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This course introduces students to the esoteric traditions of South Asia and their complex systems of medical knowledge and healing practices. We will explore the connections between contemplative practices, healing rituals, spirit possession, and the various understandings of physical and mental well-being in the esoteric streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. What can the esoteric (tantric) religious traditions of South Asia contribute to medicine and healing today? How did the tantric traditions understand immortality, and how can it be attained? How do these traditions differently construe the relationship between mind and body, and how can these models contribute to our understanding of illness and health? We will approach these and other questions related to healing through primary sources (sacred texts) and studies that reconstruct the traditional understanding of health and medicine in Tantra.

This course provides an introduction to Buddhist Tantra through considering select themes in its historical development, philosophy, contemplative and ritual dynamics, visual and material culture, and variations across different times and cultures, from medieval India to the globalized present. Students will learn how to interpret tantric Buddhist literature in translation, assess modern scholarly studies, appreciate diverse contemplative and ritual techniques, analyze examples of tantric Buddhist artwork, and develop final projects based on their interests. Course readings are in English. No prerequisite is required.

From the earliest articulations of the category of religion in the modern era, terms like "cult," "witchcraft," and "fetishism" have been used to define the parameters of "true" religion. Though these terms are often taken at face value as they circulate in mainstream discourses, their meanings have fluctuated in response to historical shifts within various communities across time. Focusing primarily on the American context from the colonial period through the present, in this course, we will study religion through the phenomena that have come to be labeled as "not religion." How do we define cults, witchcraft, and other marginalized religious phenomena in the absence of hierarchical concepts of religion? In short, what makes a "cult?" Moreover, how do notions of religion and the religious change when (re)constructed from the margins? We will use the concept of the "cult," broadly conceived, and similar derogations to interrogate moments and traditions from the Salem Witch Trials to curanderismo. Through these interrogations, we will explore questions of the relationship between religion and the state, the racialized and gendered dynamics of religious naming, and the representation of religions outside of the mainstream. By making "the familiar strange and the strange familiar," we will endeavor to better understand the broad implications of contentious religious categories and the forces that render some religions marginal.

This course explores diverse intersections of sound and Islam in religious and secular contexts throughout the world. From studying Islamic philosophies about the art of listening to interrogating Muslim hip hop, we examine how sonic practices simultaneously reflect and shape different Muslim identities globally. Issues of nationalism, war and trauma, class, race and ethnicity, gender and sexualities, colonialism, social in/justice, and migration will remain central to our exploration of spirituality, secularism, piety, and religiosity for the individuals and communities making or listening to sounds of Islam.

This course treats popular spiritualism starting in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when millions of people in Europe and America described themselves as spiritualists and shared a recognizable set of practices. These served as a platform for spiritual immediacy guided by central questions: How can the living communicate with the dead? What technologies apply to our inner lives? How do people represent encounters with invisible things like spirits? This course covers early mediumship and women, spiritualism and art, with a focus on automatic and alchemical methods of producing "spirit art" in the past and present, and occult concepts of technology, to explore how the invisible became a place to expand community and reimagine what's real.

The first word of the Quran said to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad is the imperative: "Read!". This is what we will do in this course, albeit in English translation. Each session will focus on a specific theme (e.g., law, violence, nature, death) and will consist of a close reading of Quranic passages alongside philosophical and historical commentary. Specific emphasis will be placed on reading the Quran in relation to the biblical tradition and the contemporary world.

Most attitudes toward religion found on college campuses today trace their origins back to the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Calls for social justice, a political order free of ecclesiastical domination, and the recognition of legitimate religious pluralism; the rejection of the authoritarianism, obscurantism, and fanaticism associated with the monotheistic faiths; skepticism about the rationality of belief in God, miracles, and otherworldly salvation-these and other familiar themes were fiercely debated by philosophers in early modern Europe, often at great personal risk. What's more, central branches of philosophy such as epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political theory were transformed in the modern period amidst debates over the credibility of religious belief - primarily Christian theism - in a world come of age. After a brief look at some "natural theology" in the Middle Ages, we will study and discuss what Descartes and Pascal; Spinoza and Rousseau; Hume and Kant; and Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard had to say about matters religious.

Readings of Talmudic texts. Some knowledge of Hebrew is preferred, but not necessary. The goal of the ongoing workshop is to provide Stanford students with the opportunity to engage in regular Talmud study, and to be introduced to a variety of approaches to studying Talmudic texts and thought.

This is a one term intensive class in Biblical Greek. After quickly learning the basics of the language, we will then dive right into readings from the New Testament and the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. No previous knowledge of Greek required.