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Great Contemplative Traditions of Asia
Introduction to the critical study of contemplative practices and experiences emphasizing philosophical and scientific analyses of works from the major Asian contemplative traditions of South and East Asian Buddhism and Chinese Daoism in historical context. Theoretical studies of mysticism and studies from the psychological sciences will be included.
- Primary Instructor
- Roth
- Schedule Code
- L: Lab
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Modern Problems of Belief
Some say it is impossible to be both a modern person and a religious person. What are the assumptions behind this claim? And what is it about the modern (or postmodern) era that, according to some, has made religion difficult to believe in? These questions will be discussed as we explore the ways religion has been understood in Western culture from the Enlightenment to the present. We will read such influential thinkers as Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Durkheim, Buber, and Woody Allen. Each figure has left a decisive mark on the way we think about religion.
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Christianity and Culture
The aim of this introductory level lecture course is to interrogate the relationship between culture and religion. The foundation for our study will be exemplary works by major cultural critics and theologians since the early 19th century. Our focus will be on forms of cultural criticism put forward by interdisciplinary thinkers that attempted to gain a better grasp of both modern social crises and sources of communal joy. The course shall rehearse debates in cultural studies, theology, postmodernism, and politics.
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Believers, Agnostics, and Atheists in Contemporary Fiction (JUDS 0050A)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0050A (CRN 15619).
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Dead and Loving It: The Cult of the Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean (CLAS 0210P)
Interested students must register for CLAS 0210P (CRN 16302).
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Friendship in the Ancient World
How have ancient societies understood friendship, and how do ancient ideas about friendship differ from or resemble those of contemporary Westerners? This seminar, a comparative investigation of the ways in which friendship has been represented in the Hebrew Bible, Mesopotamian literature, and Greco-Roman texts, will addresses these and other questions through study of materials such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Book of Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel (on Jonathan and David), the Wisdom of Ben Sira (Sirach), and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS
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Women and Religion in Classical India: From Commoner to Queen, Courtesan and Nun
Classical Indian religious law books present a rather grim view of the options of women. Famously, for example, they declare that women can have no independence—religious, legal or otherwise. As girls, they are under the authority of their fathers; as wives, the authority of the husbands; and as widows, that of their sons. The seminar will look at a variety of other sources—Buddhist and Jain texts and stories, classical Indian plays and literature, and, importantly, a range of inscriptions which record the behavior of actual Indian women—to see if this view was anything more than theory. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS
- Primary Instructor
- Schopen
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The Hindu Tradition
After a brief look at our earliest evidence, we focus on the three most prominent Hindu goals during the last two millenia- enlightenment, righteous action, and loving, often passionate devotion-and the variety of practices undertaken to realize them. These include study, meditation, music, drama, image worship, asceticism, and nonviolence. Attention to issues of gender, caste, and untouchability. DVPS LILE
- Primary Instructor
- Schopen
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Women, Sex and Gender in Islam
This course is a survey of women in Islamic society from the medieval to the modern worlds. Using a variety of non-fiction, fiction and film sources, we will address issues such as women and Islamic law, women's bodies and images of Muslim women in the Muslim world; contemporary feminism and movements in Islam, the question of secularism, veiling, and others. Preference given to students with prior university level coursework in Islam. Examples include RELS 0150, 0640, 1520. DVPS LILE
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Judaism, Christianity and the Bible
No book in human history has exercised as much influence as the Bible. Over the past 2,000 years, people have killed and died for the Bible, and it continues to exercise a powerful if contested role in modern politics. Yet how did it achieve this power? This course will trace the development of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) from its origins in ancient Israel to its development about five hundred years later as a foundational text of both Judaism and Christianity. The focus will be on how Jews and early Christians throughout antiquity understood and ascribed authority to the Bible. WRIT
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God and Poetry (JUDS 0820)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0820 (CRN 15799).
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Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (JUDS 0090A)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0090A (CRN 15796).
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New Testament and the Beginnings of Christianity
How and why Christianity emerged in various forms in the ancient Mediterranean. Insights from religious studies, gender studies, literary studies, anthropology, and other fields. Careful critical readings of New Testament books, non-canonical gospels, early Christian letters, ancient apocalypses. Topics include: Jewish contexts; representations of Jesus; Paul and early communities; Christians and imperial Rome; gender constructions; canonization; eventual separation of Christianity and Judaism. Open to all students. LILE WRIT
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Problems in Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (JUDS 1625)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1625 (CRN 15984).
