CRN

94017

Distribution

C/D / *(Humanities)

Course No.

REL 103

Title

Buddhist Thought and Practice

Professor

Kristin Scheible

Schedule

Mon Wed       3:00 pm -  4:20 pm       OLIN 202

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

This course is designed to explore the “three jewels” of Buddhism: the Buddha, the Dharma (the teaching), and the Sangha (the Buddhist community).  We will move imaginatively through different historical periods, cultures, and what might be called “Buddhisms” in this introductory survey of Buddhist teachings and practices. Our goals are threefold: first, we must consider what tools are potentially helpful in the comparative study of religion.  We will revisit and reevaluate this objective throughout the course.  Second, and most importantly, we will explore the diversity of thought and practice within the religious tradition monolithically referred to as “Buddhism,” by acquainting ourselves with the texts and participants of various communities (or “schools”) of Buddhists including Theravada, Tibetan, Pure Land and Zen.  Finally, the “three jewels” framework will help us to organize our findings and to make sense of apparent continuities and differences among the traditions.  Religion program category:  Historical

 

CRN

94020

Distribution

A/C / *(Humanities)

Course No.

REL 106

Title

Introduction to Islam

Professor

Nerina Rustomji

Schedule

Mon Wed       11:30 am - 12:50 pm     OLIN 201

Cross-list:  Theology

Is Islam in Arabia in the seventh century the same religion as Islam in Michigan in the twenty-first century?  Is a woman in fifteenth-century Iran the same kind of Muslim as a man in nineteenth-century Indonesia? Does West African Islamic mysticism differ from South Asian Islamic mysticism?  This course answers these questions by introducing Islamic religious systems in world context. We will study a series of cultures in order to explore differing elements of Islamic practice and to understand some commonalities of Islamic faith. Regions we will encounter include Arabia, Iran, Africa, South Asia, Indonesia and Malay Peninsula, and America. Themes we will trace include conceptions of prophecy, ritual practice, development of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, forms of mysticism, relationship between genders, and definitions of communal identity. Textual traditions we will examine include the Quran, traditions of the prophet Muhammad, philosophical treatises, mystical guidebooks, reform literature, and contemporary educational manuals. Religion program category:  Historical

 

CRN

94019

Distribution

A/C / *(Humanities)

Course No.

REL 120

Title

The Future of Christianity

Professor

Paul Murray

Schedule

Tu Th            1:30 pm -  2:50 pm       OLIN 201

Cross-listed:  Theology

Related interest:  Gender  & Sexuality Studies

Does Christianity have a future?  Are contemporary social and cultural conditions such that it must  “change or die,” as Bishop John Shelby Spong suggests?  During the final decades of the twentieth century, sharp questions regarding the continued viability and usefulness of Christianity were raised with increasing force and frequency not only by its external critics, but by thoughtful Christians, as well.  The social contexts of such questions include developing oppositions to Western imperialism in all its forms, including attempts to proselytize non-Christian peoples, religious pluralism as an existential reality, the popular pursuit of individualized spiritualities without religious affiliation, the reconceptualization of gender and sexuality, and the emergence of technologies that extend human manipulation of the world, including the human organism, in ways that were previously unimaginable.   These contexts, however, are only the immediate forms of still more deeply rooted intellectual challenges to traditional Christian beliefs and practices.  Modern Biblical studies, linguistics, archeology,  patristics, and historical studies have compelled Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox -- to reexamine foundational assumptions about their respective traditions.  At stake in contemporary disputes about moral issues, church polity, discipline and doctrine are the conceptual foundations of Christianity.  Can they be rethought?  Or, to draw on an aphorism of  Jesus, will ‘new wine burst the wine skins’?  Course readings will consider the roots and forms of these questions in theologies, church declarations, literature and the arts. Religion program category: Historical

 

CRN

94021

Distribution

D  / * (FLLC)

Course No.

REL 140

Title

Sanskrit

Professor

Richard Davis

Schedule

Tu Th            10:00 am - 11:20 am     OLIN 303

(plus recitation session TBA)

Cross-listed:  Asian Studies

Sanskrit is the language of ancient India, the language in which such works as the Bhagavad Gita, the great Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the Upanisads were written.  In this course students will learn the grammar and syntax of Classical Sanskrit and acquire a working vocabulary.  In the second semester students will read substantial portions of original texts in Sanskrit. Religion program category: Interpretive

 

CRN

94022

Distribution

B / *(Humanities)

Course No.

REL 242

Title

Hinduism in the Epics

Professor

Richard Davis

Schedule

Mon Wed       3:00 pm -  4:20 pm       OLIN 303

Cross-listed:  Asian Studies

The Indian epics have long been one of the major ways that the teachings of the Hindu tradition have been transmitted.  In this course we will read the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad Gita) and the Ramayana, with a view to the role of the epics in Hindu ritual and devotional life.  In addition, we will examine how these texts have been retold and performed in various ways up to the present. Religion program category:  Interpretive

 

CRN

94141

Distribution

B/D / * (FLLC)

Course No.

REL 272

Title

India and Greece

Professor

William Mullen / Kristin Scheible

Schedule

Tu Th            11:30 am - 12:50 am     OLIN 201

Cross-listed:  Classics, Theology

In this team-taught course, by  specialists in ancient Greek and in ancient Indic culture, we will explore the present state of the comparative method as applied to the histories and mythologies of two complex civilizations.  We will begin with the perennial question of  shared Indo-European origins and what, if anything, we might posit as “history.”  Turning to rich and  foundational cosmogonic and catastrophic myths operative in texts such as Hesiod's Theogony and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in the Indic Vedas and Puranas, we will consider cosmological structures of time and space, and  also varying possible relations between males and females both mortal and immortal.  We will continue to pursue these themes in the enduring epics, the Odyssey and the Ramayana.  In a more intensive mode, reflecting the special scholarship of each professor, we will study the interaction of ritual and sacred places in selected texts, principally the Odes of Pindar and the Edicts of Asoka.  We will end the course revisiting historical questions, examining evidence of direct contact between the two civilizations, and how they represented each other as the other, the “barbarian.” Religion program category:  Historical

 

CRN

94023

Distribution

A/C / *(Humanities)

Course No.

REL 290

Title

Special Topics in the Study of Religion

Professor

Jacob Neusner

Schedule

Tu Th            3:00 pm -  4:20 pm       OLIN 308

Fall 2004 Topic:  Altruism in the Religions of the World

A movable feast of topical studies in religion, this seminar is offered by various members of the Religion Program to investigate particular problems or themes.  The stress is on the comparative study of religions, with an interest in how various religious traditions take up a single topic. A research seminar conducted under the sponsorship of the Templeton Foundation will be held at Bard College on November 16-18, 2004 on the theme of altruism in the Religions of the World with sessions morning, afternoon and evening. Students in this seminar will read in advance the papers to be presented at the research seminar, prepare questions to present to the visiting professors when they read their papers, and present papers of their own on the problem of the seminar.  The problem is, is altruism a category that is particular to Christianity or one that is native to diverse religious cultures and systems of thought?  The opening research seminar-paper will spell out the question, and the following presentations will respond out of the data of various religions.  A portion of the research seminar will be devoted to empirical evidence deriving from social science studies, with the same question in view.  Religion program category:  Theoretical

 

CRN

94024

Distribution

n/a

Course No.

REL COL

Title

Religion Colloquium

Professor

Richard Davis

Schedule

Mon               7:00 pm -  8:30 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