Undergraduate Courses
Rhetoric
105T: Rhetoric of Religious Discourse
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ScheduledSpring 2012 Instructor(s)
Daniel Boyarin
In this course, the genealogy of "religion" as a name, a concept, an institution, will be investigated. We will be interrogating the origins of this concept in a peculiarly western (read Christian) environment and looking at its effects as an episteme (a regime of knowledge/power) in a broadly defined imperial discourse. After a few weeks of more theoretical conversation we will turn to the case of "Judaism" as a product of colonial discourse.
Required Reading
- Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993 ISBN: 0801846315
- Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. The Meaning and End of Religion. London: SPCK, 1978 ISBN: 0281035768
- Chidester, David. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1996081391664X (alk. paper)
- Nickelsburg, George W. E., and James C. VanderKam, trans. and eds. I Enoch: A New Translation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8006-3694-5
- Dubuisson, Daniel. The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology. Trans. William Sayers. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.ISBN. 0801887569 (ISBN13: 9780801887567) whichever one is the paperback.
Suggested Reading
It would be well to refresh oneself by reading Foucault's
Discipline and Punish before the semester begins.