M. Gail Hamner @ Syracuse University
(as collected by the The Wabash Center)
This course accepts religion as a pervasive and active cultural event. Side-stepping the dilemmas inherent in defining the term, the course approaches religion through the interaction (dissonances, synergy) of filmic texts, linguistic texts and conversation. As one religionist has said, religion is less an ‘object’ of analysis than an ‘occasion’ for analysis. Over the weeks of this course we can use our own and others’ understandings of religion as occasions for analyzing the conditions of being human, namely, how the religious crystallizes and reflects the political, economic, social, and sexual parameters of human cultures.