CRN	93079	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	REL 103
Title	Buddhist Thought and Practice
Professor	Kristin Scheible
Schedule	Mon Wed 11:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 304

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

The main purpose of this course is to familiarize ourselves with the major categories of Buddhism, an historically pan-Asian religious tradition of remarkable philosophical and practical diversity, and expansive geographical and chronological scope. While the course will always maintain an historical perspective, to provide us with a framework for understanding Buddhist developments in their cultural and temporal contexts, the course will be structured mainly along thematic lines, according to the traditional concepts of the "Three Jewels or Refuges": Buddha (teacher, exemplar, enlightened being), Dharma (doctrine), and Sangha (community), and the "Three Trainings": Shila (ethics), Samadhi (meditation), and Prajna (wisdom). Following this structure, we will closely read primary sources (in translation) and historical and ethnographic studies, in order to explore how Buddhists, both ancient and modern, have viewed the world and lived their lives in the cultural settings of South and Southeast Asia (Theravada Buddhism), East Asia (Mahayana Buddhism), and the Tibetan and Himalayan regions of Asia (Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism).

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93080	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	REL 115
Title	Christian Moral Decision Making
Professor	Paul Murray
Schedule	Tu Th 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listing: Theology

Capital punishment, euthanasia, warfare, the environment, abortion, reproductive technologies, homosexuality, pre-marital sexuality, and divorce are among the issues on which individuals and communities seek to make appropriate moral responses. Within Christianity, there are several recognized sources of moral guidance: the scriptures, tradition, natural law, reason, conscience, official church declarations and personal experience. Various Christian traditions variously weight these sources, resulting in differing outlooks not only between traditions but in the application of shifting standards of moral reasoning from issue to issue within traditions. Moreover, church history offers striking illustrations of significant reframings of moral standards for such issues as capital punishment, usury, slavery, homosexuality and abortion, which result in radical reassessments and reversals on matters long regarded as settled. Focusing on a selection of moral issues, this course will closely examine notions of the processes of moral decision-making within Christianity, as well as various understandings of the moral life itself.

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93081	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	REL 122
Title	Catholicism & American Society
Professor	Paul Murray
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 309

Cross-listed: American Studies, Theology

Life in the American republic presented Roman Catholics with new opportunities and challenges, including religious pluralism, democratic ideals, and minority status in a predominantly Protestant society. Within the framework of a historical overview, this survey course examines the understandings and strategies employed by Catholic organizations and individuals as they engage life in the United States to craft a distinctively American Catholic culture. American Catholic responses to the social, cultural and theological challenges posed by the post-Vatican II, post 1960s period will be examined in depth.

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93676	Distribution	B/D
Course No.	REL 133
Title	Pilgrimage
Professor	Kristin Scheible
Schedule	Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm HEG 300

As religious phenomena, forms of pilgrimage, while not equally important in all spiritual traditions, are some of the most widely present kinds of activity and expression in the religious life. This course will deeply consider pilgrimage as one unifying theme in the exploration of human religiosity. As a religious arena in which multiple cultural patterns converge and shape each other, pilgrimage in its various forms has also played a very significant historical role in shaping trade and commerce, geographic consciousness, centers of political power, and artistic forms. While this course will regularly return to examinations of what religionists and anthropologists have called “ritual pilgrimages,” such as the Islamic hajj to Mecca, the Hindu yatra to Benares, and the Jewish “ascent for the festival” into Jerusalem, we will also investigate pilgrimage more metaphorically, by looking at literary (John Bunyan’s well-known Christian allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress), legendary (the Tibeto-Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Shambhala), and visionary (the Huichol Indians’ peyote quests) journeys. Both humanistic and social scientific interpretive and theoretical work, such as that of Victor and Edith Turner, James Preston, Barbara Aziz, and Joseph Kitagawa, will be employed as frameworks for our analyses of this subject.

CRN	93368	Distribution	C
Course No.	REL 160
Title	The History of Islam in the Modern Middle East
Professor	Nerina Rustomji
Schedule	Wed Fri 11:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 203

In 1979, Iran underwent a revolution that overthrew the Shah and replaced his rule with an Islamic theocracy. In an attempt to understand the revolution’s significance within Middle Eastern history, two narratives have emerged: The first argues that the presence of an Islamic state is a divergence from the process of modernization; the second interprets the revolution as a culmination of political and religious resistance against imperialism and colonialism. We examine historical monographs, imperial communiqués, ethnographies, novels, and film in order to assess these opposing narratives. The course brings into focus the interrelations between imperialism, Islamic reform and revival, nationalism, and colonialism from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It analyzes social and political movements of the British, French, Iranian and Ottoman governments, as well as how events influenced and were influenced by the peoples of the various regions of the Middle East.

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93082	Distribution	A
Course No.	REL 175
Title	Scripture, Mishnah, & Midrash
Professor	Jacob Neusner
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 pm -2:50 pm LC 206

Of related interest: Classical Studies

Judaism knows God through the Torah, and this course studies writings that are part of the Torah of Sinai. Specifically, Judaism maintains that when God was made known at Sinai, the Torah was formulated and transmitted for Moses in two media: writing, the written Torah corresponding to the Five Books of Moses as we know them; and oral formulation and transmission, that is, a process of memory. This other part of the one Torah of Sinai, the oral part, called in Judaism “the memorized Torah,” encompasses all of the documents that represented in this course, but the Torah extends far beyond those particular documents. The course deals with the first writings beyond Scripture that the Judaism of the Dual Torah treats as part of the Torah – the Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, and related writings. Each of these writings represents a moment at which, as at Sinai, in the conviction of the community of the faithful, the Torah encompassed still more truth, in an ever-growing and never-ending transaction of revelation.

Religion program category: Interpretative

CRN	93084	Distribution	C
Course No.	REL 228
Title	Devotion & Poetry in India
Professor	Richard Davis
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 305

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

Bhakti means "participation in" or "devotion to" God. From 700 C.E. to 1700 C.E., in every region of India, bhakti poet-saints sang songs and lived lives of intense, emotional devotion to their chosen gods. The songs, legends, and theologies of these saints and the communities they established permeate the religious life of India. This course explores the world of bhakti through its poetry. We examine issues of poetics and theology, bhakti and opposition to orthodox social conventions, bhakti and gender, the interactions of Hindu devotionalism and Islamic Sufism, the role of bhakti in Indian music, and the problem of bhakti in twentieth-century Indian literature.

Religion program category: Interpretative

CRN	93085	Distribution	C
Course No.	REL 241
Title	Myth and Arts of India
Professor	Richard Davis
Schedule	Tu Th 10:00 am – 11:20 am OLIN 301

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

Of related interest: Classical Studies

Stories about the legendary heroes and gods of India form the basis for much of the literature, visual art, and performing arts of southern Asia. In this course we will examine narratives from the Hindu epics, Puranas, and other literary sources relating the deeds of Visnu and his incarnations, the various manifestations of the Goddess, Siva in his multiple forms, and the Buddha Sakyamuni and his former lives. We will also explore how these myths have been represented visually in painting and temple sculpture, and how they are retold in the performative traditions of Indian drama and dance. In addition to the arts of India, we will also consider how these mythological traditions have been both preserved and transformed in the arts of Bali and Indonesia.

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93087	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	REL 259
Title	Liturgy
Professor	Bruce Chilton
Schedule	Th 4:00 pm -5:30 pm OLIN 304 Sun 7:00 pm -8:30 pm CHAPEL

Cross-listed: Theology

Under the name of "liturgy," a term for a civic duty in the Graeco‑Roman world, early Christianity referred to the range of its worship, running from formal Eucharist in cathedrals to private meditation in the desert. The origins, influence, and development of liturgy constitute the principal interests of this course.

