Courses for Spring 2005

REL 101, Introduction to Religious Studies
GORVINE, TR, 3:30-4:45

Credits:  AE, CAE, GL, GPR, H

How can one understand ‘religion’ as a meaningful category in a cross-cultural environment? This course introduces fundamental approaches to the study of religion by focusing on ‘shamanistic’ traditions. In particular, we will critically examine various ways in which anthropologists, historians of religion and others have attempted to categorize and interpret the worldviews, myths and ritual practices of communities once deemed ‘primitive’. To that end, we will utilize case studies of peoples from sub-saharan Africa, Native North and South America, and the Tibetan Himalaya, learning about and discussing subject matter such as traditional healing, religious experience, and social/environmental relations.

 

REL 109.01, Religion and Contemporary Culture
RAMSEY, MWF, 11-11:50, McIver 028

Credits:  AE, CAE, GPR

This course is designed as a large group introductory course in contemporary issues in western religious thought. In this course we will study such topics as religion and social change, the religious roots of race, class, gender and sexuality, new understandings in psychology and spirituality, and contemporary religious movements.  The course will be run primarily as a discussion course, with occasional brief lectures. 

 

REL 111.01, Non-Western Religions
GORVINE, MW, 2-3:15, Graham 313
REL 111.02, Non-Western Religions
GORVINE, W, 6-8:50, Graham 313

Credits:  CNW, GN, GPR, NW

In this survey course designed as an introduction to three main religious traditions rooted in Asia, we will carefully examine a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to help us recognize and understand the many different ways in which Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese religious communities have attempted to understand the nature of the world (both this world and beyond), human society, and the individual person's place therein.  In examining religious traditions that for many may seem wholly foreign, our emphasis will be on the internal logic of each, and on the resources that each provides for the construction of meaning, value, and moral vision.

 

REL 131.01, Religions in America
LEVINSON, TR, 1100-1215, McIver 028

Credits:  CMO, GHP, GMO, HP

This course is an introduction to a great variety of religious traditions and movements including diverse Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christianities that first emerged in the Near East, Western and Eastern Europe and Eurasia; as well as Christianities that began in the United States, including Latter Day Saints, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses; as well as Judaism, Humanism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and New Age and Self-help movements. Special topics will include: responding to religious diversity, studying and describing religions, the role of religion in public life, alternative themes in American Christianity, African-American Christianity, and religion as an individual and cultural problem.

 

REL 207.01, Modern Problems of Belief:  Reason, Existence, and The Absurd
McKinnon, TR 11-12:15

Credits:  AE, CAE, GPR

God is dead.  Reality bites.  Life sucks.  These are just a few of the themes we will be dealing with in this course.  This is not a class for weenies.  But if you can relate to the sometimes overwhelming feeling of existential angst that threatens to make your and everybody else’s life meaningless (or if you are interested in those who can so relate), then this course is for you.

We will begin by surveying the problems of God, reason, and religious knowledge from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century (specifically, from Descartes, Hume, and Kant to Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and Freud).  During mid semester we will encounter Nietzsche’s prophet Zarathustra: his heralding of the death of God and call for a transvaluation of value.  For the last part of the course we will consider the discontents of modern existence and the idea of the absurd as expressed in literature and modern art. 

 

REL 212.01, Christianity from the Reformation to the Present
McKinnon, R 6-8:50
REL 212.02, Christianity from the Reformation to the Present
McKinnon, TR 12:30-1:45

Credits:  CMO, GHP, GMO, HP

This course is a survey of Christian thought from the Protestant Reformation(s) to the present, focusing primarily on Protestant and Roman Catholic theology in Europe and America, but also including Eastern Orthodox and more recent “Liberation” movements.  We will read and discuss important primary texts representative of various forms of Christianity that have arisen since the sixteenth century.  While not a course on the history of the church, some attention will be given to the social context of our readings.  Our concern will be the ways in which Christianity has changed from context to context, on the conditions and ideals that have influenced these changes, and on the problems that arise within these various movements.

