Class Schedules

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

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 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

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

This course situates Jesus of Nazareth and his messianic movement in its first-century Jewish context. Students will read and analyze the New Testament Gospels as Jewish texts produced amidst competing ideologies and theologies within early Judaism. In order to place Jesus on his original Judaic continuum, we will also explore ancient Jewish literature like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint, as well as rabbinic literature that postdates the earliest Jesus movement. Students will gain a deeper appreciation of Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity, and the Jewish character of the religion that would become Christianity. This course will also bring us closer to answering questions around current Jewish and Christian self-understanding, interfaith dialogue, and the dynamics of contemporary religious affiliation.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

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 homosexuality 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

This course serves as both an introduction to the interdisciplinary program in Asian Studies and an introduction to some of the religious and philosophical traditions of both South and East Asia. We will have a number of guest lectures from Asian Studies faculty, and consider Hindu and Buddhist traditions in South India as well as Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist traditions in East Asia. In both settings we will examine the aftermath of nineteenth and twentieth century encounters with Western colonial powers and analyze the thought of Gandhi and Mao Zedong.

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:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course engages with the pleasures and pains of love both for the Divine and human beings 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 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 songs. 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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For over two thousand years, Jews and Christians have read and interpreted the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) in a variety of ways. This course explores the historical and religious contexts in which ancient readers understood Scripture. Students will survey specific biblical passages that have yielded various meanings in Judaism and Christianity throughout the centuries. We will analyze ancient texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in order to see how different religious groups utilized the Bible for their respective communities. The course will put early interpretations into conversation with modern scholarly approaches that speak to contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and the ongoing role of Scripture in theological, social, and intellectual discourse today.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For the past century, film has been a conduit for religious imagery and ideology. This course focuses on the role of Jews and Judaism in the creation and content of cinema. Alongside films by Jewish directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and the Coen Brothers, we will also see how non-Jewish filmmakers portray Jewish ethnicity and history. We will approach cultural, ritual, and theological subjects with a focus on how Judaic considerations shape the cinematic message. Primary texts from the Bible and other traditional Jewish sources—as well as scholarly readings in modern Jewish thought, religious studies, philosophy, literature, feminist interpretation, and queer theory—will supplement analyses of Jewish themes in movies from the United States, Europe, and Israel.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

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 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:
Writing WA
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 studies the interaction of Jewish, Christian, and pagan cultures, and the protracted struggle for self-definition and multi-cultural exchange this encounter provoked. The course draws attention to how the other and cultural and religious difference are construed, resisted, and apprehended. Readings include Acts, Philo, Revelation, I Clement, pagan charges against Christianity, Adversus Ioudaios writers, the Goyim in the Mishna, and apologetic literature.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The belief in a coming Messiah has been foundational for 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 Kokhba, the early modern mystic Sabbtai 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:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Despite a long history of problematizing the false binary of “Islam” and the “West,” we are still grappling with real life consequences of the clash of these imagined geographies. This course studies the historical context of the two concepts on a spectrum from Orientalists such as Bernard Lewis to their critics such as Edward Said. Beyond scholars in “Western” academia, we will study Muslim voices that examine, reproduce, or deconstruct the binary through scholarly and creative projects. We will analyze how the two concepts are co-constituted and how categories attached to each, such as secularity/religion, modernity/tradition, civilization, barbarity, etc., are constructed and critiqued in relation to their “others.”

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

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

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

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

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. The first part of this course traces Marx’s gradual conceptualization of the imaginary throughout his work—as well as further Marxist theoreticians, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek—while exploring how the imaginary enabled Marx’s discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom, all of which are central in the analysis of culture and ideology. In the second part of the course, we shall focus on the logic and mechanisms of power in contemporary neoliberalism, including the claim that today Marx’s theory is no longer relevant (readings will include Maurizio Lazzarato, Nancy Fraser, McKenzie Wark). All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. Core course toward the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this class you will examine ideas about love among ancients in the Mediterranean, Western Asia, and North Africa. Topics include love of friends, love of family, love of God/gods, erotic love, love magic, myth, and poetry. Alongside your classmates, professor, and occasional guest speakers, you will pay special attention to diverse constructions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, bodies, reproduction, and power and how these intersected with ancient conceptions of love. You will learn to engage theories from the last forty years (i.e. Foucault, feminist theory, queer historical theory, radiant historiography) as you explore ancient texts, sculpture, paintings, and mosaic (from Homeric myth to Augustine’s Confessions, from the poetry of Sappho to the Song of Songs, from ancient Greek vase painting to the mosaics of Ravenna). This class will be taught in a seminar style, with large and small group discussion, student presentations, short lecture formats, low-stakes writing assignments and reflections that build to a larger project, and attention to creative works such as poetry and art.

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, sometime contradictory, that we explore through various representations: autobiographical, screenplay and film, hip hop music and culture, black international opinion (and FBI surveillance documents), a young adult novel (co-written by his daughter Ilyasah Shabazz), and though comparison with his contemporary, Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary activist and theorist of decolonialism and a critic of antiblackness. Some of the questions we will explore include the following: 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?

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Religion and Law in Africa is an intermediate cross-listed history and religion course designed to teach students how to think like historians and assess how the legal systems of indigenous African societies have been shaped by their respective religions and cosmologies. This course also explores how Arab and European colonization in different parts of Africa imposed new legal systems that were influenced by either Islam or Christianity. The major themes of this class include African agency, indigenous African forms of knowledge and periodization, the interconnectedness of religious, legislative, and judicial facets of African societies, and diversity among African regions, societies, ethnic groups, religions, and languages.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All human societies observe some form of hierarchy; for example older persons might have more authority than younger persons, men more than women, and so forth. While many people claim to be egalitarians, they unconsciously still recognize differences in status, and would admit that human equality is an ideal not yet achieved. In some societies, however, equality is not even an ideal, and much effort is expended in maintaining differences in rank and privilege, so much so that those differences are seen not as a matter of custom, but as a matter of blood. In other words, differences in rank and status are read as natural, as rooted in biology rather than a result of history and culture. In India, the word for caste, jati, is the word for ‘species’. In America, minor genetic differences in skin pigmentation, which are constructed as race, have often been read as profoundly significant markers of human difference. In our course, we will examine these two cultures to see what we can find in common when people emphasize human difference (caste and race) as something biological, and to see how these value systems differ and evolve over time. In particular, we explore the way that the concept of caste changes when it travels from India to the United States and becomes part of the discourse on race.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Iran, Pakistan, and until very recently, Afghanistan are three countries that are constitutionally imagined as Islamic Republics. Is this category a possibility or an oxymoron? How is nation imagined in them? What is meant by national identity? Is nation a primordial concept or a byproduct of Modernity? What social, economic, sexual, religious, and racial factors are at work in creating a nation? This course looks at these questions in the context of the Modern Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, where competing nation-building enterprises were at work to establish an “authentic national identity” with a focus on religious identity. We will study the historical and recent political developments in these countries such as the India/Pakistan partition, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and Afghanistan’s transition from Islamic Emirates to Islamic Republic and again to Islamic Emirates with the return of Taliban to power in September 2021. We will look at political essays, literary creations, images, and songs to study the diverse ways in which the nation is imagined and critiqued in the region, along with sources on Modern political thought.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

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