REL 105
Honors Introduction to Religious Studies

Prof. Rob Stephens
robert.stephens@ua.edu

Office: Manly 202
Class: Wednesday, 2:00-4:40
Location: Manly 200-A
Office Hours: Tuesday, 3:30-4:30 or by appointment

About Online Readings

Some of the online readings for this course are posted in the form of PDF files (Portable Document Format), some of which are stored on the Department's "secure" server, and are therefore not freely available on the Internet.

To open such 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.

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).

As the honors introduction to the academic study of religion, REL 105 examines in greater detail than REL 100 theories of the historic origin and contemporary social function of religion in relation to wider sets of human beliefs, social practices, institutions, and culture in general.

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.

The course is structured around lectures and student presentations and is open to Honors, and "Honors eligible," students (those not enrolled in the Honors College but holding a 3.3 GPA).

Fall 2005 syllabus (PDF)

Spring 2006 Syllabus (PDF)

Readings

Russell McCutcheon, "Insides, Outsides, and the Scholar of Religion"

Russell McCutcheon, "What is the Academic Study of Religion" (PDF)

Malory Nye, Religion: The Basics, chapter one (PDF)

The following articles are from Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies (1999). Students will need to know their Bama ID and Password to open these PDF files.

"Introduction" and Chapter 1 (PDF)

Chapters 2 and 3 (PDF)

Chapters 8 and 9 (PDF)

Chapters 4 and 6 (PDF)

Chapters 9 and 21 (PDF)

Chapters 18 and 20 (PDF)