REL 215.01, Judaism
HAUS, MWF, 10-1050
REL 215.02, Judaism
HAUS, MWF, 11-1150

Credits:  CMO, GHP, GL, GMO, HP

This course explores the development of Judaism from its ancient origins until the present.  We will discuss the biblical foundations of Judaism and the impact that its different historical contexts have produced on its rituals and beliefs.  This approach raises a number of questions, which we will keep in mind throughout the course: What is Judaism?  Who are the Jews?  What is the relationship between Judaism and “being Jewish?”  How have historical circumstances shaped this relationship?  What has changed and what has stayed the same, and why? 

 

REL 218.01, Non-Western Religions: Chinese Religions
ORZECH, TR, 11-1215, Mary Foust
REL 218.02, Non-Western Religions: Chinese Religions
ORZECH, TR, 2-3:15

Credits:  CNW, GN, GPR, NW

The study of Asian religions and societies has undergone considerable change in the last twenty-five years.  This course is an introduction to Chinese Religion, both in the past and the present.  I will use the results of the best recent scholarship to introduce you to current issues and methods in the study of religions and to provide an in-depth exploration of a culture quite foreign to our own.  While we will, to some extent, be looking at Chinese Buddhism, the course will focus on the indigenous religions of China including Confucianism, Taoism, and folk traditions.  The course makes extensive use of films and slides.  There will be three tests—all will be part objective, part essay—and  weekly quizzes.

 

REL 225.01, Islam
SOPPER, TR, 9:30-10:45

Credits:  CNW, GN, GPR, NW

About a ¼ of the worlds population, (1 billion people) identify themselves as Muslims. The traditional centers of this Islamic world are currently experiencing a vibrant and sometimes violent resurgence of religious devotion, practice and passionate reform that touches every aspect of contemporary life and that raises important questions concerning the relation of Muslims to non-Muslims and to the major institutions of the current international system. The need to understand and engage thoughtfully and constructively with Islam is a pressing one for both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. To begin to meet that need, this course introduces you to the main elements of classical Sunni and Shiite Islam. We examine the main beliefs, values, sacred texts, rituals, and holy days of classical Islam. We also examine the history of Islamic civilization as it develops from the time of Muhammad to the present, with particular emphasis on the role of Islam in shaping society, law and politics. Finally we examine contemporary debates among Muslims on such important topics as the quest for a truly Islamic state and society under modern conditions, jihad, peace, tolerance of non-Muslim religions and minorities, gender roles and the place of women in Muslim society, democracy, international relations and social justice.

 

REL 229.01, Introduction to African American Religions
HART, TR, 2-315

Credits:  AFS, GHP, GMO

In this course we explore the rituals, performances, and pactices of  black religion.

 

REL 251.01, Topics in Religious Social Ethics
SOPPER, TR, 3:30-4:45

Credits:  AE, CAE, GPR, WI

Inquiry into the social teachings of diverse religious traditions with respect to such current topics as economic development and social justice, human rights, democracy, freedom, human well-being, and the environment.

 

REL 313.02, Topic in Ancient Judaism: Hebrew Language II
NATKIN, TR, 9:30-10:45, Foust 111

Credits: 

This is an introductory Hebrew language class, permission of the instructor is required.

Having studied the rudiments of the language in the previous semester, we continue our study of Hebrew, focusing on the different conjugations of the nouns and verbs.

At the same time, we shall be studying actual texts from the Bible and this will give you an opportunity to read, analyze and comprehend the text.  In this way you will reach an understanding of how the commentators were able to look inside the text for inner meanings. 

 

REL 323.01, Religious Movements and Communities: Tibetan Religion
GORVINE, TR, 1230-1:45, Foust 111

This upper-level course serves as an introduction to the religious culture of Tibet as seen through its cultural history, Buddhist philosophy, and religious communities. The course will proceed by examining the core doctrines, practices, institutions and key historical developments shaping the Buddhist tradition, with special emphasis on how these were interpreted and assimilated by Tibetans. We will also consider major developments in Tibetan intellectual and political history, such as the emergence of sects and the rise of the institution of reincarnate lamas that culminated in the Dalai Lama. A major focus of the course centers on the dynamic relationship between the Buddhist tradition transmitted from India and the existing cultural patterns of Tibet, centering on several different historical and contemporary arenas in which an ongoing process of cultural ‘dialogue' can be productively explored. Examples include literary accounts of Buddhist conversion of the Tibetan landscape, elite and popular approaches to religious practices such as pilgrimage, and the ritual, social and doctrinal treatment of exorcism and death.

