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This year's theme for comparative religion is “The End of the World” in Judaism and Christianity. The course examines a particular theme to focus on ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Jewish and Christian ideas of an end-time apocalypse offer a particularly rich matrix for comparative work. Recurring motifs variously applied and understood include expectations of cataclysm, judgment, and new creation, and definitions of the blessed saved and the irrevocably condemned. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Barba and Niditch
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023This course introduces students to the notion of love in mystical traditions. Rather than moving outward, mystical love leads to an inner proficiency represented by the higher Self. For some traditions, love participates directly as a guide toward enlightenment, playing an important if not an essential part in the attainment of the highest stages of oneness. For others, love is applied to the mystical path in order to see the way more clearly, helping to reveal the dynamics in the spiritual practices. To grasp these possibilities, students will read excerpts from mystical texts that address the notion of love as well as novels written by experienced, initiated, or enlightened authors that complement these treatises. Through these texts, we will examine questions such as: What is mystical love and how is it expressed? What is the difference between love as an instrument and as a medium in spiritual practice? How does this phenomenon apply to our lives?
Spring semester. Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Not offeredIn contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as RELI 143 and ASLC 143) This course explores central ideas and practices in the religious and intellectual traditions of India up until the medieval period. We consider the range of available archeological, art historical, and textual evidence for religion in this period, though the course focuses mostly on texts. We will read the classic religious and philosophical literature of the traditions we now call Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
Classes will meet in person on campus. Remote students will either attend class sessions by videochat or will have access to audio recordings of class meetings. All students, local and remote, will have access to pre-recorded video content. Local and remote students may be asked to prepare brief presentations on assigned readings to be delivered either in person or by prerecorded video.
Fall semester. Professor M. Heim
2022-23: Not offered(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Visiting Assistant Professor Chen
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Familiarity with the Bible is essential to any liberal arts education. This course is the place to begin. A master-work of great complexity revealing many voices and many periods, the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament is a collection of traditional literature of various genres including prose and poetry, law, narrative, ritual texts, sayings, and other forms. We seek to understand the varying ways Israelites understood and defined themselves in relation to their ancestors, their ancient Near Eastern neighbors, and their God.
Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Not offeredThe past century and a half have seen Christians engaging capitalism in various ways. Some have argued that capitalism and Christianity are opposed at the level of first principles, with capitalism dedicated to an ethos of competition and Christianity to one of co-operation. Others have argued that capitalism is just human freedom in the sphere of economics, and that the Christian’s duty is to defend capitalism against threats from those who would dismantle it. Some have argued that Jesus preached the virtue of poverty; others, that he blesses his followers with wealth. This course explores the history of Christian engagements with capitalism since the middle of the nineteenth century. We will examine not only Christian condemnations or valorizations of capitalism (Christian socialism and “corporate Christianity”), but also engagements that defend some aspects of capitalism while criticizing others (the Social Gospel movement and the Roman Catholic tradition of social thought). We will also examine ways in which capitalism has influenced both church history and Christian theology through discussion of the financial history of Christian publications and institutions, and the recent phenomenon of the “Christian corporation.”
Fall semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Not offeredWhat does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Omitted 2223-24.. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as RELI 255 and ASLC 256) A systematic exploration of the place of ethics and moral reasoning in Buddhist thought and practice. The scope of the course is wide, with examples drawn from the whole Buddhist world, but emphasis is on the particularity of different Buddhist visions of the ideal human life. Attention is given to the problems of the proper description of Buddhist ethics in a comparative perspective.
Classes will meet in person on campus. Remote students will either attend class sessions by videochat or will have access to audio recordings of class meetings. All students, local and remote, will have access to pre-recorded video content. Local and remote students may be asked to prepare brief presentations on assigned readings to be delivered either in prson or by prerecorded video.
Fall semester. Professor M. Heim
2022-23: Not offeredThe Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023The nineteenth century saw developments within Western scholarship that profoundly challenged traditional understandings of Christianity. Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy had thrown the enterprise of theology into doubt by arguing that knowledge of anything outside space and time is impossible. During the same period, the growing awareness of Christianity’s history and the emerging historical-critical study of the Bible brought into prominence the variability and contingency of the Christian tradition. Particularly in Germany, Christian intellectuals were to wrestle intensely with the problem of knowledge of God and the authority of tradition during this period. Should Christians adapt their understandings of fundamental points of Christian doctrine to advances in historical scholarship? Did developments within philosophy require the abandonment of reliance on claims about the nature of reality, and of human existence, which had been seen as essential to Christianity? This course will be devoted to tracking these discussions. Some of the authors to be treated are Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss, Kierkegaard, Newman, von Harnack, and Schweitzer.
Fall semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Not offered(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as RELI-285, ASLC-285, and ENGL-301) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023(Offered as ASLC 360 and RELI 360) What does it entail, and feel like, to embrace the modern world from a Buddhist perspective? The course examines key issues that have shaped the development of modern Buddhism across East Asia, while fostering a critical assessment of some fundamental assumptions in the making of the modern age. Threading through the entire course is a provocative dialogue between, on the one hand, modern events and intellectual currents such as scientific rationalism, secularization, imperialism, nationalism, feminism, and environmentalism, and on the other hand, seminal Buddhist teachings that stand profoundly persuasive across time and space. We unpack this dialogue through stories, which are drawn from China, Japan, Taiwan, Tibet, Vietnam, and from Europe and America. The seminar highlights literature as a vehicle for spiritual reflection especially in a global and postsecular world. All readings are in English. No prior knowledge of Buddhism is assumed. Requirements include weekly reflection papers, an oral presentation, and a final paper. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Not open to first-year students. Professor Ying.
2022-23: Not offeredFor the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2023-24.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Omitted 2023-24
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023