Class Schedules

This course provides a general introduction to Islam, as a textual and lived tradition. Students will read from the Qur’an, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and Shi’ite Imams engaging them both as historical resources and as dynamic and contested objects that have informed Muslim life in diverse ways throughout the centuries. Through following a thread from scripture, through the interpretive sciences, into an analysis of Muslim life in the contemporary world, and materialized in art and literature students will explore answers Muslim thinkers have given to major questions of our shared existence, with both fidelity to the texts and flexibility to present demands. Though the focus of this course is not on Islam's role in current events, through attaining a solid introduction to the tradition—its sociology, its history, and its modes of reasoning—students will attain the knowledge necessary to begin to engage those events with a critical and informed mind.

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 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:
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

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 situates Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X within the larger context of the black freedom struggle. While focusing on them as individuals, the bulk of the course addresses historical contexts, organizations, events, and individuals which are obscured by King's and X's celebrity. The black freedom struggle has always been national in scope with international implications. In addition to the "southern theater," we explore of the black freedom struggle in the Western, Midwestern, and Northern regions of the country. We also explore the relation between historical expressions of the black freedom struggle such as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. A major theme of the course is the role of religion and the larger category of spirituality as a kind of connective tissue among the various dimensions of the black freedom struggle.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will focus on two specific authors and books, whose influence is wide ranging and theoretically provocative: Catherine Bell's "Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice," and Roy Rappaport's "Ritual and meaning in the making of humanity." The work is primarily reading, discussion, and reflection. The course is a closer look at ritual theory and its development than the chronological and genealogical overview offered in RELI 311. This class has no prerequisites and is appropriate for interested students of every level.

General Education Requirements:

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 WP
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

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:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power—while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx’s work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to “take life” or punish or exclude (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit “secular,” biopower is a form of “pastoral power” (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx’s critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; and the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination. All readings in English; no pre-knowledge required. Counts as a core course for the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course examines vocal music inspired by the death of Jesus of Nazareth, a narrative referred to as "the Passion." We will study these works through musical, literary, and theological lenses, diving the course into two acts. Act One traces the form's development from liturgical chant up to the paradigmatic settings of Johann Sebastian Bach, his St. John Passion (1724) and St. Matthew Passion (1727). Act Two considers modern settings (inspired in part by Bach's) which consider issues of political ideology, class, race, gender, queerness, and more. Works to be studied will include Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos (2000), Tan Dun's Water Passion after St. Matthew (2000), Joel Thompson's Seven Last Words of the Unarmed (2015), among others. The specter of anti-Judaism in relation to the Passion story will be discussed at length. The course requires no prerequisites, though a familiarity with Western musical notation is necessary and will be assumed.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course engages with the pleasures and pains of love both for the Divine and human as imagined by authors under the influence of Persianate Culture. We will look at different sources including autobiographies, letters, poems, and novels produced from the tenth century to present day. We will read the texts in English translation and focus on themes like forbidden love, celebration of carnal pleasures and lust, homo-eroticism, mystical love, and love for God, religious figures, and nation. The texts, all in English translations, are accompanied by secondary sources that expand on some literary and philosophical issues related to the concept of love.

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

Being human is an iterative process of knowing, being known and coming into deeper sense of self. In this course we will interact with philosophical and religious thought, memoirs, and contemporary scholar-practitioners who contribute to modern understandings of self, purpose, and belonging.

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

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. His conceptualization of the imaginary is gradually developed throughout several of his works, from his Critique of German Ideology to Capital, and is intrinsically intertwined with his discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom. All these concepts became instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis and new fields of knowledge, such as cultural analysis and the analysis of ideology. While also familiarizing ourselves with the basics of two of the most decisive influences on Marx, Hegel and Spinoza, in this course, we shall read excerpts from Marx’s work and pursue its further development in later influential thinkers and cultural critics, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek. In this way the course will combine theoretical rigor with tangible analysis of media that range from verbal texts to the visual arts and film. The course will actually meet MWF 11:00-1:00 (not until 1:30), so students who want to take the course but have another course starting at 1:00 can ask professor Kordela whether she can give them permission to take the course as an independent study with her.

General Education Requirements:
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 WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Buddhist Literature introduces students to the forms, style, and usages of Buddhist literatures, as well as considerations of their content as well as their histories of creation, commentary, and social use. We will examine the structure of Buddhist canonical literatures but will also be focused on non-canonical literatures such as stories of past-life memories, biographies, and narrative visual and physical arts. Texts from multiple traditions of Buddhism, including Theravāda and Mahāyāna, will be included. This course's primary activities will be reading, discussion, and reflective work.

General Education Requirements:

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

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:
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

In this course we will explore diverse Christian understandings of virginity 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

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

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:
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:

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 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. I emphasize three words in the preceding sentence: foundational, theoretical, and religion, in order to clarify that this course will focus almost exclusively on older texts to the exclusion of more contemporary efforts in either tradition, that it will not focus on the practical revolutionary efforts of either Marxists or Anarchists, but rather on the theoretical writings of those traditions, and finally, that we will focus exclusively on those elements in the tradition that are most relevant to the study of religion.

General Education Requirements:

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

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

According to some trends in Islamic thought, the Imaginal Realm, not bound to the physical world, yet not completely abstract, gives access to the faculty of imagination to catch glimpses of the Truth. This course is a wide-ranging engagement with the imaginative discourses of Muslims. We will look at autobiographical, epistolary, and literary sources as well as music, painting, and movies spanning Islamic history in order to discuss the worldview of different Muslims on being, life and death, love, skepticism about religious claims, mystical journeys, and immigration. Besides reading original texts (in English translation), we will look at secondary sources that contextualize the historical and theoretical issues under study.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course investigates how 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

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials