Religion and the Senses
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This graduate seminar delves into the intricate relationship between religion and the senses, critically examining how sensory experience and perception have been theorized, cultivated, and contested within religious traditions (broadly conceived). Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from history, anthropology, religious studies, and art history, we will interrogate the senses as epistemological tools, vehicles of discipline, metaphors for doctrinal and ethical concepts, and markers of sacred presence. This seminar engages with the multiple boundaries of sensory experience and its sociocultural implications through close readings of theoretical texts and case studies of ritual, material culture, and sacred spaces drawn from various religious traditions, such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
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