Religion and Memory: Belief, Society, and the Past (THE1009)

15 credits

This module offers anintroduction to the interfaces between memory studies and religion. Religious identities, practices, and beliefs frequently form in dialogue with how societies remember and construct their pasts, and this module considers a range of forms this takes. Building from an initial survey of social memory theories that have developed in recent decades, it examines the roles of sacred spaces, pilgrimage, ritual, and visual culture, and the ways in which interactions between religion and memory are often contested and evolving.