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1111 - 1120 of 1221 results for: all courses

RELIGST 55: Exploring Zen Buddhism

This course is an introduction to Chan/Zen Buddhism. We will study the historical and doctrinal development of this tradition in China and Japan and examine various facets of Zen, such as the philosophy, practices, rituals, culture, and institution. For this aim, we will read and discuss classical Zen texts in translation and important secondary literature. This class will further feature a visit of a Zen teacher, who will give an introduction to sitting meditation.
Last offered: Spring 2023 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 56: Exploring Chinese Religions

An overview of major themes and historical developments in 5000 years of Chinese religion. In this course, we will try as much as possible to appreciate Chinese religion from the Chinese perspective, paying particular attention to original texts in translation, artifacts and videos, all in an attempt to discern the logic of Chinese religion and the role it has played in the course of Chinese history. To a greater extent perhaps than any other civilization, Chinese have left behind a continuous body of written documents and other artifacts relating to religion stretching over thousands of years, providing a wealth of material for studying the place of religion in history and society.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 61: Exploring Islam

Explorations, like those of the so-called New World, have historically aimed at capturing the object of their discoveries, which may explain why the word appears to have been originally used within the context of the hunt. It is in this sense that we will attempt to uncover how Islam continues to be "explored" by observers in the West. Yet in doing so; that is, by collapsing the dam of secular discourse which would attempt to contain Islam in order to regulate its movement, we will also be able to "explore" Islam so as to cause it to flow once again, as the other etymology of the term would suggest (pluere). This (de)constructive task?of analyzing Islam as both a discursive object and a way of life?will be achieved through a collective historical-philosophical study of Islamic texts, performances, practices, sounds, events, communities, and images.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

RELIGST 62: Exploring Islamic Mysticism

What is Sufi Islam? For many Sufis it concerns the search for a personal, experiential knowledge of and encounter with God. To that end, Sufis may be scrupulously observant of behavioral, ethical, ritual, and legal guidelines in their quest. For others, such practices are merely external formalities that obscure the essence of the divine behind a veil of prescriptive norms. For these Sufis, immediate knowledge of God is best sought outside of the structures of religious orthodoxy. But Sufis are not only otherworldly oriented mystics. On the contrary, Sufis are and have been rulers, politicians, warriors, and business leaders as well as poets, pilgrims, recluses, and social critics. Sufis and their collectives exist and have existed in every part of the world where there are Muslims, in bodies marked as male, female, and neither, and in every social strata. This course will explore many key elements of Sufi Islam, including history, teachings, practice, places, and people. While it is impossible to encompass the diversity of Sufism in a single course, each unit of the course will have a central theme situated in a geographic and temporal location in order to introduce students to as wide a range of Sufi times, places, and communities as possible.
Last offered: Winter 2023 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 86: Exploring the New Testament (CLASSICS 43, HISTORY 111B, JEWISHST 86)

To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situate Christianity within the ancient world. Students will read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, explore Gnostic gospels, hear of a five-year-old Jesus throwing divine temper tantrums while killing (and later resurrecting) his classmates, peruse an ancient marriage guide, and engage with recent scholarship in archeology, literary criticism, and history.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 147: Building Heaven and Hell (CEE 147, CLASSICS 147R)

How did early Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians imagine space? How did they construct heaven and hell and the afterlife through their written texts? Can we take written images of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem and her temple, such as those found in Ezekiel, the Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse of Paul and transform them into three-dimensional space? Can we visualize Homer's Hades or Dante's Inferno? We are going to try! We will meet in the architecture studio and build out of foam board and hot glue. A number of themes will emerge through the course: the interpretive move in rendering a once real space as a literary icon, the relationship between text and imagined space, the connection between space and ritual, and how to construct an image of a society from whom it imagines in hell. Learn more about the course here: https://youtu.be/J9q8CCQ9NkA
Last offered: Winter 2023 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

RELIGST 149: Finding Utopia: New Religious Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries

What is the connection between new religious movements and secularization? As the religious concept of freedom was expanded in the 19th century, so was secular culture: there was a vast array of possible routes a person might take to pursue transcendent wisdom, and this was increasingly a matter of personal choice. Whether in the form of new religious movements such as the Oneida community, reactions against institutionalization of religion such as the rise of atheism, the creation of syncretic religions such as theosophy, or the combination of religious expression and scientific discourse in practices such as scientology, the last two hundred years have been an era of profound religious experimentation. But challenges to traditional religious expression not only consisted of new beliefs, they also led to innovative forms of community.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-SI, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Willburn, S. (PI)

RELIGST 150: Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (COMPLIT 31, HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150)

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2022 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER

RELIGST 158: Spiritualism and the Occult

This course will examine the popular mystical practices of 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 the central questions: What is the relationship between seen and unseen? How can the living communicate with the dead? What technologies apply to our inner lives? This course considers the historical emergence of spiritualism, spiritualism and art, spiritualism and technology, and mysticism and women to explore how the invisible became a central metaphor for the ambition to expand and remake the real.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
Instructors: Willburn, S. (PI)

RELIGST 168: Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction

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.
Terms: Aut | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Sockness, B. (PI)
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