Course content and focus areas
The world of religions is both local and trans-national and has an extremely varied history. Religions influence cultures, identities and lifestyles and often have a say in politics. Religious Studies is a key way of exploring such correlations. It is a discipline that takes an inter-cultural approach to understand the religious phenomena in history and today in a methodologically precise and coherent way. The programme aims to understand general historical and cultural correlations and approaches that enable us to perceive the idiosyncratic nature of religious phenomena. The focus at Goethe University Frankfurt is on the various methods of empirical cultural studies as well as on working with a hermeneutic approach to religious phenomenology that explores subjective, internal perspectives of religion.