1. Critical Review Essay
This year, one component of your comprehensive exams will be to write a critical review essay. For this essay, you should survey five to six academic books or substantive articles that explore a focused topic or theme within the academic study of religion. For example, you could explore nationalism and religion, feminism and religion, critical theory and religion, religion and sexuality, art and religion, ritual theory and religion, or any topic you choose in consultation with Professor Gandhi. While one of the books you choose may be one that you used for your Senior Individualized Project (in Religion), most of the books should be books you did not use for your SIP. Your topic should be chosen in conjunction with your Senior Seminar paper, and the grade you receive for this critical review essay will be factored into your grade for the Senior Seminar. This essay should be approximately ten double spaced pages, and will be due Monday of Week 5 of spring term. (You should plan on at least two if not three drafts of this essay.)
A good review essay not only summarizes the main arguments and evidence of all of the books or articles, but also weaves those arguments together into a coherent and insightful essay. Thus a review essay is both objective—the authors of each work should recognize their own work in your essay—and subjective, insofar as you raise questions about the arguments and conclusions of the authors you discuss. Above all, the essay should be critical and closely analyzed. Please see the attached description of a critical review essay for more guidelines. For this essay, you should have a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals of each of the parts of this are the same as for all papers you write for the Department of Religion, as outlined in the document on the Religion web page, under “Info for Students.”
Within the essay, the introduction should not only present the works you will be discussing in your essay, but should have a coherent and insightful thesis. You need to provide the reader with a good “road map” of essay (without using such phrases as “I will discuss,” etc.). The body of the essay should consist of two parts: a synopsis of the works you have chosen (which includes a critical discussion of the work) and a synthesis, in which you discuss how all these works, collectively, shed light on your topic or theme.
- A good synopsis and discussion not only recaps the author’s argument, but also contextualizes the book or article in terms of the author’s background and the period in which the book was written. The discussion points out weaknesses and strengths of the work. The transition between each of your reviewed works should be seamless and smooth, not disjointed or choppy. Remember that you are writing an essay in which all of the paragraphs have a place in the essay as a whole.
- The synthesis is the place where you collectively discuss all the arguments of the books or articles in relation to each other. How do the works agree or disagree? How are there approaches similar or dissimilar? Which do you find most compelling? Why? This section may be integrated into the previous section, but it is vital that at some point in the essay, you have told the reader why you have chosen these works to review, and how they relate to one another (you would not have an essay if they did not).
The conclusion should rephrase your thesis and your key arguments. This is also where you can expand the argument about the scholarship you have just examined. Where are the holes in the scholarship? What direction would you like this sub-field to take? Why is it important to know this area of the discipline and why is it important for scholars to continue to study? The conclusion should be immediately relevant to anyone reading the essay; in other words, it should answer the “so what?” question in clear and unambiguous terms.
Essays such as this provide all of us with opportunities to reflect on what we find most compelling and interesting in our chosen fields of scholarship. Our commitments are always rooted in our own individual lives and experiences—and our emotions. However, writing an essay such as this requires us to draw on our interests, our passions, and our analysis in such a way that we enter a common conversation with our peers, mentors, and teachers. At this point in your college careers, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips, along with the experience to reflect insightfully and meaningfully on a topic that you find engaging. We hope that you will use this exercise as a way to explore a question, topic, or theme about which you are passionate and interested, and also to display your abilities to synthesize, critically engage, and to write.
2. Intellectual Autobiography
Your intellectual autobiography should be a “map” of your thinking about the study religion during the years that you have been at Kalamazoo College. Looking back to your first course in Religion, what was it about the course that grabbed your attention? What made you decide to major or minor in Religion? Looking back at your classes, not just in Religion, what themes have emerged? What authors have been most influential? What commitments hold your attention? What stands out for you when you think about your understanding of religion in relationship to your study abroad experiences? Your volunteer work or other extracurricular activities? Your friendships and family? In short, what have you learned about religious studies? How have your ideas evolved? Where do you think they will lead you?
This is not a “willy nilly,” unstructured, or stream of consciousness autobiography. You should plan on writing at least three drafts of this essay, emerging in the end with a finely written, structured reflection on how your understanding of religion has unfolded in the last four years. You must use the first person. You are free to use short anecdotes, but be sure that they have a point that supports your thesis. And, yes, you do need a thesis for this autobiography. You should touch on the questions in the above paragraph, but in an eloquent and seamless fashion that is quintessentially yours. If you mention authors, then provide citations at the end of the paper, according to the citation guides on the Religion web page (“Info for Students”).
This paper should be seven to eight pages long, double-spaced, and paginated. Again, you should plan on doing at least two drafts of this paper. It will be due in the Senior Seminar during Week 3, and will be turned in for your comprehensive exams at the same time. The grade you get on this will be factored into the Senior Seminar, and we may ask you questions about this autobiography during your oral examination.
