|
catalog
search
admissions
Religous Studies
Old Main, 108
651-696-6141
Toni Schrantz
|
|
Course Schedule
Spring 2012 »
Fall 2011 »
Spring 2012 Class Schedule - updated February 14, 2012 at 05:56 am
| Number/Section Title |
| Days |
Time |
Room |
Instructor |
| |
| RELI 102-01 Modern Islam |
| TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
MAIN 010 |
Brett Wilson |
|
| RELI 121-01 New Testament |
| TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
MAIN 010 |
Susanna Drake |
|
| RELI 194-01 Asian Religions in American |
| MWF |
09:40 am-10:40 am |
MAIN 111 |
Erik Davis |
| This class is part of the Religious Studies American Religions Cluster, and will meet once a week (most likely Sunday evening) with the other classes in this cluster to partake in the broader curriculum. The Asian Religions in America course serves as an introduction to a few of the religions in the United States which originated in Asia, with special focus on those traditions highly represented in the Twin Cities: Tibetan, Lao, Cambodian, and Vietnamese Buddhism, Chinese Religions, and Hmong Religion. Students will be expected to master social and historical material in addition to the 'religious' material, as a function of understanding how these traditions came to North America, and what this move has entailed for practicing communities.
|
| RELI 194-02 American Heretics |
| MWF |
10:50 am-11:50 am |
THEATR 205 |
Paula Cooey |
| *Cross-listed with WGSS 194-01; This class is part of a Spring 2012 cluster in the department focusing on religion and the American experience. Class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays at the assigned time, and on a weekend day (mostly Sundays, early evenings) for speakers, films, field trips and joint dinners with the other classes. * Just what is "the Bible" and what role has it played in shaping American life? How might it center a pattern of repeated political and cultural subversion that later becomes part of the dominant political voice in the United States? Many if not most of the earliest Europeans who colonized what is now the U.S. were considered religious heretics by the Christian churches of their original homelands at the time of their immigration. Over the course of U.S. history, "new" traditions have also emerged, often considered heretical or "not really Christian" by the subsequently established Christian traditions. While some of these traditions die out, a number of them flourish and later become part of the dominant cultural and political landscape. Much of the debate over who is and isn't heretical or "really Christian" has focused on what counts as authoritative Christian sacred text and how to interpret it. So, for example, even today some Christian denominations and sects find the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) politically, as well as religiously, unacceptable because this tradition grants the Book of Mormon divinely revealed status. Controversy over what does and does not count as sacred scripture, how it is to be interpreted, and who gets to determine right teaching of these texts for human life has gone on to shape American culture and politics in distinctive ways. The debates and the texts on which they focus have provided the primary scripts, the central narratives, and the cultural discourse, from worship to moral practice, politics to the courts, and secular ceremony to economic life. Christians have turned to scripture to justify opposing views and political action on issues from slavery to the Civil Rights, Women's suffrage to the second wave of Feminism, capitalism to socialism, and heterosexually exclusive civil marriage laws to Gay Rights. This course will examine this pattern or movement from "heretic" to dominance, characterized by dispute, adaptation, and power, even violence, by looking at a number of these groups, their sacred texts, and their impact through the use of film, guest lecture, visual arts, field work in various different Christian communities, on-line virtual churches, and, most importantly, the texts themselves. This course is scheduled as an MWF course; however, class will not meet on Fridays due to required fieldwork and attendance at other events.
|
| RELI 194-03 America's Jews, American Judaism |
| MWF |
01:10 pm-02:10 pm |
MAIN 009 |
Barry Cytron |
| *Cross-listed with AMST 194-02; this class is part of a Spring 2012 cluster in the department focusing on religion and the American experience. Class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays at the assigned time, and on a weekend day (mostly Sundays, early evenings) for speakers, films, field trips and joint dinners with the other classes.* In 1654 twenty-three Jewish refugees fled Brazil and landed by mistake in what is today New York. 350 years later American Jewry constitutes the largest, most prosperous, and one of the two most important Jewish communities in the world. The five to six million men, women, and children of the contemporary American Jewish community constitute a "mixed multitude": Sephardic and Ashkenazic, "yordim" and Zionists, religious Jews and secularists, feminists, converts and "bagel-and-lox" Jews, and those who are "just Jewish"! Although comprising less than three percent of the U.S. population, their educational, social, and economic success gives them heightened visibility in the media, politics and literature. We will explore the creation and evolution of the American Jewish community, focusing on the successive waves of immigration, the ways in which these settlers and their descendants constructed a distinctive cultural and religious character, and the reactions of others to their entrance into national life. Of particular focus are the relationships of: Christians and Jews, American Jews and African-Americans, and Jewish women and men, to each other and to the changing landscapes of religious and cultural identity.
