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The Rationale
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Contemplative Studies Courses
Our proposed concentration would draw on the considerable expertise and interest of this beginning core group of faculty currently at Brown. Out of this group we would generate a foundation of core courses, although students would also be encouraged to take courses relevant to the concentration from throughout the university. CORE COURSES are those that contain a significant discussion of contemplative experience, the varieties of its expression, and its underlying nature; those with an asterisk [*] feature a critical first-person component; RELATED COURSES are those that are relevant to developing a complete understanding of the nature and implications of contemplative experience, but will not necessarily contain explicit contemplative material. Both categories of courses are listed below. UNTIL THE CONCENTRATION BECOMES ESTABLISHED THIS COURSE LIST CAN BE USED AS A GUIDE TO COURSES RELEVANT TO CONTEMPLATIVE STUDIES AT BROWN.
HUMANITIES
RELIGION
Courses that consider contemplative experience as attained through religious practice
CORE COURSES
JUDAIC STUDIES
JS 198: Mysticism and Community: Tales of the Hasidic Masters and their Followers
Professor David Jacobson
RELIGIOUS STUDIES
RS 23: Religion Gone Wild: Spirituality and the Environment
Professor Cladis
RS 81: The Hindu Tradition
Professor Donna Wulff
*RS 88.018: The Foundations of Chinese Religion
Professor Hal Roth
*RS 88.023: Great Mystical Traditions of Asia
Professor Roth
*RS 188.018: Theory and Practice of Buddhist Meditation
Professor Roth
RS 188.001: Music, Drama, and Religion in India
Professor Wulff
*RS 137.003: Buddhist Psychology
Professor Roth
UNIVERSITY COURSES
UC170: Transformation of the Research University
Professor William S. Simmons
*UC XXX: An Introduction to Contemplative Studies (pending CCC approval)
Professor Roth
PHILOSOPHY
Courses on the nature of the human mind as it is envisioned in both Western and Non-Western cultural traditions
CORE COURSES
AFRICANA STUDIES
AF 115: Afro-Caribbean Philosophy
Professor Paget Henry
CLASSICS
CL 99: Concepts of Self in Indian Classical Literature
Professor Peter Scharf
SA 191: Advanced Sanskrit: Readings in Classical Indian Philosophical texts
Professor Scharf
EAST ASIAN STUDIES
EA 088: Directed Readings in Chinese Thought: Chuang Tzu
RELATED COURSES
PHILOSOPHY
PL002: Mind and Matter
PL008: Existentialism
PL175: Epistemology
PL177: Philosophy of Mind
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
AC 161.06: H.D. Thoreau and His Heritage
AC 190.06: Transcendentalism in Action: Emerson and Whitman
LITERATURE
Courses that concentrate on contemplative dimension in the creation and/or appreciation of creative writing
For Core Courses on Creative Writing see “The Creative Arts”
RELATED COURSES
EDUCATION
ED 081: Poetry in Service to the Schools and the Community
Professor Rick Benjamin
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
CO 143.01: Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry
Professor Dore Levy
CO 161.01: Theory of Lyric Poetry
Professor Levy
CO 141: Studies in Drama: Japanese Theatre from Dengaku to Botoh
Professor Meera Viswanathan
CO 071: Introduction to Japanese Literature
Professor Viswanathan
SCIENCE
Courses that concentrate on scientific explanations of the human mind and its cognitive functioning, both on an individual and cultural level
CORE COURSES
PSYCHOLOGY
PY0030: Personality
Professor Brian Hayden
PY 0182: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion
Professor Luiz Pessoa
COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES
*CG00011: Perception, Illusion, and the Visual Arts
Professor William Warren
CG 0138: An Ecological Approach to Perception and Action
Professor Warren
ANTHROPOLOGY
AN118: Japanese Culture, Society, and Performance
Professor Bill Beeman
AN0131: Religion and Culture
Professor William S. Simmons
AN 0153: The Ancient Body: Past Ideas about Human Physiology
Professor Stephen Houston
*AN 0281: Performance Theory
Professor Beeman
RELATED COURSES
PY001: Elementary Psychology
PY105: Music and Mind
PY107: Psychological Theory
COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES:
CG001: Approaches to the Mind
CG008: Meaning and Thought
CG042: Human Cognition
CG044: Perception and Mind
NEUROSCIENCE
BN001: The Brain: An Introduction to Neuroscience
BN105: Cognitive Neuroscience
THE CREATIVE ARTS
Courses that study the role of contemplative experience in the creative arts
CORE COURSES
ENGLISH
*EL 100: John Cage Seminar: Mind, Methods, and Materials
Professor Thalia Field
*EL 100: Deep Ecology and Textual Forms
Professor Field
*EL 100: Buddhism and Creative Practice
Professor Field
*EL 176 Still and Moving Minds: Contemplative Practice in Literature
Professor Field
*EL 176 Section 10: Poetry, Mind, and World, Outside and Inside
Professors Forrest Gander and Susan Bernstein
THEATRE ARTS
*TA 32: Creative Collaborations
Professor Michelle Bach-Coulibaly
*TA 33: Mande Dance, Music, and Culture
Professor Bach-Coulibaly
*TA 127: Non-Western Theatre and Performance
Professor John Emigh
*TA 128.008: New Works/ World Traditions
Professor Bach-Coulibaly
EAST ASIAN STUDIES
*EA XXX: Japanese Prints, Contemplation, and Engagement
Professor Roger Keyes
NEW COLLABORATIVE COURSES
We envision new team-taught courses emerging from the synergy of core faculty from divergent disciplines interacting with one another, as we have done this year in the Wayland Seminar. Such courses would combine perspectives from general areas of study that seldom work together such as science and religion, art and science, religion and art. We have discussed the possibility of a number of such innovative courses
From our discussions in the Wayland Faculty Seminar in which the majority of our core faculty participated during the 2002-03 academic year, we have discovered common interests that transcend academic disciplines. We would expect that as we work together in this new concentration, the synergy of so many divergent intellectual perspectives will yield new and fertile ideas for teaching such as the above examples and possibly new and significant designs for research that bridge traditionally separated disciplines and areas.