Courses

Oral presentation topics (pdf file)

Oral Presentation Topics

Unit 1 | Unit 2 | Unit 3 | Unit 4 | Unit 5

• Unit 1: The nature of belief

4. (2/8) Belief and modernity

• Matt: Byron J. Good, “Medical anthropology and the problem of belief” in Medicine, rationality, and experience. (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1-24.

• Unit 2: Cosmology and ethics

5. (2/15) Cosmology in Religious Studies

• Open: Lawrence E. Sullivan, “Above, Below, or Far Away: Andean Cosmogony and Ethical Order” in  Cosmogony and Ethical Order, Lovin, R. and Reynolds, F., eds. (Chicago: 1985), pp. 98-131.

• Pete: Frank E. Reynolds, “Multiple Cosmogonies and Ethic: The Case of Theravada Buddhism” in  Cosmogony and Ethical Order, Lovin, R. and Reynolds, F., eds. (Chicago: 1985), pp. 203-224.

6. (2/22) Divination

• Colleen: Daniel Ogden, “Greek Sorcerers, Alien Sorcerers, and The Rivals of Jesus” in  Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford, 2002), pp. 9-77.

•Aleem: Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, “Sir Edward Tylor versus Bronislaw Malinowski: is magic false science or meaningful performance?” in Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 42-63.

• Unit 3: The Insider/Outsider problem in the study of religions

8. (3/8) Mama Lola

9. (3/15) Ethnography

• Afsheen: Vincent Crapanzano, “Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description” in Writing Culture The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Clifford, J., ed. (California, 1986).

• Colette: Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era'” in, Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. (Duke, 1997), pp. 1-46..

• Unit 4: Comparison and hierarchy

10. (3/30) Comparing religions

• Maryam: Daniel Pals, “The Reality of the Sacred” in Seven Theories of Religion (Oxford, 1996), pp. 88-123.

• Alyssa: Robert A. Segal, “Axioms and Dogmas in the Study of Religion”  in Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issue (New York: Lang, 1992), pp. 35-50.

11. (4/6) Butler and Mencius: A case study

• Molly: Thomas H. McPherson. “The Development of Bishop Butler's Ethics” Philosophy 9 (1948), pp. 317-31.

• Brian: Stephen Darwall. “Conscience as self-authorizing” in The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’ 1640-1740 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 244-283.

• Eva: Philip Drew. “Jane Austen and Bishop Butler.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35.2 (1980), pp. 127-49.

12. (4/13) Mencius and James Legge’s comparison

• Scott: Norman Girardot, “Heretic Legge: Relating Confucianism and Christianity, 1877-1878” and “Decipherer Legge: Finding the Sacred in the Chinese Classics, 1879-1880” in The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (California, 2004) and Lee Yearley, “A Confucian Crisis: Mencius’ Two Cosmogonies and Their Ethics” in Cosmogony and Ethical Order, Lovin, R. and Reynolds, F., eds. (Chicago: 1985), pp. 310-327.

• Unit 5: William James and contemporary American religiosity  

13. (4/20) William James and the Varieties

• Jesse: Jacques Barzun, “The Varieties of Experience” from A Stroll With William James (Chicago, 2002).

• Breeze: Richard Dawkins “The Infected Mind” in A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. (Houghton Mifflin , 2003), pp. 117-162.

14. (4/27) Civil Religion in America

• Eric: Ernst Troeltsch,  “Rival Methods for the Study of Religion”, “Christianity and the history of religion” “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School” and “The Separation of Church and State and the Teaching of Religion” in Religion in History (Fortress, 1991), 73-117.

• Jen: Sidney E. Mead, “The ‘Nation with the Soul of a Church’” in Richey and Jones, eds. American Civil Religion (Harper Forum Books, 1974), pp. 45-75.

15. (5/4) A portrait of contemporary American religiosity

• Guo Jue: Talal Asad, “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category” in Genealogies of Reilgion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Johns Hopkins, 1993): 27-54.

• Open: Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge, 1999): 1-60.