The Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame provides a supportive and challenging environment for sociological research, undergraduate studies, and graduate training and offers a number of courses with an emphasis in the study of religion.
Graduate Sociology of Religion Comprehensive Exam
In addition to whatever specific readings graduate students engage for their own personal research interests, there is a core set of readings with which sociologists of religion should be familiar in order to claim professional competence and as a background to eventually teaching in the sociology of religion. The purpose of doctoral exams is to provide occasions for students to master the essential literatures of their fields of interest and research. Scholars inevitably differ somewhat on exactly what literature belongs on such core lists of readings. Listed here, however, are the readings which Notre Dame graduate students will be expected to master for their doctoral comprehensive exams in the sociology of religion. Many of the journal articles are available via links to the Notre Dame Hammes Library online journals. In order to access these, you will need to be a current Notre Dame student and will be asked to provide your netid and password. Copies of all the remaining articles and book chapters may be found in 811 Flanner Hall. Students will be expected to locate the listed books on their own.
2009-10 Sociology of Relgion Readings List for Notre Dame Students
If you do not have a Notre Dame netid, you may access the reading list here.
Graduate Seminars
duate Seminars
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 63652: "Religion, Politics, Economics, and Social Change"
Professor: Kraig Beyerlein
Description: How does religion interact with political, economic, and other social spheres of human social life? How is religion related to exercises of power, the production and distribution of material goods, the structuring of human life in seemingly non-sacred social institutions? When, how, and why does religion serve as a force of social reproduction, maintaining existing social practices and structures? When, how, and why does religion cause or influence social transformation, through cultural, political, and economic change? This seminar examines key exemplars of literature in this area as a means to master sociological approaches to religion as it interacts with other aspects of social life. Readings will help students prepare for the doctoral exam in sociology of religion.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Fridays, 3:00pm-5:30pm
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 63691: "Research & Analysis in Sociology of Religion" (RASR)
Professor: Jessica Collett
Description: This one-credit workshop will engage students with pieces of literature related to empirical research, measurement, and data analysis in the sociology of religion; teach some alternative approaches to basic data analysis strategies in the sociology of religion; and provide an informal seminar-based context for the collective reading, discussing, and critiquing of each others’ scholarly papers in sociology of religion.
Credits: 1
Day and Time: 5 Thursdays, 6:00pm-8:30pm January 21, February 18, March 4, April 8, and April 22.
Fall 2009
Title: Soc 63630: "Religion, Gender, and Family "
Professor: Mary Ellen Konieczny
Description: This course examines classical and current sociological theory and empirical research concerning the relation of religion to issues of gender and family. Themes to be examined include: religious participation and the construction of gendered identities; modern women's adherence to conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist religious groups articulating patriarchal gender ideologies; religion, family organization, and parenting; religion and the control/expression of sexuality; and the contribution (and limits) of feminist theory to understanding the relation of religion, gender, and family in contemporary societies. Empirical research studied in this course draws extensively from Western contexts, but also substantially includes cases from societies across the globe.
Credits:3
Day and Time: Tuesdays, 9:00am-11:30am.
Fall 2009
Title: Soc 63691: "Research & Analysis in Sociology of Religion" (RASR)
Professor: David Sikkink
Description: This one-credit workshop will engage students with pieces of literature related to empirical research, measurement, and data analysis in the sociology of religion; teach some alternative approaches to basic data analysis strategies in the sociology of religion; and provide an informal seminar-based context for the collective reading, discussing, and critiquing of each others’ scholarly papers in sociology of religion.
Credits: 1
Day and Time: 5 Thursdays, 6:00pm-8:30pm on September 8, September 22, October 13, November 10, and December 8.
Fall-Spring 2008
Title: Soc 63900: "Critical Realism, Human Personhood, and Multiple Modernities I"
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: T his course will explore critical realism as a philosophy of social science that offers an alternative to positivist empiricism, hermeneutical interpretivism, and postmodernism that I believe fixes some of the problems in each. Having first come to a firm grasp of what critical realism is and the kind of research and thinking it promotes, we will then turn our attention to reflecting systematically on the nature of human persons and possible related implications for work in the social sciences. Finally, we will examine the thesis of multiple modernities as a way of understanding our contemporary global experience that provides an alternative theory to the modernization paradigm, with a particular eye to understanding the theoretical connections between this and critical realism. The concern of this course is with first principles in sociology and how good presuppositions and thinking can improve our scholarship, teaching, and yes - living. Little knowledge of philosophy is presupposed but some background in social theory and philosophy will be helpful. This course satisfies the advanced theory requirement of the ND sociology doctoral program.
Credits:1
Day and Time: Thursdays: August 28, September 18, October 9, November 6, December 4, 5:15pm-8:45pm.
Fall-Spring 2008
Title: Soc 63691: "Research & Analysis in Sociology of Religion" (RASR)
Professor: David Sikkink
Description: This one-credit workshop will engage students with pieces of literature related to empirical research, measurement, and data analysis in the sociology of religion; teach some alternative approaches to basic data analysis strategies in the sociology of religion; and provide an informal seminar-based context for the collective reading, discussing, and critiquing of each others’ scholarly papers in sociology of religion.
Credits: 1
Day and Time: Thursdays: August 27, September 17, October 8, November 5, December 3, 3:00pm-5:30pm.
Fall 2008
Title: Soc 63662: "Religion and Schooling in American Society"
Professor: David Sikkink
Description: This seminar will provide an overview of the relationship between religion and primary and secondary schooling in the United States. It will address several key questions in the academic and policy literature: What are the key historical turning points in the relationship between religion and schooling in American society? How do contemporary religious Americans view public schools, and how does religion shape Americans’ views on curricular and other school policy issues? What is the role of religion in the schooling choices of families in the US? How does religion affect academic outcomes for children? Specifically, do religious schools improve academic outcomes for children? Why or why not? The coursework will focus on advancing theory and evidence regarding the relationship of religion and academic achievement, the role of religion in politics of education, and the relationship between religion and democratic education.
Credits:3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30pm-2:45pm.
Spring 2008
Title: Soc 63664: "Modernity, Secularization, Religious Persistence,
Spiritual Transformation"
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: What is the fate of religion in modern society? Is there something about modernity that is particularly corrosive of religion? Does modernity secularize? What is "modernity?" What does "secularization" mean? Where, how, and why does religion survive or thrive in the modern world? What social forces and influences explain different religious outcomes in modernity? Are there "multiple modernities" that have different effects on religious traditions? This course will examine the most important works in the literature on religion in modernity to explore these questions, toward mastering a set of key debates in the sociology of religion and generating new research to contribute to the field. Readings will help students prepare for the doctoral exam in sociology of religion.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: TBD
Fall-Spring 2007
Title: Soc 63691: "Research & Analysis in Sociology of Religion-1" (RASR-1)
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: This one-credit workshop will engage students with key pieces of literature related to empirical research, measurement, and data analysis in the sociology of religion; teach some alternative approaches to basic data analysis strategies in the sociology of religion; and provide an informal seminar-based context for the collective reading, discussing, and critiquing of each others’ scholarly papers in sociology of religion. Workshop readings are drawn from the reading list for the ND doctoral exam in sociology of religion, to also help facilitate preparation for that exam.
Credits: 1
Day and Time: (5) Thursdays, 3:45pm-5:15pm
Fall 2007
Title: "Research & Analysis in Sociology of Religion-2" (RASR-2)
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: Sociology of religion graduate students and faculty will read, discuss, and provide critical feedback for participant scholarly works in progress.
Day and Time: (5) Thursdays, 5:15p-6:30p
Fall 2007
Title: Soc 63652: "Religion, Politics, Economics, and Social Change"
Professor: David Sikkink
Description: How does religion interact with political, economic, and other social spheres of human social life? How is religion related to exercises of power, the production and distribution of material goods, the structuring of human life in seemingly non-sacred social institutions? When, how, and why does religion serve as a force of social reproduction, maintaining existing social practices and structures? When, how, and why does religion cause or influence social transformation, through cultural, political, and economic change? This seminar examines key exemplars of literature in this area as a means to master sociological approaches to religion as it interacts with other aspects of social life. Readings will help students prepare for the doctoral exam in sociology of religion.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Thursdays, 12:30pm-3:30pm
Spring 2007
Title: Soc 73652: "Sociology of Religion II"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: Contemporary empirical studies in the sociology of religion are examined. Current developments and movements of religious behavior are related to such issues as political action, family structure, economic actions, and leisure.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Tuesdays, 3:30pm-6:00pm.
Fall 2006
Title: Soc 68901: "Research in the National Study of Youth and Religion
-a Training Seminar"
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: This 1-credit training seminar will orient students to the project, data, and analysis of the National (Longitudinal) Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). We will examine the goals and data collection methods of the project, explore the various types of survey and interview data collected to date, and launch students into specific analyses of data that fit their own substantive interests. Course meetings will involve student presentations of their analyses and group feedback toward publication.
