Religious Studies

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Religious Studies helps you to understand the complex world of religion by introducing you to the diversity of religious beliefs and practices. It traces our established traditions from their ancient roots through to modern times. It also examines the various forms of 'spirituality' that feature so prominently in modern popular culture.

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Recent Deposits

Mediated Representations: Japanese New Religions and Social Media

Giambra, Danilo (Thesis, Master of Arts, 2016)

Social Media significantly affect the way religion is presented and represented online, and allow a variety of religious actors to create a new type of charismatic authority for themselves, similar to that of celebrities. ...
On the Devotion to the Buddha in Paramanuchit’s Mārabandha Episode of the Paṭhamasambodhi

Rattana, Phra Akbordin (Thesis, Master of Arts, 2016)

The Paṭhamasambodhi is an important biography of the Buddha, a living story well-known all over mainland Southeast Asia, and an essential element for Southeast Asian art history. In addition, the Mārabandha episode of the ...
The gift of the other: Levinas, Derrida, and a theology of hospitality

Shepherd, Andrew Philip (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009)

Despite the celebration of 'difference' and the rhetoric of 'connectedness', the so-called 'global village' of the early twenty-first century is far from a peaceful and harmonious reality. Powerful ideological discourses ...
Word-pairs & continuity in translation in the ancient Near East

Eaton, Margaret Rose (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, 1994)

It has been recognised for more than two hundred years that the basic style of poetry in the Hebrew Bible is parallelism, and its system has been minutely studied. More recently ethnographers have noted the same style in ...
A hierarchy of symbols : Samoan religious symbolism in New Zealand

Duncan, Betty Kathleen (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, 1994)

This dissertation seeks to understand the religious experience of Samoans in New Zealand. The research uses the framework and themes of phenomenology of religion to observe, describe and interpret the expressions of Samoan ...
Quran and Reform: Rahman, Arkoun, Abu Zayd

Voelker, Katharina (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012)

This thesis engages with three Modern Muslims accounts of the nature of the Quran and its interpretation as basis for reform schemes. I investigate how the three Muslim intellectuals Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), Muhammad Arkoun ...
The Significance of Khruba Sriwichai's Role in Northern Thai Buddhism: His Sacred Biography, Meditation Practice and Influence

Treesahakiat, Isara (Thesis, Master of Arts, 2011)

Khruba Sriwichai (1878-1938) was a well-known monk in Thailand and especially in the Lanna regions in the northern part of the country. His local fame spread throughout the country among a diverse group of followers. Many ...
Exploring Spirituality in a New Zealand Oncology Unit

Knitter, Lisa (Thesis, Master of Arts, 2011)

Spirituality, as presented in this paper, is characterized as an individual’s inherent need to find meaning and purpose in life, and as being the fabric that makes each person whole, (encompassing beliefs, values, attitudes, ...
Haunted, religious modernity and reenchantment

Repphun, Eric (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009)

The academic study of religion has for too long laboured under a flawed understanding of the relationship between modernity and religion. Any narrative of the displacement of religion by a universal and secularising modernity ...