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761 - 770 of 868 results for: all courses

RELIGST 168: Philosophy of Religion

Course traces efforts within the Western tradition from Boethius through Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Kierkegaard to Camus to establish a rational foundation for theist belief and its consistency or coherence with everyday experience. We will deal extensively with the criticisms that that effort has cast up and then turn to investigate issues that extraordinary or mystical experience raises. We will incorporate a look at Buddhist traditions as well as those in the west to gain insight into these questions. And finally, we will look at the ethics of belief, at our responsibility toward our commitments, and some of the varying positions available to us.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 174: Religious Existentialism-Kierkegaard

Existentialism is often understood to be a secular or anti-religious philosophy of life, a substitute for Christian ethics in a post-theistic world come of age. Yet this twentieth-century philosophical movement owes many of its concerns and much of its vocabulary to the hyper-Protestant Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard, and much of the best Christian and Jewish thought in the 20th-century (Bultmann, Buber, Tillich) adopted existentialism as the 'best philosophy' for making sense of these traditions in a secular age. This course will examine the origins of existentialist thought in the writings of Kierkegaard and its appropriation by a handful of influential 20th-century religious thinkers.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

RELIGST 179: Doing the Sacred: Religion and Performance

This course investigates religion as practice and performance, rather than as belief and doctrine. A performance-centered emphasis helps us understand how domination and authority, as well as creativity and individual resistance, underlie culture. From initiatory rites to cyber sermons, human action offers raw, physical data that unveils the mechanisms of social control, ideology, and individual resistance. Reorienting religion from the perspective of religious acts / actors -- those who are doing something they consider sacred -- evokes many interpretive possibilities: How do these performances create and maintain communities? How do they resolve conflicts that arise within everyday affairs? In what ways do they generate meaning and shape identity? What can these enactments reveal about the constructions of power, gender, and race? This course explores such issues, probing the complicated relationship between human intention and social reality. Ultimately, a study of religion and performance seeks to understand how performance and transcendence interact to make participants into who they are.nThe readings cover an array of religious traditions -- medieval and evangelical Christian, Hindu, Native American, Jewish, Buddhist, African and Haitian Vodou -- all of which present a rich repertoire of sacred drama, dance, and music. We will discuss performances that make modern readers uncomfortable, such as sacrifice and flagellation, and examine why they are meaningful within their specific cultural context. Finally, we will consider how secular practices and the internet mimic religious behavior. However divergent, all of these examples demonstrate how religious performance is no mere artifice, but a vehicle for the practitioner's own pious posturing -- one that is spiritually innovative and self-affirming -- yet shaped by hierarchical regimes.
Terms: Spr | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP
Instructors: Dickason, K. (PI)

RELIGST 183: Atheism: Hegel to Heidegger (PHIL 183T)

The radical changes in ideas of God between Hegel and Heidegger, arguing that their questions about theism and atheism are still pertinent today. Texts from Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger: on God, history, and the social dimensions of human nature. N.B.: Class size limited. Apply early at tsheehan@stanford.edu.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors: Sheehan, T. (PI)

RELIGST 188A: Issues in Liberation: El Salvador

Within the context of US intervention in Central America the course investigates the history of liberation movements in El Salvador (including ¿liberation theology¿), as well as ethical questions relating economic, social, and political issues in that country. This class will likely include immersion travel to El Salvador over spring break and consequently the size of this course is limited. Students will be given an application by email. All applications will be reviewed to determine final class enrollment.
Terms: Win | Units: 4 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors: Sheehan, T. (PI)

RELIGST 201: Islamic Law (RELIGST 301)

(This course is combined with LAW 586) Topics include marriage, divorce, inheritance, ritual, war, rebellion, abortion, and relations with non-Muslims. The course begins with the premodern period, in which jurists were organized in legal traditions called ¿schools of law.¿ After examining the nature and functions of these institutions, we turn to the present era to study the relationship between customary law, state law, and the Islamic legal heritage in Egypt and Indonesia. The course explores Muslim laws and legal institutions and the factors that have shaped them, including social values and customs, politics, legal precedents, and textual interpretation.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Sadeghi, B. (PI)

RELIGST 202A: Monsters, Ghosts and Other Fantastic Beings: The Supernatural and the Mysterious in Japanese Culture

Examine the development of strange and fantastic creatures in Japan. Mysterious creatures in folklore, literature, art, manga and movies. Through them see how the concept of the strange or mysterious have evolved and how they inform Japanese modernity.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 205: Religious Poetry

Religious poetry drawn from the Islamic, Christian, Confucian and Daoist traditions. Limited enrollment or consent of the instructor required.
Last offered: Winter 2014 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

RELIGST 208A: Ex Oriente Lux: Orientalism and the Study of Religion (RELIGST 308A)

This seminar is designed to expose students to issues relating to discourse and subjectivity within the textual constructions of Oriental religions in the colonial era. We will begin with Edward W. Said¿s provocative work on notions of representation and power embedded in the discourse on the Orient that established, produced, and, ultimately, perpetuated western knowledge about the Other. We will then discuss the impact of the Oriental Renaissance and the vital role that Eastern wisdom played in constructing the field of Comparative Religious Studies. In addition, students will also read ethnographies, fables, and travelogues that both support and undermine Said¿s thesis of an active West constructing a largely passive East.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors: Vevaina, Y. (PI)

RELIGST 209E: Imperishable Heroes and Unblemished Goddesses: Myth, Ritual, and Epic in Ancient Iran (CLASSICS 148, CLASSICS 248, RELIGST 309E)

Designed as a broad introduction to the world of ancient Iran, students will be introduced to the Indo-European inheritance in ancient Iranian culture; the shared world of ritual, religion, and mythology between Zoroastrianism in Iran and Vedic Hinduism in India; and to the contours of early Zoroastrian religious thought. We will also survey mythoepic literature in translation from the archaic Avesta through the late antique Zoroastrian Middle Persian corpus to the early medieval national epic of Iran, the Book of Kings of Ferdowsi.
Last offered: Spring 2013 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-SI
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