Class Schedules

Situated within the overlapping socio-political contexts of the so-called Muslim World and the West, this course examines the Islamic engagement with modernity through both secondary scholarly analysis and primary texts representing seminal modern Islamic discourses (including modernist, Islamist, traditionalist, and progressivist). After a brief introduction to the academic study of Islam and Islamic history, we will explore key ways Muslim thinkers and activists have defined (and re-defined) themselves in response to the changes wrought by the colonial and post-colonial eras.

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:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Globally and throughout the United States, right-wing authoritarianism and populism is on the rise. Parliamentary governments in Europe have seen previously-unthinkable victories by far right parties, and fascism within the United States has received a new boost of energy from the mainstreaming "Alt-Right" movement, which organizes on college campuses and in paramilitary formations, including multiple murders and deaths. We will examine fascist movements using contemporary political questions and concerns as our primary organizing lens. We will investigate the role of religion, authority, the creation of moral frameworks, and the strategies and tactics used by fascists, their opponents, and mainstream media discourses about both. Some of the key questions of the course will include: What is fascism and how is it similar to, and distinct from, other far right movements? Were pre-twentieth century movements like the KKK fascist? This class will move from historical beginnings to a series of debates and questions regarding contemporary fascist and antifascist movements, including questions of free speech, violence, the appropriation of liberal discourse, and the role of campuses in fascist strategy.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines Muslim discourse on the spirituality of women in Islam—both through personal accounts of Muslim women themselves and discourses imposed upon them by the prevailing patriarchy—from the time of Muhammad through the present. Using both primary and secondary sources, we will explore the various doctrinal and political ways mysticism and mystical experience is defined and interpreted in gendered contexts and the attendant debates around competing gendered notions of spiritual power and authority.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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. Readings will 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. All readings in English. No pre-knowledge required.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

19th century Mormons and 20th century Muslims were subject to paranoid perceptions and constructions. Inspired by “The Paranoid Style in American Political Thought,” this course explores three themes: (1) the challenge that Mormons and Muslims posed to the normative relationship of religion and state, which is rooted in Protestant Christianity and its secular offspring, political liberalism; (2) the racialization of Mormons and Muslims and traditions of racial thinking within those traditions; and (3) the concessions to the normative order that Mormons and Muslims have been forced to make and the prospect of reconstructing a Protestant-dominant American identity in light of the challenges these traditions pose to a liberal individualist social order.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Traversing the borderlands between enlightenment and psychopathology, this course examines how charismatic, spiritual masters often authorize the subversion of their own rational, legal, and ethical traditions. Through primary writings, accounts of disciples, and secondary scholarly analysis, we will wrestle with problematics arising at the intersections of global modernity, charismatic power, and transgressive spirituality, such as the tensions between non-dualism and antinomianism, intimacy and sexual exploitation, monism and megalomania, and ego dissolution and coercive power.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The belief in a coming Messiah has been central to much of Jewish thought and history. This course charts messianic expectation among Jews from biblical times to the present day. Along with an introduction to the concept of “Messiah” as it appears in the Bible and other ancient Jewish texts, we will survey various messianic figures, including Jesus of Nazareth, the military leader Simon Bar Kochba, the early modern mystic Shabbtai Tzvi, and others. The course will also explore the role of messianic hope as a religious phenomenon, analyze messianic movements in contemporary Judaism, and consider the socio-political impact of Messianism in the State of Israel and the broader Middle East.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Christianity is often understood as a “Western” religious tradition, yet Christianity has deep roots in the area now called the Middle East. In the first millennium C.E., Christian communities thrived in the regions of what we today call Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Christians in late ancient Mesopotamia produced texts, images, and rituals that continue to inform the practice of Christianity in the Middle East and beyond. This course will explore the diverse forms of Christianity from its beginnings in ancient Palestine, to its development in the Christian East, to its more recent history as a minority religion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We will pay special attention to relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslims; the practice of Christian asceticism and monasticism; the diverse understandings of Jesus; the role of persecution and martyrdom in the formation of Christian identity; and the history of Christian sites, manuscripts, images, and monuments in this region.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This seminar-style course concentrates on the concept of ritual in approaches to the study of religion, and examines examples of rituals in practice. We will eschew focus on any single religious tradition for a focus on ritual across traditions. This will require 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:

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

Since sociologists and anthropologists have long argued that people think about religion and the divine in categories that correlate closely to their social system, it is not surprising that they have been especially interested in the religion and society of India. Beginning with the classic account of the caste system by social anthropologist Louis Dumont, we will examine is view of the hierarchical nature of society and its relationship to religious views that affirm and assume hierarchy in human and divine worlds. From there we will go on to consider the many responses to Dumont's view, including studies of gender roles; sexuality in mythology and ascetic traditions; untouchability; religious hierarchy and political power; and, resistance to and inversions of hierarchical systems in India.

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