Informations du cours

In this seminar, we will study the urban environments of religious formations with a special focus on New York City. Even though it is often perceived as a rather secular place, New York is a vibrant hub of religious innovations and encounter. The seminar is closely related to research activities at CERES and will be followed by an excursion to New York City (subject to a pending application with PROMOS). It is organized in collaboration with the Department of Religion and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University that will host our excursion.

Apart from discussing theoretical and methodological approaches to religious traditions in the urban environment, students in this course will develop individual research questions about which they can do (preliminary) fieldwork in New York City. The city is one of the religiously most diverse places in the world, and home to religious communities from a range of global religions, e.g. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Catholic, Evangelical, or Muslim traditions, New Age and other new spiritual movements, or adherents of more recent deities like Santa Muerte (“Our Lady of Holy Death”).

At the end of term (March 26th to April 1st, 2020), a group of students will travel to New York. The class will conduct individual field research, and meet students and staff at Columbia University, presenting each others’ projects and discussing the place of New York City as a hub for entangled histories of religions between ‘East’ and ‘West.’