Ethnography of Religion
This seminar explores the craft, ethics, and politics of ethnography, a qualitative methodology
essential to the study of lived religion. Ethnographers conduct participant observation and
cultivate long-term collaborative and intimate relationships with contemporary communities. By
centering the genre of ethnography, we examine how research is about relationships. Research
relationships are messy, rife with power dynamics, intimacies, and tensions, and contingent on
bonds of trust and access. We consider how ethnographers of religion navigate spaces and
histories crowded with the presences of gods, spirits, and ancestors and the work of writing
about those presences.
We will explore the relationship between research and embodied knowledge and the tensions
between balancing story-telling, history, and theory. This course will help students develop
analytical and methodological skills as they explore the ethical dimensions of humanities and
social science research with human (and nonhuman) subjects.