REL 480
Religious Studies and Colonialism

Dr. Tim Murphy

Office: 209 Manly Hall
Office Phone: 348-8513
Office Hour: TBA
Course: M 3:00-5:30
Course number: 14816
Location: 210 Manly Hall

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

To open these 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. If you still have difficulty accessing these readings, then contact the instructor by email.

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 late

Description

This course will survey modern Western religious thought and the history of the study of religion in light of the historical relationship between European colonizers and non-European colonies. We will look at the "power/knowledge" correlation established in Christian Theology and the discipline of Religious Studies as European scholars define, classify, interpret, and explain—or otherwise construct—the phenomenon of "religion," often taking the "primitives" of their colonies as data for their reflective, academic activity. We will read some of the major texts of modern theology and of the history the study of religion, including such thinkers as Hegal, Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Otto, and others. We will also look at contemporary theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Edward Said who use analytical methods to critique the Eurocentric ways in which "knowledge" is constructed in the colonial/post-colonial/neo-colonial situation(s).

Spring 2009 Syllabus (PDF)

Books

Otto, Rudolf, Harvey, John translator
The Idea of the Holy (paperback)
ISBN: 0195002105
Publisher: Oxford Univ Press USA; 2 edition

Wilhelm, Georg; Hegel, Fredrich
The Philosophy of History (paperback) ISBN: 0486437558
Publisher: Dover Pub Reissue edition 2004

Samson, Jane
Race and Empire
ISBN: 0582418372
Publisher: Longman 2005

Gandhi, Leela
Postcolonial Theory (paperback)
ISBN: 0231112734
Publisher: Columbia Univ Press 1998

Troeltsch, Ernst
The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions
ISBN: 1592441254
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers 2003

Readings

Hegel Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (PDF)

Religion Faith & Knowledge, Derrida (PDF)

Tiele Outlines (PDF)