WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2012-2013       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Junior History Tutorial: Religion, Secularism, and Modernity

CSS 340
Fall 2012 not offered
Certificates: International Relations, Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory

In recent decades, religion has regained prominence both as a force in world politics and as a much-debated category of analysis in the social sciences. This new development would have profoundly surprised generations of thinkers--from Marx to the proponents of the secularization thesis--who prophesied that religion would "die out" as a force of public, and perhaps even private, life. The return of religion has brought into question many of the foundational assumptions of modernity--namely, that modernization and secularization are twin processes that rationalize and disenchant the world and create the modern (secular) subject.

This junior history tutorial will examine understandings about religion, secularism, and the relationship of both to the concept of modernity. The course will examine the assumptions that guided the secularization narrative and analyze how the relationship between the religious and the secular has shaped the emergence of modernity in Europe and beyond. The tutorial will then investigate recent revisions of the secularization narrative, as well as re-considerations of religion and secularism in recent debates about the desecularization of the world; religion and secularism in public life; secularism and Islam; and the concepts of multiple secularisms and postsecular society. Finally, the tutorial will address methodology with the goal of preparing students to write long research papers.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (CGST-MN)(CSS)

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459