Here are some more of the "final syntheses" from this year's "Theorizing Religion." The one above may or may not be a reference to a series of post-Copernican metaphors we followed, starting with Feuerbach's "each planet has its own sun." You can find more of the exquisite collages by Ines Gurovich - the ones she produced for us (below) move from imposed prefab religions to the lessons of introspection and nature - here. The watercolor beneath chronicles the student's progress - if progress it was! - from "what is the definition of religion?" to "what is a definition?"
Not all syntheses were visual, of course. One student managed wittily to capture all the major elements of our theorists and discussions in terms of "breaks." One described how the class had provided tools for making sense of the situation in Syria. Another described how the course had taught her, an atheist, how to respect religious people. Another copied out quotations from the notebook in which she jots down lines from the readings which she didn't notice until they came up in discussion, a lovely concretization of this seminar thing we're doing. We learned lots!