Credits: 1
Day and Time: Thursdays, 7:00pm-9:00pm every other week
Undergraduate Courses
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 40607: "Religion, Civil Disobedience & Nonviolent Resistance"
Professor: Jason Springs
Description: This course explores the ways in which religious ethicists, political philosophers, social critics have employed conceptions of love and violence as resources for criticizing and resisting oppressive political conditions, and for radically transforming existing social arrangements. We begin by exploring the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau concerning the moral status of civil disobedience in the context of the U.S. abolitionist struggle, with particular attention to the influence of the Bhagavad-Gita upon their thinking. We will examine the ways that both Thoreau's writings and the Gita influenced Mahatma Gandhi on questions of non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi's exploration of the power of non-violence in light of the Sermon on the Mount, and his correspondence with the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. We will examine how this entire mosaic of influences came to inform Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1960s. Other assessments of civil disobedience and non- or non-violent resistance include Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement and Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam in the United States. We will engage critical perspectives on these thinkers and ideas, such as George Orwell's criticisms of Gandhi, Frantz Fanon's claims that colonialism is an essentially violent phenomenon that requires an essentially violent response, arguments against pacifism on the basis of political realism by Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr. We conclude by brief examination of principled vs. practical pacifism in the work of John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and Cornel West.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30am-10:45am.
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 40606: " Religion and Democracy in Comparative Perspective: Islam, Judaism, Christianity"
Professor: Atalia Omer
Description: This course will first explore how Muslim, Christian and Jewish thinkers have theorized the question of democracy in various contexts like Iran, Israel and the U.S. and how they drew on the resources of their respective traditions in their effort to address issues such as minority rights and religious freedom. Of a special focus will be the tension between a support of democratic values and a general commitment to ethno-national political projects. Second, the course will interrogate the presuppositions underlying the conventional construal of this comparative discussion as one that asks whether Islam, Judaism or other traditions are compatible or incompatible with democracy.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:00pm-4:15pm.
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 30672: "Religion and Social Life"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: How does social life influence religion? How does religion influence society? What is religion's social significance in a complex society like ours? Is religion's significance declining? This course will consider these and other questions by exploring the great variety in social expressions of religion. The course examines the social bases of churches, sects, and cults, and it focuses on contemporary religion in the United States.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30pm-2:45pm.
Spring 2010
Title: Soc 43600: "Religion and Classical Social Theory"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: The purpose of this course is, in the setting of a small seminar, to engage students in close reading and broad discussion of sociological writings about religion by classical theorists of the discipline. Works that may be nominated for treatment include such mainstays as The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and other studies of religion by Emile Durkheim; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and The Sociology of Religion by Max Weber; portions of The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as excerpts from Marx's Capital; The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud; and various essays on religion by Georg Simmel. The course also will cover more recent works, both in the sociology of religion and in related fields, incorporating assumptions about and approaches to religion that can be traced to these pioneering authors.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:45pm-1:00pm.
Fall 2009
Title: Soc 30672: "Religion and Social Life"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: How does social life influence religion? How does religion influence society? What is religion's social significance in a complex society like ours? Is religion's significance declining? This course will consider these and other questions by exploring the great variety in social expressions of religion. The course examines the social bases of churches, sects, and cults, and it focuses on contemporary religion in the United States.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30pm-4:45pm.
Spring 2009
Title: Soc 43600: "Religion and Classical Social Theory"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: The purpose of this course is, in the setting of a small seminar, to engage students in close reading and broad discussion of sociological writings about religion by classical theorists of the discipline. Works that may be nominated for treatment include such mainstays as The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and other studies of religion by Emile Durkheim; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and The Sociology of Religion by Max Weber; portions of The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as excerpts from Marx's Capital; The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud; and various essays on religion by Georg Simmel. The course also will cover more recent works, both in the sociology of religion and in related fields, incorporating assumptions about and approaches to religion that can be traced to these pioneering authors.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:45pm-1:00pm.
Fall 2008
Title: Soc 30672: "Religion and Social Life"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: How does social life influence religion? How does religion influence society? What is religion's social significance in a complex society like ours? Is religion's significance declining? This course will consider these and other questions by exploring the great variety in social expressions of religion. The course examines the social bases of churches, sects, and cults, and it focuses on contemporary religion in the United States.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30pm-2:45pm.
Spring 2008
Title: Soc 30675: "Religion, Modernity, Secularization, Religious Persistence"
Professor: Christian Smith
Description: What is the fate of religion in modern societies? Is there something about modernity that is particularly corrosive of religion? Does modernity secularize? What does secularization mean? Where, how, and why does religion survive or thrive in the modern world? What social forces and influences explain different religious outcomes in modernity? Are there "multiple modernities" that have different effects on religious traditions? This course examines the most important works on religion in modernity to explore these questions so as to better understand outcomes of religious belief and practice in the contemporary world.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: TBD
Spring 2007
Title: Soc 30672: "Religion and Social Life"
Professor: Kevin Christiano
Description: How does social life influence religion? How does religion influence society? What is religion's social significance in a complex society like ours? Is religion's significance declining? This course will consider these and other questions by exploring the great variety in social expressions of religion. The course examines the social bases of churches, sects, and cults, and it focuses on contemporary religion in the United States.
Credits: 3
Day and Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30pm-1:45pm.
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