REL 293
Religion, Play, and Politics Spring 2014
Division II
This is not the current course catalog

Is there a distinctive “play” element in human culture? If so, what should count as play? Some likely candidates may be: joking, games, festivals, fantasy, and leisure. What about the activities that we usually describe as “religious”? In this course we will investigate the relationship between religion and play. We will read from theorists in a wide variety of disciplines who have written about play: philosophers, sociologists, animal psychologists, anthropologists, and others. But we will pay particular attention to overlap in the study of play and the study of religion. We will ask, for instance: what is the play element in ritual, myth, and the devotional interpretation of texts? Is there something necessarily playful about the academic study of religion itself? Once we have investigated the relationship between religion and play, we will then consider the significance of this relationship for political thinking about religion. Perhaps we should respect religious diversity out of respect for the variety of ways that people want to play? How might a deeper understanding of play help us to address ongoing religious conflicts? We will read from Johan Huizinga, Brian Sutton-Smith, Gordon Burghardt, Victor Turner, Donald Winnicott, Bernard Suits, Sam Gill, Robert Bellah, Wendy Doniger, Friedrich Schiller, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, and others.