Lines of Research:
Religious Phenomenon: epistemological dimensions
It analyses the concept of religious phenomenon in contemporary thinkers, investigating the relation of the religious phenomenon with the sciences, politics, atheism, and secularization. It studies the relation between immanence and transcendence, the conception of Sacred, the concept of religious experience and the narrow relation between religion and secularization.
Religious Phenomenon: institution and discursive practices
It studies the religious phenomenon in its institutional, doctrinaire, and life experience configurations. It analyses its forms of symbolic, ritual, and textual production in the search for meaning for human existence. It analyses the role of Tradition in the configuration and reconfiguration of the several religious cultural matrixes, from the historical and hermeneutic perspectives, and on the society and culture interface.
Objectives
The Stricto Sensu Post-Graduation Program in Religious Sciences has as main objective qualifying its students for research and teaching in the areas of Religious Sciences.
The Program, at master’s degree level, has the following specific objectives:
a) conferring the student the degree of master in Religious Sciences;
b) forming professors and researchers for acting in higher education institutions, in religious institutions, and governmental and non-governmental organizations;
c) contribute for the continuous development of research in Religious Sciences, notably, in the area of religious phenomenon;
d) stimulating the investigative capacity and improve the Professional formation, through the development of research methods around the religious phenomenon;
e) stimulate the systematic reflection and production of researches around religion and religiosity in interdisciplinary and non-confessional perspective;
f) enable, o solid basis, the expansion of the Post-Graduation in Religious Sciences, aiming, in time to come, the constitution of a Doctor’s Degree Course in Religious Sciences at PUC-Campinas;
g) consolidate PUC-Campinas as reference on research in Religious Sciences in regional and national level.
Target Audience
– Holders of higher education diplomas in Theology, Social Sciences, History, Philosophy, Education, Psychology, and areas alike
Scholarship Modalities
a) CAPES/MEC: Program of Support to Post-Graduation from Private Education Institutions;
b) PUC-Campinas/Rectorship: 50% exemption on tuition.
Curricular Structure
For the conclusion of the Master’s Degree in Religious Sciences, aiming at the title of Master, a total of 32 credits are necessary, attributed as follows:
1) 02 mandatory disciplines of 03 credits, adding up to a total of 06 credits;
2) 04 elective disciplines of 03 credits, adding up to a total of 12 credits;
3) 03 modules of Advanced Research Seminars, all mandatory, adding up to a total of 06 credits;
4) Approval on Qualification Exam: at the end of the first year of the Master’s Degree course the student will have to submit his/her dissertation project to a Qualification Exam.
5) Dissertation: 08 credits.
Minimum duration of the Master’s Degree in Religious Sciences is 12 and maximum 24 months.
Thus, the course progression is distributed as follows:
| 1st semester | 2nd semester | 3rd semester | 4th semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandatory (1) | Elective (1) | Elective (3) | Guidance |
| Mandatory (2) | Elective (2) | Elective (4) | – |
| ARS (1) | ARS (2) | ARS (3) | – |
| Guidance | Guidance | Guidance | – |
History
The Stricto Sensu Post-Graduation Program in Religious Sciences originates on the nature of Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas (Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas) of forming its students in an integral manner, articulating science and profession, with ethical-Christian values. The University offers to students disciplines of theology, of philosophy, and humanities, surpassing the specificity of the chosen Professional area. Following such initiative the pedagogic and epistemological of the courses of Theology, Philosophy, Social Sciences, and History, where religion is one of the central elements of the according curriculums. It also originates in the development of research performed in the scope of institutional research groups, certified along the Directorate of CNPq Research Groups (“Contemporary Theology”, “History, Religion, and Religiousness”, “Ethics, Epistemology, and Religion”, “Ethics, Politics, and Religion: issue of founding”) that consider religion as an object of philosophical, theological, historical, and sociological investigation. This scientific production laid its foundation as much in the theoretical founding as in the Brazilian religious reality, markedly plural in terms of religious confession. Thus, the Program was organized around a concentration area called “Religious Phenomenon”, with two lines of research: “Religious Phenomenon: epistemological dimensions”; “Religious Phenomenon: Institution and Discursive Practices”. The first line intends on emphasizing the concept of religion in the contemporary thinking and an entire set of elements that emerge from the search of conceptualization, performed in the context of Modernity and Post-Modernity, while the second one analyses elements contained in the first, present in symbols, rituals, and texts from the ecclesiastical and secular Religious Institutions, inferring, thus, the way these institutions relate with society and culture and its discursive practices.