 

REL 324.01, Philosophical Issues is Religion
RAMSEY, MW, 2-315

Credits:  WI, Speaking Intensive

This course is designed as an intensive reading of critiques and revisionings of religion from the late 19th century thru the present.  The course is designed primarily for religion majors and those with an interest in the philosophy of religion. 

 

REL 325.01, American Judaism
HAUS, W, 2-4:45

Credits:  WI

This course will explore historical and religious aspects of the Jewish experience in America from the first settlement until the present.  The major themes of study will include the development of Judaism in America; the economic, social, and political evolution of American Jewry and its institutions; the impact of Jewish immigration to the United States; American Jewish self-perception; and the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in American society.  Assignments will draw upon a wide range of materials, from secondary historical studies and primary documents to fiction and film. 

 

REL 327.01, American Religious Thought II
LEVINSON, M, 6-8:50, 807 Seven Oak Drive

Credits:  GPR, WI

This course pursues the religious reflections of a number of religious romantics, including Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882], Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], and Walt Whitman [1819-1892], long considered classic voices of the American Renaissance Each one of them professed kinds of natural supernaturalism, as they mounted religious protests against quasi-established American Protestant Christianity. Thus, some interpreters have called them Protestant Protestants. Emerson’s Essays, Thoreau’s Walden and other books and essays, and Whitman’s poetry and prose, especially Song of Myself and Democratic Vistas,  charted a  course of religious thinking that both inherited and rebelled against the Reformed Protestant Christian theology of Puritans like Jonathan Edwards, in an effort to show divinity at work in the natural world (including the natural human world).

 

REL 356.01,  Colonial Rites: Religion, Anguish, Otherness
HART, T, 6-8:50

Credits:  WI

In this course we examine the religious aspects of colonialism, that is, colonialism as an ensemble of ritual performances.

 

REL 410, Senior Seminar
RAMSEY, TBA

Credits:  Majors Only

Everything TBA.

 

REL 503/WGS 450, Gender and Culture
KRUEGER, W, 6-8:50, Foust 111

Credits:  WGS, WI

The readings in this seminar include feminist historical criticism, poststructuralist analyses of power relations, and queer theory.  In our discussions, we will explore and analyze the mechanisms and techniques by which cultural systems including religion exert power over the formation of community and identity particularly around issues of gender and sexuality. Literary, historical, and analytic texts yield understandings of the processes through which cultures define norms and deviations, both encouraging conformity and providing opportunities for transformation.

“I understand [queer theory] to be an investigation that systematically puts into question any praxis, theoretical or political, of the ‘natural’ in sexuality, praxes that historically in our culture have naturalized heterosexuality, enforcing heteronormativity.  Queer theory is theory that recognizes that human desire–that is, even desire for ‘straight sex’–is queer, excessive, not teleological or natural, and that for which the refusal of heteronormativity on the part of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and others provides a privileged but not exclusive model.”

                                    –Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, 14

“Briefly, one is a woman, according to [the framework of normative sexuality and normative gender] to the extent that one functions as one within the dominant heterosexual frame and to call the frame into question is perhaps to lose something of one’s sense of place in gender.”

                                    –Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1999 Preface), xi

This course is designed for undergraduate Religious Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies majors, graduate students, and others with a strong interest the topic.  Class will be run as a seminar discussion with everyone expected to contribute to our common task of interpreting the assigned texts.  This course is writing intensive; it is also reading intensive.  Reading assignments will average 125-150 pages per week.  Students should expect to spend 5 or 6 hours a week preparing for our three-hour class meetings.

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