Religious Studies (RELST-GA)

Students explore fundamental theoretical and methodological issues for the academic study of religion, including some of the more important theories of the origin, character, and function of religion as a human phenomenon. Students cover psychological, sociological, anthropological, dialectical, post-colonial and feminist approaches, as well as some problems for the study of religion today: secularization theory and the intersection of religion and media. Departmental permission required.

We tend to think of the secular as an absence of sorts: the neutral emptiness that remains once religion is removed. In this course, we will explore how the secular is imagined, represented, and produced. Like religion, the secular requires and creates particular images, sensibilities, regulations, practices, and beliefs. Like religion, it also operates through the authorization of certain forms of knowledge and the refusal of other actions and ideas as impossible. In everyday language, "secular" can imply a host of meanings, including atheist, profane, rational, or modern. We will work to give greater specificity to the concepts of secularism, secularization, and the secular. We will also address the presumed secularity of scholarly critique. What kinds of assumptions undergird scholarly inquiry? How do these assumption limit the agents, practices, and connections deemed significant or plausible? Together, we will take up the task of articulating what it means to live in a "secular age"—a framework which, although often invisible or implicit, establishes and limits much of what we experience, expect, and encounter in our daily lives.

Topics courses are taught by a variety of professors and center on a variety of subjects. At least one topics course is typically offered each semester. The current iteration of a topics course can be found on the Religious Studies website.

Topics courses are taught by a variety of professors and center on a variety of subjects. At least one topics course is typically offered each semester. The current iteration of a topics course can be found on the Religious Studies webpage.

This course takes us beyond text-centered dogma, philosophy, and scriptures toward lived religion in everyday life and practice: The study of bodies in their materiality of corporal performance and physical sensation. The course will introduce concepts of embodiment, subjectivity, agency, affect theory and the materialist turn. A variety of religious archives will be explored.

Topics courses are taught by a variety of professors and center on a variety of subjects. At least one topics course is typically offered each semester. The current iteration of a topics course can be found on the Religious Studies website.

The Religious Studies MA student will, in consultation with the Faculty Advisor, conduct research and write a scholarly Master’s Thesis on a specific topic within Religious Studies. The thesis must be at least 50 pages long and reviewed at the end of the last semester as the requirement of the degree by your two thesis advisors from NYU (at least one from the Religious Studies department).

The Religious Studies MA student will, in consultation with the Faculty Advisor, conduct research and write a scholarly Master’s Thesis on a specific topic within Religious Studies. The thesis must be at least 50 pages long and reviewed at the end of the last semester as the requirement of the degree by your two thesis advisors from NYU (at least one from the Religious Studies department).

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Christianity.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Christianity.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Judaism.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Judaism.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Islam.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on the subject of Islam.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing related to the subjects of Asian Religion.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing related to the subjects of Asian Religion.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on topics within the philosophy of religion.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on topics within the philosophy of religion.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on selected topics within religious studies.

A student works with one professor on a substantial project combining readings with in-depth writing on selected topics within religious studies.

This course will introduce you to the longstanding and complex connection between religious practices and various media, based upon the premise that, like all social practice, religion is always mediated in some form or other. Yet, religion does not function simply as unchanging content, while media names the ways that content is formed. Instead shifts in media technique, from ritual innovations to the invention of printing, through TV, to the internet, also shape religious practice. We are interested in gathering theoretical tools for understanding the form and politics of this mutual dialectic. We will analyze how human hearing, vision and the performing body have been used historically to express and maintain religious life through music, voice, images, words and rituals. Then we will spend time on more recent electronic media such as cassette, film, television, video, and the internet. We will consider, among other things: religious memory, both embodied and out-sourced in other media; role of TV in the rise of the Hindu Right; the material culture of Buddhism (icons, relics, sutras); religion and commodification; film as religious experience; Christian Evangelical media.