1 credit The religion colloquium meets every other Monday for discussion of senior projects, new books in religion and other topics of interest for the critical study of religion. Its purpose is to foster a community of inquiry among students and faculty, providing a forum for engaging issues of common interest. The course carries one credit, and students who have moderated into religion are expected to register for four semesters of the colloquium, for a total of four credits. Students from other programs are also welcome. The primary requirement of the course is active participation in the Monday night sessions, for which students will receive a grade of Pass, Fail or Honors. In addition, students are required to lead one discussion every year. For juniors, this may be on a recent article or book in religious studies; seniors will make a presentation of their senior project.

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.

Part of religions' role in society is to determine the value of acts, whether good, evil, or indifferent. Such ethical constructs are not only a means of modifying individual behavior, but are also tied to fundamental myths of creation, redemption, salvation, and the like. This course addresses the religious response to a series of moral questions dealing with war, abortion, euthanasia, and sexual relations. While the course presumes no previous study of religion, it will introduce students to the problematic of comparative and theoretical work. Source material will be drawn primarily from the writings of the three monotheistic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although contemporary religious thought will be emphasized, debates will be placed in their historical context.

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.

This course offers an overview of the early history and culture of South Asia, from its earliest urban civilization in the Indus Valley (2500-1800 BCE) up to the classical period of the Gupta dynasty in northern India (300-550 CE). Within this three-millennium frame, we will look at archeological reconstructions of the Indus Valley civilization and textual reconstructions of early Indo-Aryan or Vedic culture, the period of second urbanization in the Indo-Gangetic plain and the transition from tribal organization to kingdoms, the rise of the Mauryan imperial formation, the emergence and growth of heterodox orders of Buddhists and Jains and responses to their challenge from orthodox Hindus, the post-Mauryan period of Central Asian rule, and the articulation of a classical Indian culture during the Gupta period. While tracing this chronological history, the course will pay greater attention to key issues and debates within Indian history: social hierarchy and the development of caste society, the status of women, the roles of religious specialists in the political order, and the ideology and practice of kingship.

This course will examine the history of Japanese religions as a continuous stream of synthesis of elements from the Shinto, Buddhist, Taoist, and neo-Confucian systems and prominent folk traditions such as shamanism, mountain asceticism, and divination. The course will cover major religious developments in Japanese history, such as the early clan mythologies of the Jomon and Yayoi peoples, the Shinto-Buddhist syncretism and union of Buddhism with the emperor's law in the Asuka and Nara periods, the establishment of sectarian Buddhism under the Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates, the influence of Neo-Confucianism and Christianity in the Tokugawa era, the establishment of Shinto as state religion and persecution of Buddhism by the Meiji regime, and the triumph of non-elite "new religions" following World War II. In addition to the subject of relations between religion and state, which so pervades this field, we will investigate such significant ongoing themes as aesthetic expressions of religious thought and notions of embodiment in religious practice.

The veil, polygamy, arranged marriages--these are the images many Westerners have when they envision women in the Islamic world. While the images may be accurate, their interpretation by Muslim and Western feminists may be radically different. Given these divergent views, the question arises whether Muslim women and other women can speak to one another, and if so, what they would say. This course will approach this question by first examining several issues: the role of multicultural voices in the feminist movement, the critique of Islamic society by Western feminists and human rights activists, and the concerns raised by Muslim feminists about their relationship to other women throughout the world. The course will attempt to place Western and Muslim feminists in dialogue with one another, seeking to develop a deep understanding of the place of women in modern Islamic society and to probe questions of oppression and agency. Readings will draw from feminist philosophy, novels, case studies, and legal theory.

Claims of human experiences of deities, spirits, and transcendent / transpersonal states are among the aspects of religious traditions that many find compelling, confounding, or both. This course will explore the locus of such experiences within various religious systems, by addressing such issues as: a) the parameters of what can possibly be considered religious experiences (do all religions afford common religious experiences, or do various religions identify different types of experience as religious?); and b) the nature of human feelings, moods, perceptions, dispositions, modes of consciousness, and realizations that are brought into and result from experiences of sacred realities, as well as of transcendent or transpersonal states. Such theoretical considerations will inform the course's examination of such topics as mysticism, conversion, religious office, socio-economic contexts, textuality, scientific-rational denigration and defenses of religious experience, and postmodern "re-enchantment" of the world. Comparisons between Christianity and Buddhism will be a particular emphasis of the course. Reading assignments will include primary source works written by or about religious figures from a variety of traditions, who have stood out in their spiritual communities because of the profound religious experiences attributed to them, theoretical writings by academics about the nature of "experience" and the "religious," and scholarly pieces involved in current debates on such issues as whether religious experience is always mediated by cultural factors, or is sometimes purely unmediated. Prerequiste: at least two courses in religion, theology, or other related subject matter.

The Jewish people have been known as the People of the Book. However, in recent scholarship it has been suggested that "The People of the Body" would be fitting as well. Because historically Judaism has defined itself in a complex combination of religion, ethnicity and nationhood, questions of sexuality, reproduction and the role of the body are central to its understanding. Biological reproduction has stood with cultural reproduction as a religious value, and the engenderment of bodies is a central concern. In this course we will explore the interface of sexuality, the body, and Judaism's religious literature, rituals and practices. Circumcision and the symbolism of blood, practices pertaining to menstruation, eating and clothing will be discussed, along with questions of the construction of gender and attitudes toward sex and sexualities.

Does God have a body? Can we see it? Can and should this be represented in artistic form? In medieval and modern India, Hindu gods and goddesses are visible beings who present themselves to their devotees in visions, in icons, and in grand image-filled temples. Other religious traditions, by contrast, have often considered the embodiment of God in materials form as deeply problematic or as a sacrilege. This course examines the practices, issues, and debates surrounding divine icons and the religious arts in a comparative perspective. We will examine the arts and practices of Hindu theism, including visions of gods, the iconography and aesthetics of divine imagery, the rituals of image worship, and the cultural and political roles of Hindu images. We will look at the recurrent debates over the status and propriety of religious icons within the Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and Islamic traditions, as well as critiques from within Hinduism. Finally we will consider recent attempts to understand theoretically the continuing hold of images on the human imagination.