Class Schedules

Buddhism is increasingly well-known in the USA, but what is it, and how does Buddhism encourage people to organize and think about their lives? Organized on the basis of the Eightfold Noble Path, with a focus of 'morals, the Buddhist psychology of mind, and meditation,'  this course offers an introduction to the personalities, teachings, and institutions of Buddhism. Beginning in India at the time of the Buddha, this course focuses on Theravada Buddhism, asking students to think historically, philosophically, and anthropologically. Many Friday sessions will be dedicated to an exploration of the variety of Buddhist meditative techniques.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For nearly a thousand years, the religious lives of the ancient Israelites revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem. When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, Jewish scribes needed to find new ways to carry on the worship and traditions of Judaism. This course introduces students to the rabbis and the literature they produced in the first several centuries of the common era. In our study of rabbinic texts such as the Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmud, we will see how the rabbis conceived Jewish thought and practice in Late Antiquity. In order to locate the rabbis in their historical context, we will also compare the classical rabbinic corpus with other Jewish texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judeo-Hellenistic philosophy, and the New Testament. Since rabbinic Judaism stands as the foundation for Jewish praxis today, this course maintains a focus on how rabbis’ words and deeds continue to influence modern notions of Scripture, ethics, and theology.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the Qur'an through diverse perspectives, including through its revelation, assembly as a text, its form, its interpreters, and its embodied learning practices. We will pay particular attention to the Qur'an's narrative form through its prophetic, environmental, and gender narratives. We will learn about the life of the Prophet Muhammad in conjunction with the revelation of the Qur'an as well as the importance of the Prophet's own sayings and examples in Islamic law and practice. We will examine interpretations of the Qur'an from different chronological, geographical, environmental, and gendered perspectives. We will ask questions such as: What role has the Qur'an played for Muslims historically? In the contemporary period? In what ways does the Qur'an speak to believers? What are some of the ways Muslims have approached and interpreted the Qur'an? No Arabic language proficiency required.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This class will be a reflection on the long history of co-existence of people in South Asia thought to belong to two very different religions Hinduism and Islam. We will begin by looking at the formation of classical Islam in the Middle East, and looking at the classical Hindu epic, the Ramayana. From there we will move to a survey of the history of encounter and exchange, from the early period (al Biruni), to the establishment of the great Muslim sultanates. We will critically examine the evidence of religious conflict, alongside the evidence of rich cultural exchange, and interrogate the competing historigrahic narratives, according to which South Asia either become a single Indo-Islamic civilization or a place of two cultures destined to become different modern nation states (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Finally, we will consider colonial and post colonial South Asia and conclude with a reflection on the Babri Masjid crisis and India's debates about secularism.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A study of the religious tradition of Roman Catholicism. Some attention will be given to the theology and historical development of the Roman Catholic Church, but major emphasis will fall on the relationship of the Catholic religion to various Catholic cultures, including Ireland, Mexico, Poland and the United States.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Asian Americans are often overlooked in the study of religion in the U.S., and yet the impact of Asian religious practices can be seen at every turn: yoga studios, mindfulness meditation, "zen" aesthetics of minimalism, and so on. What do we make of the gap between how Asian religions are practiced in Asian American communities and how these traditions have been reinterpreted by predominantly white, educated, middle class adherents? How do Asian American Christians negotiate their identities in the context of non-Asian Christian churches or the intergenerational tensions within their own ethnic churches? The approach of this course is interdisciplinary (and sometimes counterdisciplinary); it draws on theoretical and methodological insights from ethnic studies, religious studies, history, and sociology. Topics include: race and the racialization of Asian Americans; the politics of cultural and religious exchange; the commodification of Asian religious practices; and issues of assimilation and hybridity within Asian American Christian traditions.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores James Baldwin's life and work as a writer and activist. Baldwin was a black queer man in an antiblack and heteronormative world. His queer imagination and spirituality are part of the same cloth. Deeply scared by the black church, Baldwin's spirituality and art were, nevertheless, profoundly shaped by the spirit and language of black church religiosity. Through a heterogenous body of writing and the life he lived, Baldwin explored the souls of black folks (including queer blackness) and the nature of American identity.