Program Overview
It equips students with analytical and interpretive skills through core and optional modules covering topics such as Studying Religion, Reading Buddhism, Religion and Conflict, and Sources of Indian Religion and Philosophy. The program aims to foster a deep understanding of religion's role in society and equip students for careers in fields related to religion, including academia, education, and religious organizations.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
This program aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of major theories, concepts, and issues related to religion in various intellectual traditions, historical, and contemporary contexts. The program seeks to equip students with the ability to analyze, evaluate, and interpret academic and practitioner approaches to religion.
Objectives:
- Gain a secure understanding of major theories, concepts, and issues relating to religion.
- Acquire the necessary skills to evaluate, analyze, and interpret academic and practitioner approaches to religion.
Outline:
The program consists of one core module and two optional modules chosen from the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion.
Core Module:
- Studying Religion:
- Aims: Introduces research methods and approaches from various disciplines, examines theoretical and practical issues in the study of religions, and provides cross-cultural and cross-religious examination of research topics.
- Objectives: Induction into the study of religions, research methodologies, theoretical approaches to the study of religion, dissertation workshop.
- Assessment: 5,000-word essay.
Optional Modules:
- Reading Buddhism:
- Examines Buddhist scriptures in the Theravada and Mahayana traditions.
- Enables students to understand key concepts and ideas through reading selected extracts of Buddhist texts in English.
- Allows students to comprehend changes in doctrinal emphasis and variations in interpretation in the historical development of Buddhism.
- Religion and Conflict (distance learning):
- Explores the role of religion in global, national, ethnic, and ethical conflicts.
- Analyzes how and why religious groups contribute to conflicts, including terrorist attacks, historical disputes, and violence.
- Provides knowledge and skills to understand and analyze why conflict occurs within and between religious groups.
- Assessment: 5,000-word essay.
- Sources of Indian Religion and Philosophy:
- Encounters foundational religious and philosophical texts of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, including the Rig Veda, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutra, Nikayas, Vinaya, Jatakas, Lotus Sutra, and Bodhicaryavatara.
- Examines core religio-philosophical ideas of early Indian thought, focusing on the composition, style, and structure of the texts.
- Situates Hindu and Buddhist textual material within a social and historical context.
- Assessment: 5,000-word essay.
Assessment:
Not all optional modules are available every year.
Fees and Funding
Location Full Time (per year) Part Time (per year) Home £3,830 £1,915 International £7,955 £3,975