Religion program category: Historical

CRN	93675	Distribution	C
Course No.	REL 261
Title	Women and Buddhism
Professor	Kristin Scheible
Schedule	Mon 3:00 pm – 4:20 pm OLIN 303 Wed 3:00 pm – 4:20 pm OLIN 304

In this interpretative course, we will encounter the sacred images and social realities of women in the Buddhist world. Specifically, we will consider the ways in which categories such as “woman,” “feminine,” “gender,” and “nun” have been explained and imagined by Buddhist communities (as well as by academics and feminists) through various historical and cultural locations. We will begin with an examination of early Buddhist sources, the stories surrounding the founding of the nun's order and the songs of women saints (Pali Therigatha). We will then consider gender(ed) imagery in Mahayana sources, with a sustained focus on the evolution of the bodhisattva Kuan-yin in China. We will consider the feminine principle as envisioned by Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet before devoting a significant portion of the course to the study of how real women in the contemporary Buddhist landscape, especially those who have taken vows, resolve tensions inherent in the Buddhist tradition. Our main source in this section will be the collected ibservations of nuns who were in attendance at the First International Conference on Buddhist Nuns. To conclude our course, we will break into two groups, each responsible for presenting and leading discussions on two recent, provocative books in the field of Buddhist Studies.

CRN	93369	Distribution	A
Course No.	REL 280
Title	Afterlives and Afterworlds
Professor	Nerina Rustomji
Schedule	Tu Th 3:00 pm – 4:20 pm HEG 300

While the idea of an afterlife may appear universal, its form is unique to each religious tradition in time and place. This course investigates eschatology as an aspect of human religiosity, and it aims to understand how different societies have envisaged and transformed their visions of a future life. In order to study concepts, such as the apocalypse, heaven and hell, and journeys to the afterworld, the course surveys various religious and literary traditions. Texts range chronologically from Sumerian literature to American sermons; however, particular attention is paid to articulations of the afterlife and the afterworld in Zoroastrian, early Christian, medieval European, medieval Islamic, and contemporary American texts. While materials include secondary sources and some theoretical texts, the course is driven by discussion of primary sources in translation.

Religion program category: Interpretative

CRN	93089	Distribution	A
Course No.	REL 325
Title	Mary Magdalene
Professor	Bruce Chilton
Schedule	Fri 12:00 pm -1:20 pm OLIN 107

2 credits Through the history of the interpretation of the New Testament, Mary Magdalene has emerged as a pivotal figure in the discussion of gender and sexuality. Understanding that focus illuminates key issues of hermeneutics, and also offers possibilities for the assessment of the ancient sources regarding Mary, whether in the New Testament itself or in the literature of Gnosticism.

Religion program category: Interpretative

CRN	93088	Distribution	A
Course No.	REL 350
Title	Ritual & Performance Studies
Professor	Richard Davis
Schedule	Tu 4:00 pm -6:30 pm OLIN 107

Cross-listed: Anthropology

This seminar will explore theories of ritual and performance as they have developed in disciplines of religious studies, sociology, anthropology, and theater studies. Using a series of case studies, we will consider how these symbolic and transformative human practices are represented and analyzed within various theoretical perspectives. Of particular interest in this seminar will be rituals and ceremonial performances in the public sphere. We will look at political ceremonial such as royal coronations and Presidential inaugurations, enactments of public protest such as Gandhi’s Salt March, religious festival processions like Mardi Gras and the Rath Yatra, and performative dramas like the Ramlila.

Religion program category: Theoretical

CRN	93090	Distribution	n/a
Course No.	REL COL
Title	Religion Colloquium
Professor	Paul Murray
Schedule	Mon 4:30 pm -6:00 pm OLIN 201

2 credits The religion colloquium is a two-credit course open to all students, but required of religion moderands. The purpose of the colloquium is to foster a community of scholarship among students and faculty interested in the study of religion, and to prepare public presentations of independent research. The colloquium is designed to encourage interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on students’ topics of particular interest. Weekly sessions will be devoted to discussion of new books, films, CD-roms, etc. as well as regular updates of progress on senior projects. Public sessions of the colloquium will be scheduled three or four times each semester; students who enroll for credit will shoulder the responsibility for preparing papers to present in these sessions. Outside speakers and faculty members may also be invited to present papers in these public sessions.

Religion program category: Theoretical