3. Oral Examination
The oral exam is a discussion with members of the faculty in the Religion Department, and the focus will be your critical review essay and your intellectual autobiography. The goals for majors in Religion are separated into three categories: knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Under the heading of knowledge, we expect majors to be familiar with the principal texts, rituals, practices, and ideas in whatever area you have chosen to focus; to be familiar with the history of the study of religions; and to “critically reflect upon the role and value of religious traditions with regard to one or more contemporary problems or issues.” With regard to skills, we expect senior majors to (a) have the critical thinking skills appropriate to the academic study of religion, (b) to be proficient in methodologies of studying religions, and to be able (c) to write in a style appropriate to the study of religion. Finally, we expect that majors should, by this time in their Kalamazoo career, (a) display a respect and understanding of peoples of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds and also (b) possess an awareness of and sensitivity for the heterogeneity of perspectives and concerns within individual religious traditions.
During the oral examination, faculty will ask you questions that are designed to evoke answers that display the following.
- knowledge of religious traditions you have chosen to study;
- knowledge of the history of the study of religions;
- your critical thinking skills;
- your ability to ask (and answer) the proper questions about the study of religion (methodologies); and
- your respect and understanding of religious diversity as a whole, and within particular religious traditions.
The oral exam is a serious conversation, but should not be cause for undue nervousness or anxiety. It is an opportunity for an extended conversation with members of the faculty on topics that you have chosen to pursue, and students should feel entirely comfortable asking faculty questions as well as answering the questions posed to you. Learning how to conduct oneself in such an exam is yet another opportunity for learning that, in the past, has served graduates well. We look forward to this examination, not as an opportunity to “grill you,” but to have an extended conversation about the questions that are central to the study of religion. Dress should be neat, but casual, and students should be on time for their examination slot. The oral exam will be no more than 30 minutes long.
4. Results of the Comprehensive Exam
Immediately following the oral examination, students will be asked to leave the room for a few minutes for faculty deliberations. Several outcomes are possible: students can pass the examination, pass with distinction, fail part of the examination or fail in general. Weaknesses in particular areas of the written work can be strengthened and remedied in the oral examination. In fact, if you feel you did not adequately address a certain point in your critical review essay, come prepared to redress that weakness. If a student fails to recognize a weakness in the review essay, the student will be asked to do specific reading in the problem area and will then be separately examined by a single faculty member. If substantial problems persist yet at this point, a failing grade will be recorded. In this instance and if a student fails the comprehensive exams as a whole (or generally), the entire examination needs to be retaken after a sufficiently long interval to allow for adequate preparation. "Honors" in the Department can be achieved for superior work in courses, the SIP (if it was completed in the Religion Department), and the comprehensive examinations.
Further Thoughts on Writing a Critical Review Essay
A critical review is neither a summary nor a "response paper." A summary only tells the reader the contents of the book; a "response" only tells the reader what you thought or, worse yet, "felt" about it. A critical book review combines the best elements of each.
You should imagine that you are writing your review for an audience that is not only familiar with the events that are described in the books, but is interested in learning how this particular collection of books discusses the topic. Rather than simply retelling the story told by the book as a summary would, your review should discuss how the scholar of religion chose to tell the story. What arguments does he or she make? How does he or she organize and present these arguments? What type of sources does he or she use? To answer these questions, you need to look closely at the footnotes.
Then, you should offer your own assessment of the book--an intellectual rather than emotional assessment. Is the author persuasive? Do you think he or she does a good job using sources, organizing the argument, and making his or her case? Can you think of other kinds of sources that may have been left out? How might they have changed their argument? Does the author rely upon what you consider questionable assumptions or faulty arguments? Did the author accomplish her goals? What are the strengths of the book? By the end of the book, does the reader have a clear sense of the argument in the book?
Having suggested the key components of the "what" question, the next question to answer is "why." Why do we write critical book reviews at all?
For academic scholars of religion, they are the most common form of scholarly publication—every scholar writes a book review at least once a year, if not more often.
- For graduate students, they are a central element in learning to be a scholar of religion—in the best graduate religion programs, first-year students (i.e., a year or two beyond many of you) will read 25 to 35 books in a semester and write critical book reviews on a 5 to 8 of them. Through sheer repetition of reading, writing, and talking about scholarly history books, graduate students in religion become scholars of religion, theologians, and pastors or ministers.
- One of the goals for a critical review essay is to help you display your knowledge as scholars of religions (and critical thinkers, more generally) and, in that sense, what critical book reviews do for graduate students they can also do for you:
- This review will help you to sharpen your reading skills by forcing you to consider carefully and deliberately such questions as: what is the author trying to accomplish?; how does he or she go about doing so? Are his or her arguments clear? Are they persuasive? Are they supported by the evidence?
- This review will also help you to hone your writing skills by forcing you to be clear in your explanations, to condense the essence of what are often big, sprawling, complex books into a substantive review essay of ten pages, and to devote the time and attention necessary to prepare near-publishable quality writing (i.e., papers that are not marred by basic errors of spelling, word choice, and grammar).
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