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores Malcolm X: the man, the myth, and the movement. X was a man of many pieces, sometimes contradictory, that we explore through various representations: autobiographical, screenplay and film, hip hop music and culture, black international opinion, FBI surveillance documents, and a young adult novel co-written by his daughter Ilyasah Shabazz. To some extent, we will engage in a genre study. How does genre —autobiography, biography/history, fiction, hip hop and outlaw cultures —influence representation? How should we think about the continuities and discontinuities among historical, autobiographical, and fictional representations of Malcolm X? Questions we will explore include: Who is representing Malcolm, how and why? How are the various representations inflected by their respective media and genre? Why do we engage in myth-making? Can we distinguish Malcolm the man from Malcolm the myth? How does the religious studies category of “hagiography help us to understand some representations of Malcolm X? What are the perils of hagiography? Was Malcolm’s religion merely a prop for his politics? Assuming it was not, how do we do justice to the religious dimensions of his life? How does Malcolm X’s religious itinerary help us understand who he was? In the last third of the course, we explore Malcolm X as a revolutionary by comparing him with two contemporaries, Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary activist, anti-colonial theorist, and critic of antiblackness (1925-1961); and Amilcar Cabral, revolutionary poet and leader of the anticolonial struggle in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (1924-1973).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, students will explore how stories of past and present Christians and the theologies they produced contribute to the histories of gender and sexuality, particularly in the United States. We will pay special attention to the development of and intersections among queer theory, queer and trans activism, queer biblical interpretation, and queer theology in the U.S. from the late twentieth century on. Students will learn how the development of queer biblical interpretation and theology grew out of the intellectual and activist work of feminist, womanist, and mujerista scholars, theologians, ethicists, and pastors. In readings, class discussion, online forums, and written and creative work, students will be invited to explore the social construction of gendered identities and sexualities over time, from antiquity to the postmodern, and the intersections of these identities with religion, race, ethnicity, class, and dis/ability. Although the majority of the class will be devoted to scholarship and theological writing that insists on the inclusion of diverse sexualities and genders in the Christian past, present, and future, we will also examine the role that some forms of American Christianity play in the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people, the enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality, the “naturalization” of a gender binary, and the reification of patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and transphobic cultures.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the Qur'an and hadith, and other authoritative texts that ground Islamic jurisprudence, and explores the diverse ways in which Muslims have understood and interpreted these teachings in locations across the world (i.e. Indonesia, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and the United States) and at various points in history.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course will explore the art and architecture of the medieval Christian world from the time of Constantine the Great (306-337 CE) to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The lectures and class discussions will focus on the role of images and relics in Christianity as well as the developments in sacred and secular architecture across Europe and the Byzantine empire. Special emphasis will be given to certain trends such as the foundation of monasteries, pilgrimage, icon and relic worship, and the emergence of Romanesque and Gothic styles in architecture, which changed the urban and rural topography of the continent.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

We are living through another wave of popular interest in “cults” and “cultists,” manifesting in true crime podcasts (Escaping NXIVM, Heaven’s Gate), television documentaries (Wild Wild Country, The Deep End), fictional horror or thriller stories (Midsommar, The Idol, Martha Marcy May Marlene), and historical dramatizations (Waco, The Master). These cultural works use the “cult” designation (with all its connotations and associated narratives) to label and make sense of a range of religious, political, economic, and social practices, ideas, and organizations, both contemporary and historical. This course aims to look critically at these media texts and the larger popular fascination with “cults.” In analyzing these narratives about religion, power, charisma, and commitment, we will not primarily focus on the so-called “cultists” being represented, but on the audiences that consume and interpret the stories and the cultural contexts that give rise to them. Looking closely at these images and narratives can reveal popular anxieties and ways of thinking about power and agency, identity and subjectivity, spirituality and secularism, and individuality and collectivity, for instance. Importantly, many of these historical and contemporary treatments also act as powerful sites for working out ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. Our approach will be theoretical and analytical as we examine key historical case studies from the second half of the 20th century (including media engagements with People’s Temple, the Black liberation group MOVE, and the Branch Davidians) and more contemporary examples (including MLM and crypto groups, NXIVM, and Teal Swan).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The word "ritual" is used in many contexts to refer to types of practice that are considered centrally important, as well as formalistic and repetitive. This seminar-style course concentrates on the concept of ritual as a central component of social practice, within and without religious groupings. Focusing on developing the concept of ritual, we will focus on ritual across traditions. This requires students to 'work with' concepts - forming a conception of what they mean by ritual, and be willing to change that conception when faced with contradictory evidence.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores how bodily practices of fasting and sexual abstinence have shaped Christian identities from the first century, C.E. to today. From Paul of Tarsus' instructions about sexual discipline to the True Love Waits® campaign, from the desert fathers' rigorous bodily regimens to the contemporary Christian diet movement, Christians have often understood the practice of renunciation as a necessary feature of spiritual perfection. In this course we will consider several ascetic movements in Christian history, including the development of ascetic practice in late antiquity, the rise of fasting practices among women in medieval Europe, and the culture of Christian dieting and chastity in the U.S. We will pay special attention to how Christian practices of piety both draw upon and contribute to cultural understandings of gender and the body.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An advanced seminar required for religious studies majors, open to minors. Both classic and contemporary theories on the nature of religion and critical methods for the study of religion will be considered. Prerequisite(s): Two courses in Religious Studies and permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines the diversity of Muslims in America from a historical and lived religion perspective. We will examine how race, ethnic, class, gender, and theological differences matter in the construction of Muslim American identities. We will pay particular attention to issues of representation as they relate to Orientalist discourses and the phenomenon of Islamophobia. The class will begin with the history of Muslims in the United States, discussing such figures as Omar ibn Said and early Black American Muslim movements like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam. The latter half of the course turns to the lived experiences of American Muslims, including how American Muslims engage in sacred texts and rituals today. The final project will use oral histories to explore geographies of Islam in the Twin Cities through a digital humanities story mapping project.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Buddhism is increasingly well-known in the USA, but what is it, and how does Buddhism encourage people to organize and think about their lives? Organized on the basis of the Eightfold Noble Path, with a focus of 'morals, the Buddhist psychology of mind, and meditation,'  this course offers an introduction to the personalities, teachings, and institutions of Buddhism. Beginning in India at the time of the Buddha, this course focuses on Theravada Buddhism, asking students to think historically, philosophically, and anthropologically. Many Friday sessions will be dedicated to an exploration of the variety of Buddhist meditative techniques.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introduction to the study of Asian religious traditions in South and East Asia (India, China and Japan). Open to everyone but especially appropriate for first and second year students.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is taught jointly between the department of Religious Studies and the department of Classics, by a specialist in the Roman East and a specialist in classical India. We will start on either side of this world, with Alexander the Great and Ashoka, exploring the relationship between empire and religion from Rome to India in the world's crossroads for the thousand years between Alexander and the rise of Islam.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course investigates the ways in which gender identities and relationships between “men” and “women” have been articulated, constructed, and refashioned throughout the Muslim World. Starting with problematizing fixed notions of gender and sexuality, we map prominent attitudes through visiting a diverse array of sources from the Qur’an, Sunna, and legal documents to historical and anthropological case studies, literature, and film from across the region. Exploring notions of femininity and masculinity, as well as attitudes towards same-sex relations and transgendered populations, we witness their implications in case studies and stories, from a divorce court in Iran to a matriarchal utopia in India.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Many religious texts and traditions have attempted to tackle the question of life after death. In Judaism, views of post-mortem existence develop gradually over centuries, and they include phenomena like heaven, hell, resurrection, messianism, apocalypticism, and more. This course provides an overview of the varied presentations of the afterlife throughout Jewish history. Students will explore the Jewish Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient apocalyptic visions, and rabbinic discussions as avenues for understanding these concepts and their impact in Judaism. We will also dedicate time to comparative study of the afterlife and eschatology in Judaism and Christianity, as well as the reception of these ideas in popular culture, cinema, podcasts, and contemporary theological discourses.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course you will explore the diverse understandings of Christian sexual renunciation from the first century, C.E. to today. From the veneration of the Virgin Mary in early and medieval Christianity to the more recent celebration of virgins and born-again virgins in U.S. pop culture, many Christians have understood the practice of virginity as a mark of spiritual progress or perfection. You will examine the rise of Christian sexual renunciation in the first through fourth centuries, C.E., the veneration of virgin saints in the Middle Ages, the shifting attitudes toward virginity in the Reformation era, the recent development of Christian chastity movements in the U.S. (True Love Waits, Silver Ring Thing), and the proliferation of Christian chastity advice literature. In written assignments and class discussions, you will explore how Christian practices of renunciation draw upon and contribute to cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, race, and the body. In three short reflection papers and one final project, you will use your own writing as an occasion to come to terms with the cultures of virginity and how they relate to the history of Christianity. In-class writing workshops will provide you an opportunity to discuss your and your peers’ writing and hone skills in argumentation, organization, style, and revision.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The critical study of ancient Christian texts involves making strange texts familiar and familiar texts strange. In this course, we will consider non-canonical texts alongside canonical texts in order to develop insight into the formation of Christian identity in the first through fourth centuries. Special emphasis will be given to the development of the discourses of orthodoxy and heresy, the diversity of Christian beliefs and practices, and the examination of early Christian writings within their social and political contexts. Instead of investigating the material in strict chronological order, we will consider how different people (Jesus, Mary Magdalene, James, Paul, etc) serve as authorizing figures for the texts. Using this organization, we will investigate issues at stake in the development of Christian "canon," including theology, Christology, apostolic authority, women's roles, and the relation of Christianity to the state and to other religious traditions.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will examine the roles, identities, and representations of women in the Tanakh/ Old Testament, New Testament, and Jewish and Christian apocrypha.  We will explore how biblical writers used women "to think with," and we will consider how gender is co-constructed alongside religious, social, and sexual identities.  We will ask the following sorts of questions: What opportunities for social advancement and leadership were open to women in ancient Israelite, early Jewish, and early Christian communities, and how did these opportunities differ from those open to women in other religious formations in the ancient Mediterranean?  How did biblical regulations of bodies, sexuality, marriage, and family life shape women's lives? What are the social and material effects of biblical representations of women? And how might current feminist theories inform our interpretation of biblical texts about women?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course is an introduction to some of the important theoretical and methodological work conducted by scholars in various disciplines who hope to better define and understand religious phenomena. This seminar begins with some of the early twentieth century texts that are often cited and discussed by contemporary scholars of religion (e.g., Durkheim, Weber, Freud) and then turns to a number of investigations stemming from engagement with earlier theorists or refracting new concerns. The course inquires into the problems of defining and analyzing religious cultures, and the researcher's position or positions in this analysis, as this has been approached from anthropological, sociological, and religious studies perspectives.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the ancient history and sacred texts of Judaism’s Second Temple period (6th century BCE to 70 CE). After Jews return home from exile in Babylon, they rebuild the Jerusalem Temple (the "Second Temple") and spend centuries living under the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome. In this class, students will encounter Jewish military records in the books of the Maccabees and Josephus; approach ancient views of women and gender in the books of Esther and Judith; ponder Jewish philosophy in the books of Sirach and Wisdom; and decode the apocalyptic imagery of Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Our study of these texts will provide political and socio-cultural insight into how Second Temple Jews expressed identity, engaged in worship, and negotiated conflict amidst uncertain times in the ancient Mediterranean world.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course engages with the pleasures and pains of love, for the Divine and human, as imagined by authors under the influence of “Persianate” culture. We will start by defining the “Persianate” and its sphere as well as conceptualizations of “love.” We will look at an array of sources in different poetic genres and forms, produced in Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent from the 10th century to present day. We will read the texts in English translation and will focus on themes such as forbidden love, celebration of carnal pleasures of love and lust, homo-eroticism, mystical love, as well as love for the Divine, religious figures, and the nation. When possible, we will juxtapose the poems to their visual representations or musical renditions. The texts are accompanied by secondary sources that expand on some theoretical, historiographical, literary, and philosophical issues related to the concept of love.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will examine the relationship between fascism and religion in a variety of historical settings. We will read and analyze primary and secondary source texts to identify how and to what extent fascist movements root themselves in traditions of faith. We will explore the formal relationship between fascist leaders and clergy as well as how religious and fascist practices inform one another. By comparing how fascism and faith relate in different historical contexts, students will be challenged to determine what makes religious beliefs and institutions predisposed to authoritarianism and violence.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What causes people to change their religious beliefs? How have societies handled those who do alter their spiritual attitudes? This course focuses on several dramatic case studies of men and women who self-consciously changed their religion during the turbulent period of imperial encounters between the mid-1500s and the 1700s. Among others, we will examine and interrogate reports of converts to Christianity including Jewish and Muslim prisoners of the Inquisition, captives of Mediterranean pirates, and the nearly canonized Mohawk convert Catherine Tekakwitha. We will consider how violence, national loyalties, gender, charisma, local power dynamics, environmental upheaval, and serendipity affected the choices and fates of these converts. This course fulfills both the global/comparative and pre-1800 requirements for the major. Meets the pre-1800, and the global and/or comparative history requirements, and can count towards "Law and Social Justice," or "Global/Comparative" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials