81 - 90 of 201 results for: RELIGST

This seminar investigates the central role of the Christian Bible in European religion, culture, and society from ca. 1000-1700 CE. In the medieval and early modern periods, the Bible not only shaped religious attitudes, practices, and institutions, but also exercised profound influence over learning and education, politics, law, social relations, art, literature, and music. Students will obtain an overview of the role of the scripture as both a religious text and a cultural artifact, exploring the history of biblical interpretation in commentaries and sermons; textual criticism, study of biblical languages, and the translation of scripture; manufacturing of Bibles in manuscript and in print; the commercial dimensions of Bible production; illustrated Bibles, biblical maps, and biblically-inspired artwork; religious uses of scripture in monastic houses, public worship, and domestic settings; biblical foundations for political and legal traditions. Students will also have the opportunity to suggest topics consonant with their own fields of interest and use the seminar to workshop on-going projects related to the Bible in this period. All of the readings will be in English, though students with the ability to read German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew will be encouraged to pursue projects that utilize their linguistic skills. Students will have the opportunity to utilize materials in Special Collections. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Send an email to pitkin@stanford.edu explaining your interests and background. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

"Political theology" is the name that academics give to a tradition of inquiry in which the distinction between these two terms is continuously troubled. In other words, like modern language and modern thought more generally, it is "woven into the very fabric it is unrolling" (to borrow a line from Foucault). In this class, however, we will attempt to weave them together, which will in turn allow us to recall what is always potentially good and beautiful in the encounter between politics and theology and not only what is evil and ugly (though this recognition will be of equal importance to our endeavor). Our collective pursuit will be facilitated through the slow, meticulous reading of texts along with the discussions that emerge from the threads which we unravel. The readings will consist of a range of dense philosophical treatises (Benjamin, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Kojeve, Agamben), literary creations (Shakespeare, Kafka, Baldwin), and films (Kurosawa, Gigineishvili, Malick). All students who are interested are welcome. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 unit.

This seminar focuses on the emergence of second- and third-century Christianity. Together we'll explore a wide range of primary sources in English translation as well as recent scholarship in the field. For graduate students, regardless of their specialty, the focus will be on achieving a good knowledge and teaching competence of early Christianity. Undergraduates must already have strong background in the academic study of late antiquity and must obtain permission from the instructor. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

This advanced colloquium explores the transformed religious landscape of sixteenth-century Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective. Two professors, one from History and one from Religious Studies, contextualize the key theological and social aspects of the sixteenth-century reformations and provide a general introduction to the study of the reformation era. Students will read primary writings and documents from major reformers and reform movements and gain an overview of secondary scholarship in select classic studies of the period and in recent literature. Undergraduates register for HISTORY 231G or RELIGST 231 for 5 units; graduate students register for HISTORY 331G or RELIGST 331 for 3-5 units.

This course will examine how people learn religion outside of school, and in conversation with popular cultural texts and practices. Taking a broad social-constructivist approach to the variety of ways people learn, this course will explore how people assemble ideas about faith, identity, community, and practice, and how those ideas inform individual, communal and global notions of religion. Much of this work takes place in formal educational environments including missionary and parochial schools, Muslim madrasas or Jewish yeshivot. However, even more takes place outside of school, as people develop skills and strategies in conversation with broader social trends. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to questions that lie at the intersection of religion, popular culture, and education. May be repeat for credit.

An exploration of the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation from the time of the Buddha to the modern mindfulness boom, with attention to the wide range of techniques developed and their diverse interpretation. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

This seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students to a wide variety of religious thinkers and literary traditions, while simultaneously interrogating the usefulness of the concept of "mysticism" as a framework in the study of religion. We will consider various paradigms of method (comparative, constructivist, essentialist), and examine the texts with an eye to historical and social context together with the intellectual traditions that they represent. Preserving the distinctiveness of each religious tradition, the class will be structured as a series of five units around these traditions, but our eyes will be continuously trained upon shared topics or themes, including: language; gender; notions of sainthood; scripture and exegesis; autobiography and writing; mysticism and philosophy; poetry and translation; mysticism and social formation; the interface of law, devotion, and spirit; science and mysticism; perceptions of inter-religious influence; mysticism and the modern/ post-modern world. Advanced reading knowledge of at least one language of primary-source scholarship in one of the above traditions is required. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 unit.

Muslims invent, design, manipulate, consider, revere, and debate objects of all sorts, from the explicitly religious (prayer beads, prayer rugs, ritual clothing) to the contested (amulets, figural images, devotional offerings) to the seemingly mundane (books, daily dress and ornament, household wares, tools and instruments). As material objects are pervasive and valued elements of all Islamic cultures in diverse ways, this course will consider in what sense object creation, use, encounter, and interpretation can be understood in relation to religion in general and Islam in particular. From studies that consider objects as agents to technical considerations of the physical properties of artifacts to thick descriptions of human attachments to and uses of items of personal or collective significance, this course will look at both a variety of object classifications and a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

This course will examine interactions between religion and education, focusing on both formal and experiential sites in which people and communities explore, articulate, encounter, and perform religious ideologies and identities. The class will focus on different religious traditions and their encounters the institutions and structures of education in American culture, both in the United States and as it manifests in American culture transnationally.