Four Funerals and a Wedding: Introduction to Chinese Religious Life

This is an introductory course on contemporary Chinese religious life. Students are encouraged to think comparatively about religious life with sociological as well as historical imagination. We examine the major religious traditions in China today—Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, Islam, and popular religious traditions—through rituals and beliefs related to everyday life, such as birth, marriage, and death. Case studies include a history of the development of Confucianism; an analysis of essential concepts and practices in Daoism; a narrative of Catholicism in a Chinese village; a history of women's mosques in China; and a study of contemporary popular religious practices.