|
| RELI 194-04 American Catholics |
| MWF |
01:10 pm-02:10 pm |
MAIN 010 |
James Laine |
*Cross-listed with AMST 194-03; this class is part of a Spring 2012 cluster in the department focusing on religion and the American experience. Class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays at the assigned time, and on a weekend day (mostly Sundays, early evenings) for speakers, films, field trips and joint dinners with the other classes. * For much of American history, Catholics were suspected of harboring values at odds with the democratic values thought to be central to the nation. And yet very large numbers of immigrants coming to American since the 1830s were Catholics: Irish, Germans, Poles, Italians. This course will concentrate on the European background to American Catholicism, the sub-cultures of popular Catholic piety, and the values that American Catholics have held, values that sometimes put them at odds with their Protestant neighbors, and other values that put them at odds with the Catholic hierarchy. With that historical background, we will go on to consider a variety of Catholic sub-cultures present in the Twin Cities: Latinos, African Americans, recent African Immigrants (Eritreans, Cameroonians), Native Americans (Ojibwe), Asian Americans (Koreans, Vietnamese). We will visit these communities and compare their experience to more mainstream Euro-American Catholic communities, both those characterized by a progressive 1960s Vatican II ethos, and those favoring a conservative approach to religion, politics and culture.
|
| RELI 200-01 The Qur'an (Koran) |
| TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
CARN 204 |
Brett Wilson |
|
| RELI 223-01 Orthodoxy and Heresy |
| M |
07:00 pm-10:00 pm |
MAIN 010 |
Susanna Drake |
|
| RELI 294-03 World Religions and World Religion Discourse |
| MWF |
10:50 am-11:50 am |
MAIN 003 |
James Laine |
Our goal will be to make an effort to comprehend just what cultural literacy would mean when studying the major religious traditions of the world, while at the same time developing an appreciation of some of the blind spots and problems in this enterprise. To a large extent, we will do some serious construction before we feel ready for de-construction. Every couple of weeks, we will cover one of five major areas (South Asia, East Asia, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and each student will read a different author's treatment of this material.
|
| RELI 294-04 Defense Against the Dark Arts |
| W |
07:00 pm-10:00 pm |
CARN 305 |
Erik Davis |
*Please note that as of Nov. 16 the waitlist for this course is long and there's no magical way for everyone to get in; cross-listed with ANTH 294-01* This class is a comparative survey of magic and witchcraft across cultures. As such, students in this class will be expected to simultaneously learn details from particular magical traditions studied in class, as well as to relate these details to theories about magic and witchcraft within the discipline of Anthropology and the field of Religious Studies. Special themes addressed in the class are the reasonableness of belief in magic, social panics, magical efficacy, and magic as a form of prefigurative politics.
|
| RELI 294-04 Defense Against the Dark Arts |
| W |
07:00 pm-10:00 pm |
CARN 305 |
Ron Barrett |
*Please note that as of Nov. 16 the waitlist for this course is long and there's no magical way for everyone to get in; cross-listed with ANTH 294-01* This class is a comparative survey of magic and witchcraft across cultures. As such, students in this class will be expected to simultaneously learn details from particular magical traditions studied in class, as well as to relate these details to theories about magic and witchcraft within the discipline of Anthropology and the field of Religious Studies. Special themes addressed in the class are the reasonableness of belief in magic, social panics, magical efficacy, and magic as a form of prefigurative politics.
