181 - 190 of 201 results for: RELIGST

Buddhism and arts have long been intimately related. In this course, we will explore various artistic expressions of Buddhist ideas, such as mandalas, gardens, landscapes, and musical liturgies. We will further study iconography and Buddhist sculptures. We will study primary sources, secondary literature, visual culture, and multimedia expressive forms through class discussions, presentations, field trips, and guest lecturers. Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units. Note: This is a graduate /upper level seminar with a high reading load. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. Students must have taken at least one course in Buddhist studies. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units. This course will be in East Asia Library, room 212.

This course stages a series of encounters with the concept of devotion, or "bhakti," a theological framework whose varied, vivid, and heartfelt expressions form an integral part of how religion is experienced in South Asia. Though most commonly identified with one particular literary genre, devotional lyric poetry written in north Indian vernaculars, and one particular religion, Hinduism, bhakti comes in many guises. We will examine bhakti as part of a phenomenology of authentic and personal religious experience but also as an emblem of legitimacy that empowers specific communities and values at the expense of others. We will explore the vital role that bhakti has played in Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim and even South Asian Christian religious imaginations. We will look at how bhakti is inscribed within Indian history, in the context of ephemeral performance, as well as within colonial and contemporary South Asian politics and political theology. As the course unfolds, we will trace the multi-dimensional impact of devotional religion within literate and non-literate media, through languages and regions, among different castes, classes, traditions, even across and beyond the category of religion itself. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Visionary experiences - meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions - hold a central place in Buddhist traditions, and have gone on to inspire modern practices such as mindfulness and lucid dreaming. Many forms of Buddhist visionary experience are thought to involve conscious and voluntary visualizations, in contrast to spontaneous and passive visions. Through readings about visionary aspects of meditation, dreams, and deathbed visions in classical Buddhist literature (in translation) in a pan-Buddhist context, we will reflect upon the following questions: Do the modern ideas of Buddhist visualization practices truthfully represent early Buddhist understanding? What do these visionary experiences reveal about Buddhist epistemologies and soteriologies? Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Given South Asia's rich religious diversity, is communal conflict inevitable? Since the colonial era and partition, Muslims and Hindus are, at times, at odds with each other, with interreligious relations intermittently marred by violent conflict. And yet, from early modernity through the present day, Hindu-Muslim encounters extended far beyond the confines of communalist conflict. In this seminar, we explore moments of interreligious encounter and exchange between Muslim and Hindu communities in South Asia from the earliest Muslim polities in the subcontinent up through the present day. We begin by re-examining the stories we tell about how Islam and Hinduism came to co-exist in South Asia, and continue with explorations of Hindu-Muslim translation enterprises, the intersections between Sufi and Yogic practice, and Mughal patronage of Hindu temples. We then build on this foundation to explore the complex dynamics of conflict and coexistence in the colonial period through the present-day. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

This course offers a theoretical and practical approach to researching and writing religious history. We will discuss theoretical issues related to historical methods, such as historical and epistemic archival violence, alongside the methodological challenges of triangulating religion and religiosity across cultural and chronological chasms in our own work. We will read groundbreaking work to explore innovative methods and writing strategies. Finally, we will consider practical issues related to the craft of researching and writing religious history, from accessing and cataloging sources, to establishing a daily writing habit, to revising an article and conceptualizing a dissertation.

This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Graduate independent study in American Religions. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor

Graduate independent research in Late Anitquity. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor

Graduate independent study in Christianity. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.