Approaches To the Study of Religion

Abstract

The religion department at the University of Colorado, Boulder re quires all incoming graduate students take Approaches the Study of Religion. The course has been taught every Fall term for over a decade by a variety of resident and visiting faculty. I taught the course for a three-year period from 1995-1997. There are many concerns in teaching such a course. Should it be a history of the discipline? Should it be a balanced survey of ap that distinguish the many fields within the academic study of religion? Should it include application as well as theory and if so, what areas of application will engage students representing a wide variety of interests? Should the course include field study methodol ogy and experience? These questions and many others are not easily, and never wholly satisfactorily, resolved. Nonetheless, this kind of course is, I believe, remarkably important meaningful graduate work and will significantly shape the students' academic careers. I will describe in general terms, with reflective commentary, the course as I have taught it. The course objective, as I have stated it, is to provide graduate students with a foundational vocabulary, a basic familiarity with a variety of the most creative and promising theories and methods, supportive bibliography, and a clear understanding of each student's selected field of concentration within the academic study of religion. The course was presented in seven sections requiring six five-to-eight page papers and a Profile of an Academic Field. First, the profile. During my years teaching, too often I found myself talking students completing their M.A. degree who still did not have any sense of what they might do either further their studies or get jobs. I found that even at the point of completing their degrees many did not know much about the field in which they had done their research. I decided that in order for students in Ap proaches prepare themselves participate in, and contribute to, an academic field, each should have a clear and thorough under standing of her or his chosen field. Certainly not all students have chosen a field of concentration when they enter graduate study, but

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