University Bulletin (2009-2010)

REL 97a Senior Essay
Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 97b Senior Essay
Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 98a Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 98b Independent Study
Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 107a Introduction to World Religions
[ hum nw ]
This course serves as an introduction to the study of religion; it surveys some of the major religions of the world.
Staff

REL 131b The Dynamics of Religious Experience
[ hum ]
A comparative study of religious experience, including Christian, Jewish, nonbiblical, and feminist responses to modern anguish and the quest for identity and absolute meaning. Topics include doubt, sin, conversion, prayer, mysticism, holiness, and social action. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

REL 151a The Buddha: His Life and Teachings
[ hum nw ]
Few human beings have had as much impact on the world as Siddhartha Gotama Shakyamuni, known to us as Buddha. This course explores his life and teachings as reflected in early Buddhist literature and Western scholarship. Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 161a Chinese Religion and Thought: Understanding Confucianism and Daoism (Taoism)
[ hum nw ]
This course aims at widening and deepening students' knowledge of world religions by introducing to them distinctive Chinese religions and schools of thought with emphasis on two most significant ones, namely, Confucianism and Taoism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Feng

The following courses are approved for the program. Not all are given in any one year. Please consult with Schedule of Classes each semester.

ANTH 80a Anthropology of Religion
[ nw ss ]
An introduction to the anthropological study of human religious experience, with particular emphasis on religious and ritual practice in comparative perspective. Examines the relationship between religion and society in small-scale, non-Western contexts as well as in complex societies, global cultures, and world historical religions. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Lamb or Ms. Schattschneider

CLAS 170a Classical Mythology
[ hum ]
An introduction to Greek and Roman mythology. Considers ancient song cultures, and the relationship between myth, drama, and religion. Also explores visual representations of myth. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Muellner

HIST 181a Seminar on Traditional Chinese Thought
[ nw ss ]
Social, historical, and political theory is one of China's greatest contributions to world civilization. Studies the most influential schools (Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism, and Legalism) through the reading and discussion of original texts. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

IMES 104a Islam: Civilization and Institutions
[ hum nw ]
Provides a disciplined study of Islamic civilization from its origins to the current state of affairs. Approaches the study from a humanities perspective. Topics covered will include the Qur'an, tradition, law, theology, politics, Islam and other religions, modern developments, women in Islam, and Islam and Middle Eastern politics. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

NEJS 3a Introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
[ hum ]
An introduction to the three major religions originating in the Near East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Areas of focus include historical development, sacred texts, rituals, and interpretive traditions. Ancient, medieval, and modern periods are treated. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 5a Foundational Course in Judaic Studies
[ hum ]
A survey of the Jewish experience and thought, focusing on the varieties of historical Judaism, including its classical forms, its medieval patterns and transformations, and its modern options. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Kimelman

NEJS 9a The World of the Ancient Near East
[ hum ]
An introduction to the peoples, history, religions, institutions, and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, Israel, Anatolia, and Egypt from prehistory to 330 BCE. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Wright

NEJS 111a The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students.
A survey of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Biblical books will be examined from various perspectives and compared to other ancient Near Eastern compositions. No knowledge of Hebrew is presumed. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 114b Ritual and Magic in the Bible
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor (section 1 only).
A study of ritual and cultic texts of the Bible in Hebrew and their rites and phenomena with historical-critical, Near Eastern-environmental, social-scientific, and literary analysis. Usually offered every third year. Section 1 in Hebrew, section 2 in English.
Mr. Wright

NEJS 116a Ancient Near Eastern Religion and Mythology
[ hum nw ]
Open to all students.
An introduction to the religion, mythology, and thought of the ancient Near East. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Abusch

NEJS 128a Introduction to Christianity
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
An introduction to Christian beliefs, liturgy, and history. Surveys the largest world religion: from Ethiopian to Korean Christianity, from black theology to the Christian right. Analyzes Christian debates about God, Christ, and human beings. Studies differences among Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Brooten

NEJS 130a The New Testament: A Historical Introduction
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
A study of the main parts of the New Testament, with emphasis on the contents of the books and the historical development of early Christianity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Brooten

NEJS 153a Hasidism as a Religious and Social Movement
[ hum ]
The rise of East European Hasidism in the eighteenth century and its success. Key teachings, motifs, and religious ideals of the movement and its leadership. Changes as Hasidism struggled with modernity and destruction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

NEJS 186a Introduction to the Qur'an
[ hum nw wi ]
Traces the history of the Qur'an as text, its exegesis, and its role in inter-religious polemics, law, theology, and politics. Examines the role of the Qur'an in modern Islamic movements. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lumbard

NEJS 187b Shi'ism and Political Protest in the Middle East
[ hum nw ]
Who are the Shi'i Muslims? Addresses this question by focusing on the Shi'i communities of Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Lebanon. Examines the social, cultural, and religious life of these communities, as well as their political development in modern times. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

NEJS 198b Modern Islamic Thought: The Eighteenth Century through the Contemporary Era
[ hum ]
An analysis of major trends in Islamic thought -- Sunni, Shii, and Sufi -- beginning with eighteenth-century revival and reform and carrying through to the contemporary era, covering themes such as women and gender, democracy, pluralism, liberation, and jihad. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

REL 151a The Buddha: His Life and Teachings
[ hum nw ]
Few human beings have had as much impact on the world as Siddhartha Gotama Shakyamuni, known to us as Buddha. This course explores his life and teachings as reflected in early Buddhist literature and Western scholarship. Usually offered every year.
Staff

REL 161a Chinese Religion and Thought: Understanding Confucianism and Daoism (Taoism)
[ hum nw ]
This course aims at widening and deepening students' knowledge of world religions by introducing to them distinctive Chinese religions and schools of thought with emphasis on two most significant ones, namely, Confucianism and Taoism. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Feng

The following courses are approved for the program. Not all are given in any one year. Please consult with Schedule of Classes each semester.

AAAS 81b Religion in African-American History
[ ss wi ]
Prerequisite or corequisite: AAAS 70a.
Examines religious development in African-American history in order to understand how religion has influenced African-American life. Topics include religious experience and identity, religion in popular culture, institutional developments, political activism among religious figures, theological innovations, and religious conflict. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 167b The Cultural Work of Religion in America
[ ss ]
Examines the roles of religion in the adaptation of ethnic and racial cultures to one another in the United States and to the mainstream American culture. Topics include the ways in which Americans used their religious institutions to assimilate newcomers and to contain those they defined as the "other," the religions of immigrants, and the responses of immigrants and Americans to religious pluralism. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AMST 168b American Religious History
[ ss wi ]
Charts the origins and development of the various--and primarily Judeo-Christian--religious movements that have shaped and been shaped by the American experience. Topics include the origins of the "Bible Belt," the religious debate over slavery, the black church in America, the social gospel, and the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Farrelly

ANTH 105a Myth and Ritual
[ nw ss ]
Studies myth and ritual as two interlocking modes of cultural symbolism. Evaluates theoretical approaches to myth by looking at creation and political myths. Examines performative, processual, and spatial models of ritual analysis through study of initiation, sacrifice, and funerals. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 135a The Sanctification of Space in Contemporary Israel
[ ss ]
Explores the myriad ways in which the "idea of the holy" is imprinted on the land in contemporary Israel. Case studies are used (including the commemoration of national death and the Holocaust, the Zionist pantheon at Mount Herzl, museums as sacred sites, Jewish-Moroccan saint veneration) to analyze processes of successful and abortive sanctification, highlight the role of agents of memory in contested cases, and discuss broader political and socio-cultural contexts. Special one-time offering, fall 2009.
Mr. Bilu

ANTH 137b Gender and the Sacred in Asia
[ ss ]
Ritual, violence, gender, religion, and cultural creativity in Asia, especially East Asia and South Asia. Religious movements, sacrifice and patriliny, and the ritualization of state power through religious imagery and institutions. Roles of religious leaders and spiritual movements in conflict resolution and peacemaking. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schattschneider

COML 179a Life Stories, Spiritual and Profane
[ hum ]
Examines modern life stories (such as biographies, autobiographies, journals, fiction) concerning personal identity in relation to the search for God, mysticism and anguish, conversion, moral action, and intimate love. Augustine's Confessions and Teresa of Avila's Life provide models for contemprary writers such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

ENG 78b Modernism, Atheism, God
[ hum ]
Explores European and American literature after Nietzche's proclamation, at the end of the 19th century, that God is dead. How does this writing imagine human life and the role of literature in God's absence? How does it imagine afterlives of God, and permutations of the sacred, in a post-religious world? How, or why, to have faith in the possibility of faith in a secular age? What does "the secular" actually mean, and how does it persuade itself that it's different than "the religious". Approaches international modernism as a political and theological debate about materialism and spirituality, finitude and transcendence, reason and salvation. Readings by Kafka, Joyce, Rilke, Faulkner, Eliot, Beckett, Pynchon, and others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

FA 13b Buddhist Art
[ ca nw ]
The history of Buddhist art on the Silk Road. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Wong

FA 15b Arts of the Ming Dynasty
[ ca nw ]
Examines a broad array of arts from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The first half of the course focuses on activities in and around the Chinese court. The second half concentrates on monuments related to literati and popular cultures. Usually offered every three years.
Ms. Wong

FA 39b Islamic Art and Architecture
[ ca nw ]
Introduces architecture and arts of the Islamic lands from seventh-century Levant to post-modernism in Iran, India, and the Gulf states. Provides an overview of major themes and regional variations, and their socio-political and historical context. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

FA 42b The Age of Cathedrals
[ ca ]
Architecture, sculpture, and painting (including stained glass) in Western Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, with particular attention to the great churches of medieval France. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McClendon

FA 45a St. Peter's and the Vatican
[ ca ]
The history, growth, and development of Christendom's most famous shrine, with particular concern for the relationship between the design and decoration of the Renaissance/baroque church and palace complex and their early Christian and medieval predecessors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McClendon

FECS 147a Jewish Identities in France since 1945
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation with French originals available.
After the Holocaust, French thinkers such as Sartre, Levinas, and Memmi provided a foundation for reconstructing Jewish life. Topics include assimilation, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, Muslim, black, and Jewish identity, the role of women, secularism, ethics, and religious faith. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

HIST 110b The Civilization of the High and Late Middle Ages
[ ss ]
Survey of European history from 1000 to 1450. Topics include the Crusades, the birth of towns, the creation of kingdoms, the papacy, the peasantry, the universities, the Black Death, and the Hundred Years' War. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kapelle

HIST 123b Reformation Europe (1400-1600)
[ ss wi ]
Survey of Protestant and Catholic efforts to reform religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Topics include scholastic theology, popular piety and anticlericalism, Luther's break with Rome, the rise of Calvinism, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, the Catholic resurgence, and the impact of reform efforts on the lives of common people. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST 126a Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)
[ qr ss ]
Survey of politics, ideas, and society in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Focuses on the changing relationship between the emerging modern state and its subjects. Topics include the development of ideologies of resistance and conformity, regional loyalties and the problems of empire, changing technologies of war and repression, and the social foundations of order and disorder. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sreenivasan

HIST 148a Religion and Society in Modern Russia
[ ss ]
Examines the role of religion, institutional and popular, in the social, political, and cultural development of Russia from the eighteenth century to the present. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Freeze

HIST 152b Salem, 1692
[ ss wi ]
An in-depth investigation of the Salem witch trials of 1692 and their role in American culture during the last 300 years. Focusing on gender, religion, law, and psychology, the class explores primary sources as well as films, plays, and novels. Students will also conduct field research in Salem. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Kamensky

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year. Not offered 2008-2009.
Staff

IECS 140a Dante's Divine Comedy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English
translation.
A close study of the entire poem--Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso--as a symbolic vision of reality reflecting the culture and thought--political, philosophical, theological--of the Middle Ages. Readings to include the Vita Nuova, the Aeneid (Bk. 6), and selections from the Bible, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and St. Thomas' Summa Theologicae. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lansing

LAT 125a Medieval Latin
[ fl hum ]
Surveys medieval Latin prose and poetry from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries and their influence on subsequent English, French, and Italian literature. Materials will be studied in the original Latin and English. Offered on request.
Ms. Johnston or Ms. Walker

NEJS 112a The Book of Genesis
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor.
An in-depth study of the Hebrew text of Genesis, with particular attention to the meaning, documentary sources, and Near Eastern background of the accounts of creation and origins of human civilization in chapters one to eleven, and of the patriarchal narratives, especially those about Abraham. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Abusch

NEJS 115a The Book of Deuteronomy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or a strong knowledge of biblical Hebrew.
A close examination of the prose and poetry of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy with special attention to its religious, legal, and compositional features. Traditions found in the Book of Deuteronomy will be compared with their counterparts elsewhere in the Torah. The place of the Book of Deuteronomy in the history of the religion of Israel will be considered. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 115b Women and the Bible
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
The Hebrew Bible, a complex work, reflects a wide range of attitudes toward women. This course examines these attitudes as they are reflected in issues such as the legal status of women, women in myths, women leaders, prostitution, and the gender of ancient Israel's deity. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Brettler

NEJS 122a Magic and Witchcraft in the Ancient Near East
[ hum nw ]
Examines magical literature, rituals, and beliefs in the ancient Near East, especially Mesopotamia. Topics such as demonology, illness, prayer, and exorcism are covered; special attention is paid to witchcraft. This course is organized around the close reading of ancient texts. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Abusch

NEJS 127b The Jewish Liturgy
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A 20-level Hebrew course or the equivalent.
A study of the literature, theology, and history of the daily and Sabbath liturgy. Emphasis will be placed on the interplay between literary structure and ideational content, along with discussion of the philosophical issues involved in prayer. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kimelman

NEJS 144a Jews in the World of Islam
[ hum nw ]
A social and cultural history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Special emphasis is placed on the Jewish communities in the Middle East since 1492. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Levy

NEJS 153b Abraham Joshua Heschel: Spirituality and Action
[ hum wi ]
Abraham Heschel's Hasidic spirituality and militant social action provide a meeting ground for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Studies his writings on prayer, mysticism, religious education, the prophets, the Holocaust, Israel, interfaith relations, civil rights, and the Vietnam war. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

NEJS 159a Modern Jewish Philosophy
[ hum ]
Surveys the contours of modern Jewish philosophy by engaging some of its most important themes and voices. Competing Jewish inflections of and responses to rationalism, romanticism, idealism, existentialism, and nihilism. This provides the conceptual road signs of the course as we traverse the winding byways of Jewish philosophy from Baruch Spinoza to Emanuel Levinas. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 162a American Judaism
[ hum ss wi ]
American Judaism from the earliest settlement to the present, with particular emphasis on the various streams of American Judaism. Judaism's place in American religion and comparisons to Judaism in other countries. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sarna

NEJS 163a Jewish-Christian Relations in America
[ hum ss ]
A topical approach to the history of Jewish-Christian relations in America from the colonial period to the present. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Sarna

NEJS 164a Judaism Confronts America
[ hum ]
Examines, through a close reading of selected primary sources, central issues and tensions in American Jewish life, paying attention to their historical background and to issues of Jewish law. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sarna

NEJS 166b Who is a Jew? Identity, Conversion, and Citizenship
[ hum ]
Examines the dynamics of conversion to and from Judaism from the rabbinic period to the present. Themes include the construction of identity, the place of the convert in the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, intermarriage and family, as well as social and legal dilemmas. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Freeze

NEJS 175b Responses to the Holocaust in Literature
[ hum ]
The Holocaust has generated a rich and varied body of literary representations of this crucial event in modern history. This course studies significant examples of such representations, dwelling on their historical, cultural, and psychological aspects. The aesthetic and moral problems of representation are raised in each case. Authors examined include Wiesel, Levi, Appelfeld, Spiegelman, Celan, and Pagis. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

NEJS 190b Islamic Philosophy
[ hum ]
An examination of the development and teachings of the Islamic philosophical tradition, covering its development from the Greek philosophical tradition and in response to Islamic teachings, and the relationship between Islamic philosophy and theology up to the Safavid period. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lumbard

NEJS 191a Introduction to Islamic Theology
[ hum ]
An introduction to Islamic theology and intellectual tradition. After studying the formative period of the Prophet Mohammad's life, students examine the development of law, doctrines, beliefs, philosophy, and the diversity of thought in Islamic tradition. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

NEJS 191b Messianism and the State of Israel
[ hum ]
Messianism is an important component in Jewish history. This course examines the messianic idea as a religious, political, and sociological phenomenon in modern Jewish history. Examining how the messianic narrative entered Jewish political discourse enables a critical discussion of its role in Zionist activities as an example of continuity or discontinuity with an older tradition. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Inbari

NEJS 194b Sufi Teachings
[ hum nw ]
Prerequisite: IMES 104a or NEJS 186a or a course on Islam.
An examination of the teaching and practices of the Sufi tradition. Explores the foundations of Sufism, its relation to other aspects of Islam and the development of Sufi teachings in both poetry and prose. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lumbard

NEJS 196a Marriage, Divorce, and Sexual Ethics in Islamic Law
[ hum nw ]
Using law to understand Islamic gender discourses and Muslim women's lives, the class addresses broad areas where law and gender intersect jurisprudential method and classical doctrines; women's use of courts to settle disputes; and contemporary debates over legal reforms. Usually offered every fourth year.
Staff

PHIL 24a Philosophy of Religion
[ hum ]
An introduction to the major philosophical problems of religion. Discusses traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, the nature of faith and mystical experiences, the relation of religion to morality, and puzzles about the concept of God. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hirsch

PHIL 146a Idea of God
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a or PHIL 66b or one course numbered PHIL 35a through PHIL 38b.
Engages in a philosophical investigation, not of religion as an institution but of the very idea of God. Studies the distinction between human being and divine being and addresses the issue of the relation of God's essence to his existence. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Yourgrau

PHIL 178b Major Figures in the Christian Faith
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: PHIL 1a.
Presents the important theological contributions of the major thinkers of the Western Church, covering the modern period. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Yourgrau

POL 145b The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in the West
[ ss ]
Few issues have caused more public furor than the accommodation of Islam in Europe and the United States. It is often overlooked that Muslims are developing the institutions of their faith in societies that offer everyone the freedom of choice and expression. This seminar looks at religious discrimination as a barrier to the civic and political inclusion of Muslim immigrants, the responses of governments, courts, and the general public, and what we know about the balance among "fundamentalist, " "moderate," and "progressive" Muslim viewpoints. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Klausen

REL 131b The Dynamics of Religious Experience
[ hum ]
A comparative study of religious experience, including Christian, Jewish, nonbiblical, and feminist responses to modern anguish and the quest for identity and absolute meaning. Topics include doubt, sin, conversion, prayer, mysticism, holiness, and social action. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

SOC 128a Religion and Globalization
[ ss ]
Examines the experience of religion as a social and individual identity. Looks into the social-psychology of religious resurgence movements (Islamic, Evangelical, and others) with special attention paid to the role and character of globalization and religious consciousness in the world today. Readings cover comparative classical and contemporary thought and research. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hayim

SOC 129a Sociology of Religion
[ ss wi ]
An introduction to the sociological study of religion. Investigates what religion is, how it is influential in contemporary American life, and how the boundaries of public and private religion are constructed and contested. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Cadge

WMGS 120b Women and Gender in Religion
[ hum ]
An analysis of how gender is at the heart of religion and of how women, men, and transgendered persons are transforming religious communities today. The course will include: debates over religious leadership; religious discourse about gendered bodies; sacred texts and religious law; and images of the divine and religious ritual. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Brooten and Ms. Langenberg