The Study of Religion: Past and Present

FAIN: FS-50266-10

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Kurtis R. Schaeffer (Project Director: March 2010 to April 2016)
Charles Mathewes (Co Project Director: March 2010 to April 2016)

A three-week summer seminar for sixteen college and university faculty exploring recent changes in the scholarly study of religion.

We propose a three-week seminar that brings together college and university faculty as well as advanced graduate students from the many disciplines that have a stake in understanding religion, for the purpose of coming to terms with the manifold changes in the study of religion that have occurred over the past decade. The seminar introduces participants to the enormously productive re-thinking of the idea of "religion" that has happened in recent years, in order to assist them in developing a richer and more nuanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and pitfalls, that come with using the category of "religion" to understand highly diverse manifestations of human practice and belief. The primary activity of the seminar will be close reading and discussion of important contemporary scholarship on the history, current hot spots, and teaching about religion, punctuated with lectures by specialists from select fields in the study of religion.