Syllabi Archive

A 2001 course by Courtney Bender at Columbia University analyzes "religion as it is embedded in and related to other aspects of social and cultural systems" with a primary focus "on contemporary North American religions."

A 2013 course by Christopher Ellison at the University of Texas-San Antonio examines "the dominant theories of religion and look at the ways in which sociologists use multiple types of empirical data . . . to study religion as a social institution."

A 2008 course by Christian Smith at the University of Notre Dame "provides an introduction to the long-standing and wide-ranging debates in sociology about secularization" and "what happens to religion under the conditions of modernity."

A course by Stephen D. Glazier at University of Nebraska-Lincoln offers a "cross-cultural examination of the structure, form, and functions of religious belief."

A 2006 course by Jim Watts at Syracuse University uses ritual theories to interpret practices with special attention to "cultural practices involving purification and pollution."

A course by Chad Bauman at Butler University provides "an intensive, roughly chronological overview of various approaches to the study of religion, as well as an introduction to some of the field's most prominent scholars."

A2007 course by Mark Hulsether at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville "provides an orientation to some of the major analytical frameworks for the academic study of religion."

A 2004 course by David Hall at Centre College explores "the idea of religion from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will look at the way in which religion is theorized and then studied in the fields of the history of religion, sociology, psychology, and philosophy."

A 2002 course by Ivan Strenski at the University of California-Riverside on significant theories and methods within the modern study of religion.

A 2016 course by Steven Weitzman at the University of Pennsylvania aims to develop the teaching capacity of students working "in a secular academic setting" about religion.