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REL100.001
Introduction to the Study of Religion

Dr. Maha Marouan
mmarouan@bama.ua.edu

Office: Manly 109
Phone: 348-9841
Office Hours: TBA
Course Number: 30407
Class
: MTWRF, 8:30-12:30
Location: Manly 207


About Online Readings

Some of the online readings for this course are posted in the form of PDF files (Portable Document Format), some of which are stored on the Department's "secure" server, and are therefore not freely available on the Internet.

To open such files you must click on the links and, when prompted, enter your Bama ID and Password.

If you have forgotten your Bama ID, but know your Campus Wide ID (CWID), then please go here.

Those who need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 to open PDFs (a free software available on the web and which is already installed on all campus computers) can go here.

Note: larger PDFs can take a long time to download (due to a slow Internet connection) and a long time to print (depending on your printer). Some students may therefore wish to download these files in a computer lab on campus, and then either print them there or store them on a floppy disk or zip/junk drive (to read/print them later at home).

 

Description

This course examines the function of religion in culture; as a Core humanities course, the goal is for all students to learn to define, describe, and compare in a non-evaluative manner so as to discover similarities and differences in various forms of human behavior considered to be religious.


2010 Interim Syllabus (TBA)


Books

Daniel Pals,
Eight Theories of Religion
, (Oxford 1996)
ISBN: 0195165705

Denny, Frederick,
An Introduction to Islam
ISBN: 0023285192

Voeks, Robert,
Sacred Leaves of Candomble
ISBN: 0292787316


Readings

Sigmund Freud, "Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices" (PDF)

Jean-Paul Sartre, "Religion is an Attempt to Escape Responsibility" (PDF)

Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus" (PDF)

Horace Miner, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" (PDF)