Class Schedules

This course charts the formation of Islam and the expansion of Muslim peoples, from the life of the Prophet Muhammad to the Mongol conquest of Baghdad. It will examine Muslim institutions, beliefs, and ritual practices in their historical contexts. In addition to the basics of Muslim practice and belief, the class will introduce students to mystic traditions (Sufism), Islamicate statecraft, and intellectual/legal traditions as well as cultural trends including art, architecture, and literature.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is religion? Why are people religious? What are the broad similarities and differences among various religions across culture and time? Some people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. What does that mean? These are the basic questions that we consider in this introductory course. We shall explore religion as a practice of constructing similarities and differences that recruits virtually every issue that humans find important. Birth, puberty, and death; sex, money, and power; ethics and politics; humanity, divinity, and animality, earth and sky are all part of the religious imagination. We shall approach religion as a comparative practice, both intercultural and cross-cultural, through which people understand themselves and others.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Buddhism is increasing 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 WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course, we will study the Jewish Bible (also called the Tanakh or Old Testament) in its original cultural and literary contexts. Alongside an analysis of the biblical texts, students will also encounter related literature from the Ancient Near East to compare with the Bible. Through this comparative approach, we will gain insight into ancient history, as well as the political and theological views of the Israelites and their neighbors. We will also see how the Jewish Bible contributes to various topics of discourse that remain relevant today, including issues around ethnicity, feminism, LGBTQ concerns, God and science, ethics, and collective memory. As such, students will have the opportunity to put the Bible into dialogue with their own understandings of identity, society, and religiosity.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we 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. Students in this course 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, we will explore how Christian practices of renunciation draw upon and contribute to cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, and the body.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This class explores the construction of race as connected with and applied to Islam and Muslims. The racialization connected with Islam and Muslim identities will be explored primarily though not exclusively through American examples. We will consider “blackness,” “brownness,” and “whiteness” as experienced through Muslim life in the United States and the political ramifications of these identities. We ask questions about Islam, race, and politics that are situated in the contemporary study of religion and of race. In addition to traditional readings, materials for the course from a variety of media, such as longform journalism, memoirs, and ethnography as well assigned listening (music) and film.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

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

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 WP

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

Hebrew prose selections from the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic parables. Translation of texts will be supplemented with grammar review. Students will gain facility with such tools as the lexicon, commentary and critical apparatus and will become familiar with critical trends in contemporary research.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Though sacrifice is often viewed as the exclusive property of religion, this course is organized around the claim that religion and statecraft (the art of governing a nation well) are connected through practices of human sacrifice. Thus, in this course, we use "human sacrifice" as a comparative category to understand aspects of religion and statecraft, especially in war, capital punishment, torture, terrorism, and genocide. Though torture, terrorism, and genocide are important, our special focus is warfare and capital punishment, which encompass the other sites of human sacrifice. The central questions are the following: Why do gods and states demand blood; whence the impulse to human sacrifice? What are the relations between divine sovereignty, political sovereignty, and sacrifice? What are the modalities of human sacrifice? Is human sacrifice inevitable?

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Muslim-majority societies faced daunting social, political, and intellectual challenges after Europe-s military and economic expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the modern period, Muslims have pursued various attempts at re-imagining Islam and strengthening Muslim-majority polities through different agendas of reform and revival. The course will survey the early-modern Muslim empires (Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal), the encounter of Muslim peoples with colonialism, and the major religious and social developments from the eighteenth century to the present. After surveying these major movements, the course will have a special focus on Persia/Iran from the Safavid era to the present and feature film viewings from the region.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course offers an introduction to Buddhism through a focus on Theravāda Buddhism, and asks students to approach the topic of Buddhism from anthropological, historical, and philosophical perspectives. A major theme throughout the course is the contemporary transformations of Buddhist Modernism, and its concomitant focus on the Buddhist psychologies of mind, and meditation. Many Monday 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

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 survey course examines aspects of the histories and cultures of Cambodia. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary focus, we will examine aspects of geography, language, art, and religion, moving from the enormous and significant Angkor empire to contemporary Cambodia.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course analyzes modern expressions of Jewishness and Judaism in the United States and Israel. Students will explore topics including, but not limited to, Judaic forms of religious worship and social engagement, conversion and assimilation, Jewish-Christian relations, the Holocaust/Shoah, anti-Semitism, Israeli-Palestinian discourse, questions of race/ethnicity, and feminist and LGBTQ+ issues. We will engage the contours of modern Judaism via diverse media such as books, articles, films, and podcasts. The course will also incorporate a strong discursive component, in which students will approach the assigned texts alongside in-class discussion.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces students to the Qur'an (Koran) through diverse perspectives, including through its revelation, assembly as a text, its interpreters, and the Qur'an as a material object. Students 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 example in Islamic law and practice. We will examine interpretations of the Qur'an from different chronological, geographical, and gendered perspectives. Students will leave the class with an understanding of the role of the Qur'an for Muslims and Islam historically and in contemporary times, as well as debates surrounding it. We will also examine contemporary expressions of Islamophobia, considering how misunderstandings of the Qur'an and its contents contribute to fears of the text and Islam.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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. Of course, we know their stories only second hand. This course explores how narratives about martyrs ("martyrologies") relate to the formation of religious identities and communities. Over the course of the semester, we will analyze martyrologies 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 in the ancient past, and the U.S./Middle East conflicts of 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?

General Education Requirements:

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:
Writing WC
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course intends to introduce students to the foundational theories and concepts of the Marxist and Anarchist theoretical traditions, as they apply to the academic study of religion and critical theory. This course does not focus on the practical or historical revolutionary efforts of either marxists or anarchists, but rather on the theoretical developments within those traditions and their deployment in scholarship on religion. Major themes are ideology, alienation, authority, commodity, value, and fetishization.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores James Baldwin’s life and work as a writer and activist. Baldwin was a black gay 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. We will cover material that will deepens our understanding of racial formations in the US context. Racial formations refers to the history of laws, institutions (corporate, educational, religious, etc.), and social practices that create race.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

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

Approaches to the Study of Religion serves as the capstone course in Religious Studies, required for senior majors and optional for minors and for non-majors/minors. The purpose of the course is to provide an opportunity to integrate previous work in the major, and to reflect upon the meaning of the discipline both for the academic world and for the possible professions students may follow outside the academy, whatever they may be.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials