CRN

15276

Distribution

C

Course No.

REL COL

Title

Religion Colloquium

Professor

Jeffrey Lidke

Schedule

Mon 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 101

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.


CRN

15129

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 112

Title

The Practice of Judaism

Professor

Natan Margalit

Schedule

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

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies

This course will examine the elements and varieties of contemporary Jewish religious practice. The approach will be anthropological and phenomenological. While textual sources for these practices will be studied, the focus of the course will be less on the texts than on the practices themselves. Similarly, while examples of modern theologies and religious thought will be examined, this will not be a course in modern Jewish thought. We will study life-cycle rituals such as circumcision, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, marriage, divorce, death and burial. The Jewish liturgical calendar, including Sabbath celebration, holiday cycles and daily prayers and rituals will be studied. Religious practices not tied to life cycle events or liturgical calendar such as tzedakah (charity), talmud torah (study) individual blessings and prayers and dietary laws will be studied. We will also examine differences in the various Jewish movements, as well as comparing American and Israeli Judaisms.


CRN

15130

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 122

Title

Catholicism and American Society

Professor

Paul Murray

Schedule

Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 309

Cross-listed: 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.


CRN

15125

Distribution

C

Course No.

REL 232

Title

Cairo as Microcosm of the Islamic World

Professor

Jonathan Brockopp

Schedule

Wed Fr 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 308

Cross-listed: Medieval Studies

Founded by a Shiite sect in 969 CE, Cairo (al-Qāhira) has grown to become the largest city in Africa in addition to being the capital of the Arab world. This complex metropolis is home to a diverse population of Copts, Muslims, diplomats and film stars, who live in a museum of sorts, surrounded by the mosques, synagogues and pyramids of generations passed. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach to studying this fascinating city, using architecture, literature, history and film to probe its riches. Topics will include: public and private space; decorative arts; intellectual life; religious conflicts; and the life of non-Muslim minorities, while keeping track of parallel developments in the rest of the Islamic world. Two additional opportunities: first, an Arabic tutorial will be offered for qualified students who wish to read the historical and literary accounts in their original language; second, this course will be coordinated with Prof. Sullivan's course on the Crusades, and several joint events will be planned.


CRN

15131

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 237

Title

Tibetan Civilization

Professor

Brad Clough

Schedule

Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 202

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

This course is a historical introduction to the civilization of the greater Tibetan cultural area of central Asia, from its origins to Tibet's annexation by China in the 1950s and the subsequent relocation of Tibetan communities in exile. The major topics include Buddhist and Bon religious traditions, geography and ethnicity, political history, social life and customs, and arts and literature. There are no prerequisites, but some knowledge of Buddhism would be helpful. Students who have no previous courses in Buddhism will be expected to do some additional reading at the outset.


CRN

15270

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 238

Title

Approaches to the Study of Zen Buddhism

Professor

Brad Clough

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 305

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

During the 20th century, the West was particularly fascinated with the philosophy and practice of the Zen Buddhist traditions from East Asia. Those endeavoring to transmit and "translate" Zen to the West have engaged in an intriguing variety of approaches to understanding this religion. These have encountered their own problems and limitations, and have developed unique insights. This course will examine the variety of approaches, beginning in the first half of the semester with investigations of genres of primary Zen texts that have raised particularly difficult hermeneutical issues, such as "mythologized" history (The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, The Transmission of the Lamp), "extra-rational" dialogues (Koan collections, like the Blue Cliff Record and the Gateless Barrier) and artistic presentations of spiritual realization (Haiku poetry, landscape painting, etc.). In the second half of the semester, we will look at some of the most influential approaches to understanding Zen in the West, including the seminal writings of D.T. Suzuki, popular books by Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts, and the innovative post-modern deconstructionist work of the French Buddhologist Bernard Fauré (The Rhetoric of Immediacy, Zen Insights and Oversights). Class members will also be involved in the anthropological "participant-observer" approach to understanding culture. Pre-requisite: college-level course work on Buddhism, or permission of the instructor.


CRN

15272

Distribution

 

Course No.

REL 258

Title

St. Paul in Contexts

Professor

Bruce Chilton

Schedule

Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 309

2 credits Paul of Tarsus moved through different geographical, social, and intellectual environments while he wrote his letters. That correspondence proved to be the single most important contribution to the New Testament in literary and theological terms. The purpose of this class is to move beyond a reading of St Paul as a single corpus, and to appreciate his development as a thinker.


CRN

15273

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 262

Title

Religion and Music in North India

Professor

Jeffrey Lidke

Schedule

Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm ALBEE 102

Cross-listed: Asian Studies 2 credits This course grounds students in the history, theory, and practice of classical and folk traditions of North Indian music. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, we will trace the origins of North Indian music to the theological texts of Hinduism which define music as the phonic register of a divine vibration, or spanda, which is at once light (prakasha) and sound (nada). In its light aspect, spanda shines as the mandala, the perfect geometrical structure that is the template for sacred art and architecture. In its sound aspect, spanda vibrates as melody (raga) and rhythm (tala), which are interwoven through compositions (tana) that are heard within in meditation and expressed without through voice, instruments, and drums. Additionally, we will investigate the profound influence of Islamic culture on the development of these traditions. We will ground these theoretical considerations with practical training in playing the Tablas and singing several classical and folk songs from the following Ragas: Bhairavi, Malkosh, and Dhani.


CRN

15271

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 263

Title

Comparative Religion: Judaism and Islam

Professor

Jacob Neusner / Jonathan Brockopp

Schedule

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

Cross-listed: Jewish Studies

If one believed media accounts, it seems there are no greater religious rivals than Muslims and Jews, yet Islam and Judaism constitute large and complex families of kindred religious systems. Seen as a whole, each of these families bears comparison with the other, not only because of centuries of coexistence, when Judaism was practiced within the historical and cultural framework of Islam from Morocco to Iran, but also because both are monotheist religions. They share a common worldview, rely heavily upon law to make their religious statements, and deem the political and social order the critical focus of the religious life. This course addresses classical writings of the two religions in a complex process of comparison and contrast. Primary sources addressing shared subjects (such as sacred texts, ethics, and the family) are read in parallel fashion, and similarities and differences are closely analyzed. Issues of contemporary political animosity are secondary to consideration of these traditions as freestanding, coherent wholes.


CRN

15274

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 265

Title

Religion and Ecology

Professor

Jeffrey Lidke

Schedule

Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: CRES

This comparative, thematic, and fieldwork-based course examines religious ideologies and practices centered on the triadic dynamic among ecological balance, social harmony, and self-cultivation. Readings -- which incorporate voices from a number of religious communities as well as contemporary theorists from such movements as Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism -- include This Sacred Earth: Religion Nature Environment (Roger Gottleib, ed), Religion and Ecology in Indian and Southeast Asia (Ninian Smart, ed), Nonviolence to Animals, Self, and Earth (Christopher Chapple), Black Elk Speaks (John Heirhardt), Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism, and The Journey of the Hero :Personal Growth, Deep Ecology, and the Quest for the Grail. Through our lectures, readings, discussions, and individual and group research projects we will attempt as a class to envision, develop, and creatively implement an ecological model in which strategies of environmental preservation demand and arise out of a sociological structure rooted in practices of self-cultivation that are universally applicable.


CRN

15132

Distribution

A/C

Course No.

REL 323

Title

Belief within a Religiously Plural World

Professor

Paul Murray

Schedule

Wed 7:00 pm - 9:20 pm OLIN 203

Cross-listed: Theology

The proximity of religious traditions in an increasingly global society tends to undermine absolutist and exclusivist truth claims, by rendering them both socially and psychologically untenable. What are the alternatives? This seminar will examine this question, by tracing its Biblical and historical roots and antecedents and examining its modern emergence among diverse religious thinkers, including Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths,and John Hick. Prerequisite: Moderation in Social Studies, or permission of the instructor.


CRN

15275

Distribution

 

Course No.

REL 331

Title

Technologies of the Spirit in South Asia

Professor

Jeffrey Lidke

Schedule

Th 4:00 pm - 6:20 pm OLIN 306

Cross-listed: Asian Studies

This course examines the technologies by which South Asian mystics encode their bodies as the locus of transcendent insight. We begin in the esoteric, ritualized environs of the Vedas (ca. 2500 B. C. E.) seeking there to trace the roots of what is now a pan-Asian understanding of the body/universe relationship as "holographic"-reciprocally reflecting, containing, and duplicating each other. Branching out from the Vedas, we then investigate five of the primary embodied spiritualities in South Asia: Patanjali's Classical Yoga, Hindu Tantra, Tibetan Buddhism, Islamic Mysticism, and Bhakti Yoga. Our comparative study attends to several themes, including the sociological impact of esoteric cultures, consciousness and the mind/body relationship, the relationship of spirituality to the arts, "New Age" appropriations of South Asia, and gender and sexuality in religion. In addition to grounding students in the primary spiritual traditions of South Asia, this course trains students in critical thinking, writing, speaking, and research skills. Open to all moderated students in the College, with preference given to students in Religion and Theology.