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This course provides an overview of Indian religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and Sikhism. We will spend approximately half the course on Hindu thought and traditions from the Vedic period until the present day, emphasizing the diverse forms of this religion in different times and places. The second half of the course will be devoted to religions that emerged in South Asia (e.g., Jainism) and those that came to find a home and particular forms of expression on the subcontinent (e.g., Islam). Throughout students will read selections from a range of theological texts, epics, and literature that have permeated many aspects of daily religious life in India. We will also emphasize ritual activities, visual experiences in temples, and networks of pilgrimage places that dot the subcontinent. We will often pair primary sources (in translation) with later interpretations and impacts of those texts in modern South Asia. We will also survey the modern incarnations of particular Indian religious traditions throughout South Asia and the diaspora. By the conclusion of this course, students will be conversant with the texts, beliefs, and practices of the major Indian religions in their cultural and historical contexts and also have a working knowledge of basic categories important for the study of religion more broadly.

Hindus and Muslims have lived together in the subcontinent for over 1000 years, joined by Sikhs in the last 500. Contrasting narratives may emphasize composite cultures and interdependent societies, or separation and conflict. In the first half we will introduce these traditions and communities and highlight composite cultures in religion, literature, and music. In the second half we will examine key moments of conflict: the 11th-century invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni and narratives about them in Hindu and Muslim sources; the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan; the Khalistan movement and the 1984 massacre of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi's assassination; the 2002 Gujarat riots. Learning goals: critically examine the categories `Hindu,' `Muslim,' `Sikh,' `religion'; analyze differing narratives of the same events; clarify the complex factors involved in violent `religious' conflict.

We will study Gandhi and his era, focusing on sources that relate Gandhi¿s theory and practice of nonviolence to religion and ethics. Topics include Gandhi¿s biography and personal influences; his construction of Hinduism and inclination to asceticism; his encounters with Jainism and Christianity; his attempts to negotiate the increasingly intractable and violent issues between Hindus and Muslims leading up to independence/partition; and the religious arguments involved in his bitter break with the leader of the anti-caste and ¿untouchable¿ liberation movement, B.R. Ambedkar. We will locate discussions of religion within larger political and social circumstances. Readings include The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Hind Swaraj, and other writings by Gandhi; the Bhagavad Gita; Erik Erikson¿s psychoanalytic study, Gandhi¿s Truth; and recent critical works on Gandhi and religion.

College courses and public events often address "religion and violence"--an important topic, but one-sided. We will study ways in which religious leaders, movements, and discourses have (1) promoted violent conflict, aggression, and oppression; and (2) contributed to nonviolence, peacebuilding, and liberation of the oppressed. An overarching theme will be a view of religions as fields of interpretation. No religion is essentially violent or peaceful; intricately connected to the world around them, religions become what they become through interpretation and action. Each week will have two meetings: one featuring an outstanding guest lecturer and one to discuss the lecture topic, with assigned readings and films. Topics under consideration include: Buddhism and Violence; Dorothy Day and Catholic Nonviolent Resistance to Nuclear Weapons; Just War and Jihad; The Contribution of Negro Spirituals to Liberation; The Quakers: Pacifist Convictions and Activism; Violence/Nonviolence in Jainism; The Role of Christian Faith in M.L. King's Political Work; Spirituality and Religious Peacebuilding. For lecture series with required attendance and written reflections for 2 units, take RELIGST 29.

The Lotus school of Mahayana, and its Indian sources, Chinese formulation, and Japanese developments.

This course examines the diverse ways that religious traditions have been involved in the brokering of power in South Asia from the late seventeenth century to the present day. We will examine the intersection of religion and power in different arenas, including historical memory, religious festivals, language politics, and violent actions. At the core of our inquiry is how religion is invoked in political contexts (and vice-versa), public displays of religiosity, and the complex dynamics of religion and the state. Among other issues, we will particularly engage with questions of religious identity, knowledge, and violence. Undergraduates must enroll in RELIGST 255 for 5 units. Graduate students must enroll RELIGST 355 for 3-5 units. HISTORY297F must be taken for 4-5 units.

The development of 19th-century Russian novel through close reading and broad cultural examination of three masterpieces: Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov (1859), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Leo Tolstoy¿s Anna Karenina (1877) - the novels which have been part of the European literary canon long before Oprah Winfrey put them in her reading list. Through the analysis of the novels and their adaptations, students will study the aesthetic contours of Russian Realism and its intermedial capacities. Special attention will be paid to the questions of genre, discource, medium and itermediality, relationship between artist, audience, and critic.

The Age of Revolution: Readings in Russian Modernist Prose of the 1920-30s: What makes Russian modernist prose special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernist prose? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by Babel, Mandelstam, Zoshchenko, Platonov, Olesha and Bulgakov. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English.

Preference to freshmen. The impact of societal organization on the lives of ordinary people in socialist societies and in the new societies arising through the processes of political, economic, and social transformation. Do the concepts of democratization and marketization suffice to characterize ongoing changes? Enrollment limited to 16.