Religion 252 - Magic, Prayer, and Sacrifice

From live sacrifice to sacred dances, from pilgrimage to bodily purification, rituals have long been considered a hallmark of religion. Yet, ritual activities are also important to apparently non-religious spheres of life, such as sporting events and political mobilization. This course will examine examples of ritual activity from a range of cultural contexts through the lens of anthropological, sociological, psychological, and religious studies theories of ritual. We will explore the structure of ritual activities, the question of whether rituals have meaning and function for individuals and for societies, and, if so, what those meanings and functions might be.