FYS 1025 INVENTING WORLD RELIGIONS

How are religions made? By whom? When? Where? Are they primarily about subjective personal experiences or social institutions, beliefs or cultural practices, moral teachings or group politics? This course considers these questions by exploring relationships between personal experiences, identities, religious institutions, and cultural norms in Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions and by examining how ideas about religion have been produced historically through colonialism, nationalism, and secularism.