Religious Studies

This module aims to provide skills training for postgraduate students in religious studies from induction to completion of the master's dissertation. It seeks to support existing taught modules by introducing a variety of research methods from other disciplines and theoretical issues within religious studies. It also introduces cross-cultural and cross-religious examination of research topics in religious studies. The module will provide you with the opportunity to develop generic skills in library research, essay writing, and dissertation planning.

Topics covered may include:

• Induction in the study of religions: resources, essay planning and writing, seminar preparation and presentations
• Research methodologies: examples selected from philosophical, anthropological, sociological, psychological, and phenomenological approaches
• Theoretical approaches to the study of religion: examples selected from the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences
• Dissertation workshop: finding a topic and supervisor, completion plan, case studies.

This module examines the Buddhist scriptures in the Theravada and Mahayana traditions and offers an opportunity for you to understand some of the key concepts and ideas by reading select extracts of the Buddhist texts in English from both schools and traditions. It also allows you to understand the changes in doctrinal emphasis as well as variations in interpretation in the historical development of Buddhism.

This module aims to provide you with the opportunity to advance the knowledge and skills needed to understand and analyse why conflict happens within and between religious groups, and to assess the positive and negative contributions that religions make to wider struggles – from local disputes through to global terrorism.

• When does religious encounter become conflict; when and why does religious conflict turn violent?
• Are some religions more prone to conflict and violence than others?
• Is global terrorism a religious matter?
• Are religious groups necessarily in tension with the secular state and secularism?
• Is conflict a necessary condition of religious and ethnic diversity?
• What resources do religions draw on for the resolution of conflict and peace-building?
• Do diplomacy and international relations have a role to play in resolving regional and cross-border religious disputes and violence?

The module is designed to introduce you to key concepts and issues in scholarship on religion and conflict: e.g. on the relationship between conflict and violence, religion and ethnicity, the ‘clash of civilizations’, intra-religious as well as inter-religious conflict, jihad and martyrdom. We also aim to explore the importance of context – historical, social, geographical and political. Analysis and debate about religion and conflict will be situated in particular cases and may include, the UK and Europe, the US, the Indian sub-continent and sub-Saharan Africa.

In this module we aim to explore some of the most foundational religious and philosophical texts of the Hindu and Buddhists traditions. Texts will vary from year to year, but may include: the Rig Veda, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, or the Yoga Sutra from the Brahmanical/Hindu tradition, and the Nikayas, Vinaya, Jatakas, Lotus Sutra, and The Bodhicaryavatara from the Buddhist tradition.

Through close readings, we provide the opportunity for you to examine some of the core religio-philosophical ideas of early Indian thought whilst also paying close attention to the composition, style, and structure of the texts themselves. We will also attempt to situate Hindu and Buddhist textual material within a social and historical context, paying close attention to who participates in the religio-philosophical world of ancient India and in what types of social circumstances religio-philosophical ideas are discussed. Alongside reading the primary sources, we will also seek to situate our engagements within scholarly debates about methods of interpretation such as text-historical criticism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, orientalism, and post-colonial theory.