SAMPLE SYLLABUS – This syllabus is provided as a sample. Some course content
may vary.
DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA, CULTURE, AND COMMUNICATION
E59.1340
Religion and Media
Bertrand Russell long ago declared that religion belonged to the infancy of human
history, in a statement that expressed the secular self-understanding of an enlightened
European of his time. By comparison, at least from the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, it
has been clear that in a country like the United States, religious affiliation has not
diminished with the advance of historical time. If anything the movement has been in a
contrary direction, with religion having increased in social and political influence, with
effects that reverberate across the globe today.
The disparity between Continental and American perceptions reflects a failure to
understand the place of religion in modern society, and to relate changes in religious
practice to historical change. It is not simply in traditional, backward or disadvantaged
societies that religion thrives, but in the very heart of modern society, so to speak. The
legislative approach to sequester religion and keep it in its place, widely practiced, rarely
has the desired results. Religion turns out to be mediated in new ways, to sacralize new
forms of connection, to mark out new relations between the sacred and the profane.
This course will examine some key writings on the topic of religion, including Max
Weber, Clifford Geertz, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Emile Durkheim and Talal Asad. The
changing modes of religion’s mediation will be addressed by examining key historical
controversies over the place of religion, including the Scopes trial (Darwinism v.
evolutionism), the Salman Rushdie blasphemy debates in the U.K., the headscarf
controversy in Europe, the Danish cartoon controversy, and debates over Al Qaeda,
recent terrorism, and the war in Iraq, including the growth of practices of political action
and martyrdom that are apparently fueled and partly enacted via technological media.
Course requirements and Grading Criteria:
Students must read assigned readings and participate in class discussions. They will
select a research topic, with the approval of the instructor, where they will undertake field
investigation and library research.
Students will be assessed on classroom attendance and participation, and in their written
submissions, on the basis of the clarity of their writing, and on the quality of their
understanding of course texts and class lectures. A reasonable level of clarity and
comprehension will receive a ‘B’ while those demonstrating originality of thought and
SAMPLE SYLLABUS – This syllabus is provided as a sample. Some course content
may vary.
initiative in making connections between readings will merit an ‘A.’C will denote
careless or clumsy work, and D will signal a dismal level of effort.
In addition to class attendance and participation (10%), and a research project (40%)
there will be a midterm exam (25%), and a final research paper (25%).
Student Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to critically assess contemporary debates on religion and politics in
the United States, and place them in relation to global debates about the place of religion
and their modes of manifestation in the modern world. Students will undertake a
research project, and thus learn to frame and investigate questions empirically, and to
write research reports.
Section One: Weeks 1&2
History Overtakes Religion
Theorizations of the decline or the sublimation of religion in modernity, mediated
variously by world history, nationalism, capitalism, the division of labor, and uneven
development, and responses to such theorizations.
Emile Durkheim, “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” from Michael Lambek ed.
A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 34-49.
Max Weber, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” from Lambek ibid., pp.
50-60.
Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” from Lambek, ibid., pp. 61-82.
Talal Asad, “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category,” from
Lambek, ibid., pp. 114-132.
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam. Johns Hopkins University Press,1993.
Section Two: Weeks 3-4
The Return of the Religious
The different career of religion in the U.S.; the increasing separation of religion from
nationalism in different parts of the world; theorizing religion as mediation;
understanding the sacralization of technology in the modern world.
Selections from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Vol. 2. Tr. Harvey C.
Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Selections from José Casanova, Public religions in the modern world. Chicago :
University of Chicago Press, 1994
SAMPLE SYLLABUS – This syllabus is provided as a sample. Some course content
may vary.
Section Three: Weeks 5-6
Sacred democracy, profane Islam, holy terror
Bruce Lincoln, Holy terrors : thinking about religion after September 11. Chicago :
University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Klaus Milich, “Fundamentalism Hot and Cold: George W. Bush and the "Return of the
Sacred," Cultural Critique - Number 62, Winter 2006, pp. 92-125.
Faisal Devji, “Osama bin Laden's message to the world.” http://opendemocracy.net 21
Dec. 2005
----. “Spectral brothers: al-Qaida's world wide web.” From http://opendemocracy.net. 19
Aug 2005
WEEK SEVEN : MIDTERM EXAM
Historical Retrospective on Politicized Religion in the U.S.:
Creationism and its Advocacy
(Week 8-9)
Jeffrey P. Moran, The Scopes trial : a brief history with documents. New York :
Palgrave, 2002.
David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers. eds. When Science & Christianity meet
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2003.
Edward B. Davis, “Fundamentalism and Folk Science between the Wars,”
Religion and American Culture , Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 217-248
Marjorie George, “And Then God Created Kansas? The Evolution/Creationism Debate in
America's Public Schools ,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review > Vol. 149, No. 3
(Jan., 2001), pp. 843-872.
Unveiling Europe, Covering Islam: Salman Rushdie, the Headscarf Controversy,
and Debates Over the Danish Cartoons
(Weeks 10-11)
Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See
the Rest of the World. Vintage, 1997 (revised ed.)
Talal Asad, “Ethnography, Literature, and Politics: Some Readings and Uses of Salman
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1990), pp.
239-269.
Tanil Bora, “Nationalist Discourses in Turkey,” The South Atlantic Quarterly - Volume
102, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 433-456.
Emilie Olson, “Muslim Identity and Secularism in Turkey: The Headscarf Dispute.”
Anthropological Quarterly v. 58, n. 4, 1986, pp. 161-171.
Francis Fukuyama, "Europe vs. Radical Islam ", Policy Review, 27 February 2006.
SAMPLE SYLLABUS – This syllabus is provided as a sample. Some course content
may vary.
Heiko Henkel. "‘The journalists of Jyllands-Posten are a bunch of reactionary
provocateurs’ The Danish cartoon controversy and the self-image of Europe", Radical
Philosophy, May/June 2006.
Pernille Ammitzbøll and Lorenzo Vidino , “After the Danish Cartoon Controversy,”
Middle East Quarterly. Winter 2007Vol XIV No. 1
Faisal Devji: “Back to the future: the cartoons, liberalism, and global Islam.” From
http://opendemocracy.net 13 - 04 – 2006.
Weeks 12-15: Student research presentations in class.