|
| RELI 294-05 Martyrdom Then/Now |
| TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
MAIN 111 |
Susanna Drake |
*Cross-listed with CLAS 294-01* From Socrates to suicide bombers, martyrs have been forced to give up their lives, or chosen to risk them and even to die, rather than renounce their beliefs or practices. This course explores how stories about martyrs ("martyrologies") relate to the formation of religious identities and communities. Over the course of the semester, we will analyze martryrologies from the early Christian and Jewish periods, the beginnings of Islam, the sixteenth century, and modernity. We will pay special attention to the social and political contexts with which martyrs often found themselves at odds (including the Roman Empire, and U.S./Middle East in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries). In class discussions, readings, and written work, you will have the opportunity to reflect on the following questions (among others): How do the stories we tell about martyrs shape the way we understand religious practices and beliefs? How do narratives of bearing witness, suffering, and death help to illumine relationships between religious and political domains? How might our current understanding of martyrdom be informed for better and for worse by a study of history?
|
| RELI 294-05 Martyrdom Then/Now |
| TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
MAIN 111 |
Paula Cooey |
*Cross-listed with CLAS 294-01* From Socrates to suicide bombers, martyrs have been forced to give up their lives, or chosen to risk them and even to die, rather than renounce their beliefs or practices. This course explores how stories about martyrs ("martyrologies") relate to the formation of religious identities and communities. Over the course of the semester, we will analyze martryrologies from the early Christian and Jewish periods, the beginnings of Islam, the sixteenth century, and modernity. We will pay special attention to the social and political contexts with which martyrs often found themselves at odds (including the Roman Empire, and U.S./Middle East in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries). In class discussions, readings, and written work, you will have the opportunity to reflect on the following questions (among others): How do the stories we tell about martyrs shape the way we understand religious practices and beliefs? How do narratives of bearing witness, suffering, and death help to illumine relationships between religious and political domains? How might our current understanding of martyrdom be informed for better and for worse by a study of history?
|
| RELI 294-06 Conversion and Inquisition: Religious Change 1550-1750 |
| TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
MAIN 002 |
Karin Velez |
*Cross-listed with HIST 294-03*
|
| RELI 469-01 Approaches to the Study of Religion |
| TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
MAIN 111 |
Paula Cooey |
*For Religious Studies majors/minors only; others need permission of instructor*
|
top of page »
Fall 2011 Class Schedule - updated February 14, 2012 at 05:56 am
| Number/Section Title |
| Days |
Time |
Room |
Instructor |
| |
| RELI 100-01 Introduction to Islam |
| TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
HUM 212 |
Brett Wilson |
|
| RELI 100-02 Introduction to Islam |
| TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
HUM 212 |
Brett Wilson |
|
| RELI 111-01 Introducing Buddhism: Mind, Morals, and Meditation |
| MWF |
03:30 pm-04:30 pm |
MAIN 009 |
Erik Davis |
*First Year Course only.*
|
| RELI 111-02 Introducing Buddhism: Mind, Morals, and Meditation |
| MWF |
01:10 pm-02:10 pm |
MAIN 001 |
Erik Davis |
This course introduces students to the tradition of Theravada Buddhism, the type of Buddhism found most commonly in South and Southeast Asia. We focus primarily on the core Buddhist concepts of Samsara, Karma, and Anatman - the last being the Buddhist denial of a persistent soul or self. We also focus on the core Buddhist ascetic practice of meditation. A number of classes are given over to meditation labs, guided by the instructor. The goals of the class, beyond the introduction of the Buddhist tradition and its central components, is to encourage student reflection, self-awareness, and the crucially important skill of meta-cognition (thinking about thinking), and to introduce the field of religious studies as a scholarly pursuit.
|
| RELI 120-01 Hebrew Bible |
| TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
OLRI 270 |
Katherine Brink |
Where did the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) come from? In what way do the worldviews and traditions expressed by its ancient authors compare with those of the superpowers of their day, including the Canaanites (from Ugarit), the Hittites, the Egyptians, and the Mesopotamians? How did the text of the Hebrew Bible come to represent a millennium of beliefs, desires, and customs from ancient Israel and Judah, many of which still reverberate in our society today? Integrating a cross-disciplinary spectrum of religion, history, and literature, students in this class will interpret Hebrew Bible texts in English, using methods employed by biblical scholars, asking questions about language and meaning, literary effects, and the Hebrew Bible's social and historical contexts. Since we will engage in secular study only, analytically examining all relevant religious texts and traditions, students are required to have an open mind and willingness to read and discuss the Bible in a new way.
