printer friendly pageRELIGST 82: Approaches to the Study of Religion: Exploring Christianity
Historical and contemporary Christianity from four viewpoints: ritual and prayer; sacred texts and creeds; ethics and life; and community governance.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 107: Hindus and Muslims in South Asia
Hindus and Muslims have lived together in the subcontinent for over 1000 years, joined by Sikhs in the last 500. Contrasting narratives may emphasize composite cultures and interdependent societies, or separation and conflict. In the first half we will introduce these traditions and communities and highlight composite cultures in religion, literature, and music. In the second half we will examine key moments of conflict: the 11th-century invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni and narratives about them in Hindu and Muslim sources; the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan; the Khalistan movement and the 1984 massacre of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi's assassination; the 2002 Gujarat riots. Learning goals: critically examine the categories `Hindu,' `Muslim,' `Sikh,' `religion'; analyze differing narratives of the same events; clarify the complex factors involved in violent `religious' conflict.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom
RELIGST 113B: Japanese Religion Through Film
Themes in premodern and modern Japanese religion though animations, movies and documentaries
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 116: Who Speaks for Religion? Scholars Versus Believers
This course introduces students to the Insider /Outsider problem in the study of Religion focusing on questions of location, position, relation and boundaries. Who possesses the authority to decide on which people are inside/outside a religion, religious group or tradition? How do we conceive of the participant observer relationship and the speaking and writing about religion? How should we think about the scientific pretensions of religious studies as a reductionist approach? How do we meaningfully engage with questions of faith, theology, and the beliefs of others as part of a historical narrative of religious studies that both privileges lived experience of believers and extols the need for critical distance on the part of scholars?
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 128: The Five Books of Moses
A survey of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy¿that will explore their authorship, form and meaning.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 132C: How Jesus the Jew became God
Contemporary historical-critical methods in investigating how one might study Jewish and Christian texts of the 1st century CE. Social contexts including economic realities and elite ideological views. What can be known historically about 1st-century Judaism and Jesus' part it in it. How Jewish apocalyptic messianism shaped the birth of Christianity and its trajectory through the 1st century.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 133: Inventing Christianity in Late Antiquity
The transformation of an apocalyptic sect into an imperial religion from 200 to 600 C.E. Shifts in structures of authority, worship, and belief mapped against shifts in politics, economics and religion in the larger Roman empire. Cultural visions of this history including Edward Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Dan Brown's conspiracy theory in
The Da Vinci Code, and Elaine Pagels'
The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 146: Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection
Explores the boundaries of rational knowledge about Christian faith through a careful reading of the transcendental project of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner. Rahner¿s thought, informed by various sources (e.g., the mystics, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel and Ignatius Loyola), results in an interpretation of Christian faith that strives for intellectual honesty in the face of challenges from science, atheism and post-modern culture. Yet it leaves room for a fundamental human openness to the source and goal of self-transcendence, what Rahner calls Holy Mystery. Weekly short position papers will be required to stir both reflection and discussion.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 148: From Jesus to Paul
Jesus considered himself God's definitive prophet, but he did not think he was God, and had no intention of founding a new religion. How did this Jewish prophet become the gentile God and the founder of Christianity? The role of Paul.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 148A: St. Paul and the Politics of Religion
The major letters written by Paul, the Apostle, and his biography, Acts of the Apostles. Historical context in first century Jewish cultural politics. Origins of Christianity, and the split into Judaism and Christianity. The relationship between Jews and non-Jews. The juxtaposition of law and faith. Origins of cultural universalism. Paul as Jewish radical versus Paul, the first Christian thinker and theologian. Recent philosophical readings of Paul (Taubes, Badiou, and Agamben).
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
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