RELI 237: Religion and Art

RELI 237-DL1: Religion and Art
(Fall 2024)

Online

Section Information for Fall 2024

We may not realize it, but many forms of artistic expression – sculpture, murals, paintings, drama, architecture, and even songs, film, and theater – convey religious ideas, or are deeply rooted in the world’s religious traditions. And as we learn more about cultures around the world, a basic understanding of their religious traditions, and their many modes of self-expression, is essential in order to break down barriers of mistrust and misunderstanding. We need to more fully appreciate the world’s spiritual traditions, and how each tradition creates what we in the West regard as works of art.
For many religions, a specific aesthetic goal – the search for ‘Beauty,’ the ‘Sublime,’ etc. – lies at the foundation of their experience of what is ‘holy,’ or ‘sacred.’ These goals, inherent in each spiritual tradition, drive the intellectual and creative process of each community’s artists, as part of a community’s efforts to create a heightened awareness of a realm beyond the senses. Meanwhile, artists outside the tradition, indifferent to an art form’s religious roots, use elements of these religious art forms to create their own, secularized, form of ‘Beauty’ and the ‘Sublime.’

This course will explore the complex intersections of religion and art in world culture. How does art facilitate religious thought, values, and experiences? In what respect are works of art, even secular art, religious? Why have certain kinds of artwork been controversial within many religious traditions? When and why do some monotheistic traditions forbid the depiction of humans? How has artistic expression been central to ritual practices within many religious traditions, from Orthodox Christianity to Buddhism?
Similarly, music has been central to many religious traditions, from indigenous ritual to Quranic recitation to Bach’s ‘Passions,’ but, again not without controversy. Is music a vehicle for worship, a form of entertainment, or a dangerous emotional distraction? Let’s see what we find, together.

RELI 237 DL1 is an online asynchronous section.

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

The course examines both the way that religious stories, images, ideas, and values have influenced the production and experience of art, and how art has historically been a primary means to express religious thought, feeling, and meaning. Thus, this course will examine the arts across different religions. The course will also examine the extent to which the artistic experience may be thought of as a kind of "religious" experience, and how even civil art projects convey a kind of civic or national "religion." Offered by Religious Studies. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Mason Core, Arts
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

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