This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2016 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

ATS3157 - Sources of religious violence: Texts and contexts

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Undergraduate - Unit

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Faculty

Arts

Organisational Unit

Centre for Religious Studies

Coordinator(s)

Dr Scott Dunbar

Offered

Clayton

First semester 2016 (Day)

Synopsis

Religious texts from many traditions frequently invoke imagery of violence, war and struggle while also celebrating ideals of harmony, peace and justice. Do such texts make religions responsible for promoting violence, or is this a consequence of specific contexts, political, social and economic that shape the way such texts are interpreted? Is there any place for such rhetoric in contemporary society? This unit looks at a range of texts from Eastern religions and from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in both past and present manifestations, to consider how their interpreters have engaged with the question of legitimizing violence and war against minorities or other groups in society and how such imagery may shape their understanding of an ideal world.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the unit students will be expected to have:

Critically engaged with different forms of religious texts that invoke violence, placing them in their historical context and being aware of the range of ways in which they might be interpreted;
Understood the significance of both literary genre and political context in shaping religious texts;
Drawn on a number of theoretical frameworks in order to understand these texts;
Conducted research into a particular area of religious history, either in more distant or more contemporary contexts.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 70%
Exam: 30%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Scott Dunbar

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Religious studies