RELI 100-01 30586 |
Introduction to Islam: Formation and Expansion |
Days: M W F
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Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: Ahoo Najafian
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Details
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
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RELI 136-01 30587 |
World Religions and World Religions Discourse |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room: HUM 214
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Instructor: James Laine
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Details
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
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RELI 145-01 30163 |
Pagans, Christians and Jews in Classical Antiquity: Cultures in Conflict |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: CARN 404
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Instructor: Andrew Overman
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*Cross-listed with CLAS 145-01*
Details
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
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RELI 194-01 30588 |
Jewish Messianism from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the State of Israel |
Days: M
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Time: 07:00 pm-10:00 pm
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: Nicholas Schaser
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Details
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
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RELI 194-02 30589 |
Islam and the West |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: OLRI 301
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Instructor: Ahoo Najafian
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Details
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
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RELI 225-01 30590 |
Women and the Bible |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: Susanna Drake
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*Cross-listed with WGSS 225-01*
Details
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
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RELI 238-01 30592 |
Catholics: Culture, Identity, Politics |
Days: M W F
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Time: 02:20 pm-03:20 pm
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Room: HUM 215
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Instructor: James Laine
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Details
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
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RELI 241-01 30712 |
Reclaiming Zen, Yoga and Church: Asian American Religions |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: HUM 212
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Instructor: Jake Nagasawa
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*Cross-listed with AMST 241-01 and ASIA 241-01*
Details
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
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RELI 276-01 30328 |
Marx, the Imaginary, and Neoliberalism |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: HUM 401
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Instructor: Kiarina Kordela
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*Cross-listed with GERM 276-01, MCST 276-01, and POLI 276-01*
Details
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
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RELI 294-01 30593 |
Love in the Ancient World |
Days: M W F
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Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room: HUM 112
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Instructor: Susanna Drake
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Details
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
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RELI 294-02 30594 |
Representing Malcolm X: Religion, Hip Hop, Mythmaking |
Days: M W F
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Time: 03:30 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: MAIN 010
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Instructor: William Hart
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*Cross-listed with AMST 294-08*
Details
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
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RELI 294-03 30703 |
Religion and Law in Africa |
Days: M W F
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Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room: HUM 302
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Instructor: Tara Hollies
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*Cross-listed with HIST 294-02*
Details
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
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RELI 294-04 30798 |
Gender, Caste, and Race: The Biological Readings of the Socio-Religious |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: Hart, Laine
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Details
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
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RELI 394-01 30595 |
Islamic Republic: Explorations in Religion and Nationalism |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room: CARN 05
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Instructor: Ahoo Najafian
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Details
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
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RELI 469-01 30597 |
Approaches to the Study of Religion |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: William Hart
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Details
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
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