Suggestions for Major Academic Paper Topics – Rel 356
Please remember to discuss your topic with the instructor. Be sure that you have a critical engagement with your subject matter. Must be a topic in religion.
One Idea: Pick a religion and examine how their tradition and scriptures tells them to engage modern life: science, technology, pluralism, globalization, gender, or sexual orientation, etc. Or examine fundamentalism and the refusal to engage these issues.
Hinduism
- Sex and Hinduism: Religious ideas and significance of Kama Sutra
- The meaning of reincarnation: hope for change or fatalistic?
- An extended examination of one of the main gods
- Widow Burning: Hinduism or custom?
- The third eye: what is it, how does it open, what’s its function?
- Fundamentalism and violence: focus on a particular event/group
- Reforming Hinduism – find a specific individual or event
- Rabindranath Tagore – How poetry can be religiously influential
- Gandhi: Hindu Reformer or Revolutionary?
Buddhism
- Buddha’s biography: legend or history, human or deity?
- Buddhist meditation or mindfulness
- The life and beliefs of the Dali Lama: Religion or Philosophy?
- Explore a concept like emptiness, no-self, or compassion
- Introduction to Zen: the nature of a koan
- Buddhist/Zen humour
- The traditions around the Laughing Buddha: who is he?
- Fundamentalism and violence: in Buddhism? Really?
- Summary and critique of Thich Nhat Hanh, D. T. Suzuki or Allan Watts
Daoism
- An in-depth analysis of wu wei or yin yang
- An extended analysis of Tao Te Ching or the stories of Chang-Tsu
- Connections to an ecological ethic today
- Feng Shui’s religious core
- Taoist humour
- Laozi: legends and meanings
- The Tao of Pooh: Why the success of book and how true is it to Daoism?
- The life and times of Allan Watts and his Daoist ideas
- Death or sex in Daoism
- The five Elements/Agents
- Daoism and “how to govern properly”: contra Confucianism?
- Contrast with C. S. Lewis’ view of Tao in Abolition of Man
Islam
- Faith mixed with politics in Islam: Islamic State?
- Muslim view of the Qur’an: Is it inspired?
- Islamic Hell: describe and critique and compare
- Critical biography of Muhammad using Muslim and other sources
- Jihad, violence, fundamentalism or extremism and the Qur’an: different views of the massacre of the Banu Qurayza Jews: justice or genocide?
- Suicide bombing: religious texts for and against and religious means of promoting it and preventing it
- Muslim humanitarianism and the Qur’an
- A critical discussion of different approaches to the law of apostasy in Islam (including the punishments for it). Include reference to religious freedom and human rights.
- Sexual ethics, music, art, humor in Islamic tradition…
- A critical assessment of the concept of the “ummah” in Islam and the “da’wa” that accompanies it. Compare with Christian and/or Buddhist missionary impulse.
- The Sufis: mystics for Allah. Pick one aspect of their faith.
- Tariq Ramadan: Muslim Martin Luther?
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Traditionalist or Modern?
- Sayyid Qutb: Founder of Muslim Extremism?
- Wahabism: Return to Empire?
- Radical mission to Muslims: Phil Parshall and John Travis
- Abraham: source for inter-religious connections?
Theology and Dialogue
- Summary and Critique of John Hick, Karen Armstrong, Joseph Campbell, Paul Knitter or Paul Heim’s theory/theology of world religions.
- Summarize and critique the “Common Word Between Us and You” dialogue. Include the Pope, Rowan Williams and the Yale response.
- Max Weber or Emile Durkheim’s views on world religion
- Multi-religious identity: Ann Holmes Redding and beyond
- Compare/contrast some aspect of two religions in this course
Eg. fundamentalism in Judaism & Islam; “no-self” in Buddhism & Hinduism; Buddhist and Christian ideas of compassion, Christianity and Islam: the same God? Mission in Buddhism and Islam. Meditation in Hinduism and Judaism.