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Judaism: History and Religion (JUDS 1640)
Interested students must register for JUDS 1640 (CRN 15792).
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Writing Lives in Late Antiquity: Jerome and Augustine (LATN 1120E)
Interested students must register for LATN 1120E (CRN 16303).
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Catacomb Religion: Ordinary Christianity in the Age of Constantine
The history of Christianity has often been the history of doctrine, the development of scripture and institution and canon, not the history of human experience. This course looks into what it meant to be Christian in the first centuries of Christianity's development, through taking literally a "subterranean view" on the surprising things that "being Christian" meant to ordinary individuals – men, women and children – in the city's underground spaces where this religion flourished. Prerequisite: RELS 0110 or 0400 or 0410 or 1300. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Themes in Japanese Buddhism
An exploration of critical themes and debates in the study of Japanese Buddhism. Participants become conversant with the key features of medieval Japanese thought as well as the strengths and weaknesses of established conceptual models in Japanese Buddhist studies. Readings include primary texts in English translation and modern secondary interpretations. Recommended: a course in Buddhism or East Asian religions.
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Islamic Political Thought, Global Islam, and Globalization (HIST 1978V)
Interested students must register for HIST 1978V (CRN 15700).
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Interpreting the Self: Biography in Medieval Arabic Literature
What compels a person to write the story of a life—their own or someone else's? How do they use exciting, improbable, or salacious details to make that life story interesting? Most importantly, how does the concept of "biography," our own or a famous person's, affect how we conceive of ourselves? These are all questions medieval authors of Arabic literature answered when they compiled one of the most impressive biographical traditions in history. From the "Life of Muhammad" to the fantastical Lives of Saints and Mystics in 15th-century Cairo, "Interpreting the Self" is an exploration of medieval Arabic biographical literature. DVPS LILE
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Religion, Music, and Politics, 1750 to the Present
From the revolutionary era of the late eighteenth century through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, music and religion have been complexly interwoven with the political struggles of modernity. Focusing on Germany, the course asks, How have the relations between religion and the arts, particularly music, shifted in Western modernity? Has music come to perform functions—providing consolation or uniting a people—formerly associated closely with religion? How have music and religion informed notions of national identity? How have they functioned as sites of political resistance? How central is myth to the three key concepts of the course?
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Pragmatism, Religion, and Politics (HMAN 1970P)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1970P (CRN 16162).
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Individual Study Project
Directed reading and research arranged with individual faculty. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Willis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Cladis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Lewis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalek
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Harvey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kraemer
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Olyan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Sawada
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Roth
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Satlow
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stowers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bush
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schopen
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Denzey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Thesis Preparation
Required of seniors in the honors program. Open to others only by permission of the chair of the department. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Willis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Cladis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Lewis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalek
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Harvey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kraemer
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Olyan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Sawada
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Roth
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Satlow
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stowers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bush
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schopen
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Denzey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Theory of Religion
Critical examination of major approaches to the study of religion, especially those of the anthropology and the history of religions, with attention to issues in current debate.
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Grief in Late Antiquity
Lamentation and penance in late antique Christianity.
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Huai-nan Tzu
No description available.
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Exchange Scholar Program
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
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Seminar: Afro-Theism
This graduate seminar places a theological lens on Black life in North America. Its premise is that Afro-Theisms, not the institutional "Black Church" or Black prophetic religion, have been seminal to the self-conception of Black people and their way of constituting racial "others". Different theistic emphasis at different historical moments demonstrates both the importance and fluidity of Afro-Theisms and sheds unique light on quest for equity and self-actualization. Starting with the conventional Christian theologies into which New World Africans under slave conditions were indoctrinated, this course will explore the role and impact of Afro-Theisms.
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Preliminary Examination Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for preliminary examinations.
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
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Independent Research
The staff is willing to offer independent reading courses in selected areas. See the Instructor for more information. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering.
- Primary Instructor
- Willis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Cladis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Lewis
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Khalek
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Harvey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Kraemer
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Olyan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Sawada
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Roth
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Satlow
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stowers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bush
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schopen
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Denzey
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing a thesis.
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
