WHAT IS RELIGIOUS STUDIES?

Religious studies brings together perspectives and approaches from history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and literature to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the individuals and traditions that constitute religions and cultures.

For a long while many westerners have tended to think that religions are either "dying out' or have been relegated to the private sphere where they have little public or political importance.  Recent events in the United States and around the world, however, have made it harder and harder to sustain this view. In our increasingly cosmopolitan world, the need to understand the root beliefs and values of diverse cultures has become a political and moral imperative.  The academic study of religion seeks to explore the deep intersections between religions and cultures which have shaped, and continue to shape, personal and collective identity.

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO FACULTY AND STUDENTS!

Faculty:

Anne Feldhaus has received a grant from the British Library Association for a second phase of a project on Preserving Marathi Manuscripts.

Tracy Fessenden, along with two other colleagues at ASU, Pegge Vissicaro and Rachel Bowditch has been selected to receive the IRH ASU Fellow award for the coming year for a project on "Festivals of the Americas: Staging Identity, Politics, and Utopian Performance." Her My piece involves jazz funerals in New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina.

Students:

Richard Rickett has been chosen as a recipient of a Sun Angel Excellence in Humanities Research Awardee for a project on “Indigenous World Views of Quicha Speaking Peoples in the Andean and Amazonian Region of Ecuador” that he will complete under the supervision of our colleague Miguel Aguilera.

Paul Jackson, a PhD student in Asian Religions, Taoism, has been awarded funding fromthe National Chengchi University in Taiwan and theOffice of International Cooperation to study phenomena of Daoist language from August 2009 to February of 2010.

Mariam Cohen, a PhD student in Religions in the Americas, has just published with her coeditor a special issue of The Journal of the American Acadmey of Psychonalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, on “The God Representation in the Psychoanalytic Relationship: When is Three a Crowd? Mariam, along with her coeditor have written an introductory and concluding essay to the issue, and she also has a piece of her entitled, “An Old God Awakens, Briefly.”

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RELATED CERTIFICATES and PROGRAMS:
The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
Religious Studies Society (new site coming soon!)
Islamic Studies Undergraduate Certificate
Arabic Studies Certificate
Jewish Studies Certificate