|
| RELI 194-01 After the Holocaust |
| MWF |
01:10 pm-02:10 pm |
HUM 402 |
Barry Cytron |
The systematic murder of millions during World War II has challenged most every relationship-between neighbors, faiths, peoples. The language of genocide and ghetto has come to inform how one speaks of faith, morality, even our common humanity. After an introductory study of the events, we turn to a study of the Holocaust's impact on religious life, and on interreligious and intergroup relations. We will examine questions of collective memory and the search for justice, and the problems raised to personal and communal life by the call to forgiveness and the command to "never forget." Class meets Monday and Wednesdays during the week, and Sunday evenings for special events, guest speakers and films.
|
| RELI 194-02 Religious Reform and Violence: Catholic, Protestant, and Radical |
| TR |
09:40 am-11:10 am |
HUM 112 |
Paula Cooey |
*Cross-listed with HIST 194-04; first day attendance required; first-year friendly course* Why do people often equate religion with belief? Where does the understanding of secular as religiously neutral come from? Why do people think of national identity as a birthright and religious identity as a personal choice? Why do scholars often privilege sacred text and belief over religious practice, art, architecture, and music? Many modern assumptions about what counts as religion, secularism, and knowledge begin to take their present shape during the 16th and early 17th centuries in Europe. Throughout this period Protestant and Radical groups formed and reformed their Christian identities in relation to each other and over against the Catholic Church in the midst of great economic, political, and social upheaval. The Catholic Church underwent its own internal reformation as well. These processes of formation and reformation produced large numbers of Jewish, Muslim, and so-called heretic Christian refugees fleeing across Europe, often to the Ottoman Empire on the east or to newly discovered territories across the Atlantic. The Ottoman Empire absorbed its refugees with relative lack of conflict, though with an eye to expanding its own territories into Europe. Meanwhile within Europe religious wars raged well into the 17th century, as emerging nation-states enslaved Africans and devastated indigenous populations across the Atlantic. How did religious thought and practice figure into this drama? What role did apocalypticism play in religious reform and revolution? How did Christian discourse on witchcraft legitimate the slaughter of European women and men, along with the colonized of both genders, to reinforce elite European male privilege? How did the concept human shape and get reshaped by theological debate over the status of indigenous people and African slaves in what became the Americas? To address these questions, this course will focus on Catholic, Protestant, and Radical reform movements in relation to the violence that attended them. We will approach this subject by drawing on primary religious texts in translation, secondary historical sources, art, architecture, music, and film.
|
| RELI 235-01 Theory/Method in Religion |
| TR |
03:00 pm-04:30 pm |
MAIN 111 |
Paula Cooey |
*First day attendance required*
|
| RELI 294-01 Arabic Reading and Translation |
| W |
07:00 pm-10:00 pm |
MAIN 003 |
Brett Wilson |
*Cross-listed with CLAS 394-01*
|
| RELI 294-02 Sanskrit |
| MWF |
09:40 am-10:40 am |
MAIN 003 |
James Laine |
*Cross-listed wth CLAS 294-01, ASIA 294-02, and LING 294-01* Like Latin and Greek in Europe, Sanskrit is a highly inflected language of scholarship and revered as the perfect medium for discourse on everything from science and sex to philosophy and religion. It flourished in its classical form after the age of the Buddha (5th century BC) and served as a scholarly lingua franca in India until the Islamic period. This course serves as an introduction to the grammar and script of Sanskrit, and we will advance to a point of reading simplified texts from the classical epic Ramayana. Students will be expected to attend class regularly and spend at least ten hours a week outside class studying the grammar and vocabulary. Without this sort of effort, no progress is possible in such a complex language. In addition to the rigorous study of the language, we will consider both the role of the language in classical Indian culture and religion, and some texts from the Ramayana, looking at both English translations and Sanskrit originals.
|
| RELI 311-01 Ritual |
| TR |
01:20 pm-02:50 pm |
MAIN 011 |
Erik Davis |
|
| RELI 394-01 Gender, Caste, and Deity |
| MWF |
12:00 pm-01:00 pm |
MAIN 009 |
James Laine |
*Cross-listed with ASIA 394-01 and WGSS 394-01*
|
top of page »
|
|
