have prompted scholars to
develop theories to account for how social movements persist
and change over time and place. Minimum 3.3 GPA required to
register.
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Spring
2007 Syllabus (PDF)
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Course Books
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Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel,
Introduction to the Philosophy of History (paperback)
ISBN: 0872200566
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R. Otto, John W. Harvey (Translator),
The Idea of the Holy (paperback)
ISBN: 0195002105
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Mircea Eliade,
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (paperback),
ISBN: 015679201X
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Readings
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Course readings may be added at the professors discretion
during the course.
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