Seminar for the advanced study of the subject matter of a previously given upper division course, emphasizing reading and discussion.

This course focuses on conceptual and theoretical issues in the study of religion, with a focus on the religious traditions of South Asia. Religion attempts to sequester a fundamental mystery of human existence: what lies before, outside, adjacent to, and after mortal corporeal existence. Is divinity immanent in the world or transcendental to it? How do people, animals and things become sacralized? What do relations between people and gods, tell us about interactions between people and people? The course examines religion and ritual as lived socio-material and symbolic practices, ideologies of political and state power, the means of interaction between co-existing groups, the production of social hierarchy and challenge to dominant orders, and as a source of ecstatic experience, personal healing and ethical dispositions.

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