Epistémologie de l’étude des religions 1

This course offers a critical introduction to the key methodological and theoretical issues involved in the academic study of religion and religions. It begins with a seemingly simple question - what exactly is being studied when one studies religion? - to examine the categories, concepts, presuppositions, and procedures through which religious phenomena become objects of knowledge.

Particular attention will be paid to the historical construction of the category of "religion," the diverse ways of defining and delimiting its subject matter, and the challenges inherent in comparing religious traditions and phenomena. The course will specifically address the relationships between experience, belief, representation, practice, ritual, institution, norms, and classification systems. It aims to identify the "building blocks" of religions, analyze their interactions and complementarity, and examine various approaches to studying them - including historical, comparative, anthropological, sociological, and semiotic methods, as well as more recent approaches drawn from fields such as the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology.

The course will rely primarily on Jeppe Sinding Jensen’s What Is Religion?, supplemented by classic and contemporary texts on theory and method in the study of religions. Case studies will be used to test these various approaches and to discuss their epistemological and conceptual implications.

By the end of the course, the student will be able to:

- identify and explain the key epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues associated with the academic study of religion;
- critically analyze various definitions and conceptualizations of "religion" and understand their implications for research;
- situate major theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of religion within their historical and disciplinary contexts;
- understand the relationships between theoretical concepts, research methods, and the construction of empirical data;
- compare different approaches to a single religious phenomenon and evaluate what each approach highlights or tends to obscure;
- apply concepts and theoretical approaches in a reasoned manner to the analysis of a specific religious phenomenon or corpus;
- identify the presuppositions, categories, and methodological choices underlying a scholarly text on religion;
design and justify an analytical approach tailored to a specific research question;
- formulate a critical argument - grounded in scholarly literature - in both oral and written forms.
Particular emphasis will be placed on methodological reflexivity: students must be able not only to apply a method but also to articulate why that method and its associated concepts are appropriate—or potentially problematic—for the subject under study.

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

No prerequisites.

Teaching ex cathedra – active student participation (regular attendance strongly recommended) – flipped classroom approach (documents and texts to be read and studied)

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

Jeppe Sinding Jensen, What is Religion? London, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2025.
The text of the French translation (not yet published) will be made available to students on the course platform, along with numerous other reading materials.

Course notes

• Université virtuelle

Contacts

guillaume.dye@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Method(s) of evaluation

• Other

Other

Oral examination

Language(s) of evaluation

• french