https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/SOCL5146?type=CORECourse descriptionQuestions of religion have been central to anthropology and sociology from their beginnings and remain so today as religion reasserts itself as a global force. While earlier approaches often regarded religion through a skeptical, secular gaze, recent scholarship has unsettled anthropology's orthodoxies, calling for a critical engagement with its epistemic and methodological premises. Each new paradigm in the discipline has grappled with the challenge of explaining religion and its pervasiveness in human culture and society. The anthropology of religion emerged from this creative tension as a vibrant field of inquiry, testing the boundaries of ethnographic exploration. This course situates students within these ongoing debates, interrogating concepts and theories that have shaped the study of religion: belief and practice, time and historicity, morality and ethics, media and mediation, colonialism and modernity, secularism and the post-secular, among others. These are not only focal points of intensive debate on religion but core analytical categories in both disciplines. Our exploration will proceed through a close reading of case studies from various parts of the world and religions, with an emphasis on contemporary Christianity and Islam. Alongside classical studies of local cults and small-scale societies, we will focus on global religions and their historical dynamics, as well as entanglements of politics and religion and their enduring presence today. This will enable us to develop a historical-comparative perspective on religious phenomena and their transformations, and explore how these key concepts emerged, traveled and continue to shape anthropological thinking and practice.