Course	REL 103 Buddhist Thought and Practice
Professor	Kristin Scheible
CRN	95285
Schedule	Wed Fr 1:30 -2:50 pm OLINLC 120
Distribution	OLD: C/D	NEW: HUMANITIES

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

Course	REL 104 Introduction to Judaism
Professor	Jacob Neusner
CRN	95286
Schedule	Mon Fri 3:00 –4:20 pm OLIN LC 206
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: HUMANITIES

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies, Theology

Diverse Judaic religious systems ("Judaisms") have flourished in various times and places. No single Judaism traces a linear, unitary, traditional line from the beginning to the present. This course sets forth a method for describing, analyzing, and interpreting Judaic religious systems and for comparing one such system with another. It emphasizes the formative history of Rabbinic Judaism in ancient and medieval times, and the development, in modern times, of both developments out of that Judaism and Judaic systems competing with it: Reform, Orthodox, Conservative Judaisms in the 19th century, Zionism, the American Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption, in the twentieth. In both the classical and the contemporary phases of the course, analysis focuses upon the constant place of women in Judaic systems as a basis for comparison and contrast.

Religion program category: Historical

Course	REL 117 Hindu Religious Traditions
Professor	Richard Davis
CRN	95287
Schedule	Tu Th 9:00 -10:20 am OLIN 307
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: HUMANITIES

Cross-list: Asian Studies

This course will provide an historical overview of the series of religious movements in India collectively referred to as “Hinduism.” For the foundations of classical Hinduism, we will read from a vast corpus of mythic and epic literature and familiarize ourselves with the gods, goddesses, and heroes that have been central to Hindu religious practice throughout history. We will explore a range of social and devotional paths taken by Hindus by examining caste structure and social location, as well as the paths of action, devotion, and wisdom (karma, bhakti, and jnana, respectively). Moving into the contemporary context, we will focus on modern ethnographic accounts of how the tradition is lived, both in India and the United States, with a special eye to the construction of sacred space through temples and pilgrimage.

Religion program category: Historical

Course	REL 122 Catholicism and American Society
Professor	Paul Murray
CRN	95288
Schedule	Tu Th 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 301
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: HUMANITIES

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

Course	REL 133 Pilgrimage
Professor	Kristin Scheible
CRN	95289
Schedule	Wed Fr 9:00 -10:20 am OLIN 310
Distribution	OLD: B/D	NEW: HUMANITIES

Cross-listed: Theology

As religious phenomena not equally important in all spiritual traditions, forms of pilgrimage 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 religious identity. 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. This course will examine what religionistsand anthropologists have called “ritual pilgrimages,” such as the Catholic Santiago de Compostela, identity building tours to Poland and Israel for Jewish youth such as the March of the Living and Birthright Israel, the Islamic Hajj to Mecca, the Hindu Ban-yatra through Braj, and pilgrimages to sites from the Buddha Gautama's lifestory.

Religion program category: Historical

Course	REL / HIST 160 Narrating the Modern Middle East
Professor	Nerina Rustomji
CRN	95290
Schedule	Mon Wed 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 301
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: HUMANITIES

Cross-listed: Human Rights

Related interest: Aficiana Studies

In 1979, Iran underwent a revolution that overthrew Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi 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, political tracts, 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

Course	REL 213 Sexuality and Spirituality
Professor	Paul Murray
CRN	95291
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm OLIN 204
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: HUMANITIES / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

Cross Listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theology

Contemporary reappraisals of the domains of sexuality and spirituality have shed new light on the boundaries placed between them in Christian traditions. This course examines the historical, social, cultural and theological roots and significance of these boundaries, as well as the numerous tensions and movements that cluster around them within contemporary Christianity, for example, regarding sexual ethics, sexual orientation and gender. Theological attempts to move beyond the presumed opposition of sexuality and spirituality will be examined in detail. Extra-Christian religious perspectives, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and the cultic beliefs and practices of indigenous populations, will be drawn into the discussion for comparison. (Limited to 15 students)

Course	REL 225 Intermediate Readings-Sanskrit
Professor	Richard Davis
CRN	95292
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm OLIN 304
Distribution	OLD: D	NEW: HUMANITIES

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Classical Studies

The course combines intermediate-level readings in Sanskrit with the study of Indian society and religion. Beginning with a review of basic grammatical structures of Sanskrit, students will quickly move on to read Sanskrit texts such as the animal fables of the Hitopadesa, the religious philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, and the classic poetic rendition of the Buddha’s life, the Buddhacarita of Asvaghosa.

Prerequisite: Sanskrit 101-102 or equivalent.

Religion program category: Interpretative

Course	REL / HIST 339 Muhammad and his Wives
Professor	Nerina Rustomji
CRN	95294
Schedule	Tu 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 203
Distribution	OLD: A	NEW: HUMANITIES / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

Crosslisted: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Theology

Depending on which biography you read, the prophet Muhammad can be either the perfect model of a righteously guided Muslim or the vilest example of tyranny, manipulation, and sexual depravity. In between these two polarities is a vast range of attitudes about Muslim prophecy and Islamic faith. This class studies the politics inherent in biographies of Muhammad and his wives. Its aim is to analyze religious biography as a historical and polemical form of writing and to trace the developing traditions of Muslim and non‑Muslim accounts of Muhammad and his female companions. Muslim will include the first historical accounts of the early Islamic community in the /Sira/ of Ibn Ishaq, traditions found within sayings of the prophet Muhammad, universal histories, devotional literature, and contemporary popular manuals and children’s comic books. Non‑Muslim sources will include medieval European tracts about Muhammad, the first printed biographies in early modern and Victorian England, and early and contemporary books about Muhammad in America.

Religion Program category: Interpretive/Historical

Course	REL COL Religion Colloquium
Professor	Richard Davis
CRN	95293
Schedule	Wed 7:00 -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