The following courses are approved for the program. Not all are given in any one year. Please consult the Schedule of Classes each semester and the online Bulletin for the official list of courses.
An * signifies a course that may be used to fulfill the Core Course requirement.
Expand All
Africana or African-derived religions and their devotees have been historically persecuted and vilified. This course examines afrophobia as an aspect of anti-Black racism that has sought to eradicate and stifle African spiritual worldviews in the Black Atlantic. We will explore the roots of afrophobia as well as its connections to transnational structures of racism. The course focuses on the relationship between anti-Black racism and religious intolerance, and the social and political treatment of non-Abrahamic, indigenous, African-derived religions, rather than the theological components of Africana religions. Special one-time offering, Fall 2021.
Rachel Cantave
Considers the historical influence of religious belief on various aspects of American political, cultural, legal, and economic life. Topics include the use and effectiveness of religious language in political rhetoric, from the American Revolution to the War in Iraq; the role that religious belief has played in galvanizing and frustrating various reform movements; and the debate over the proper role of religion in the public square.
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.
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.
Considers the convergence of two cultural spheres that are normally treated as separate: medicine and religion. The course will examine their overlap, such as in healing and dying, as well as points of contention through historical and contemporary global ethnographies.
Explores how different societies, including our own, conceptualize death and dying. Topics include the cultural construction of death, the effects of death on the social fabric, mourning and bereavement, and medical issues relating to the end of life.
Usually offered every second year.
Ancient Egypt is a subject that fascinates the American imagination and filmmakers. We will examine the over 3,000 years of history that shape what is known of ancient Egypt from the prehistory of Naqada to the great pyramid builders of the Old Kingdom to the great poets of the Middle Kingdom to the great apex of Egyptian power under the pharaohs of the New Kingdom to the rise of Egypt’s breaking point as an empire. We will use artifacts, architecture, and texts from this ancient world to examine the roles of religious beliefs, mythology, monument building, and the cultural aspects that made the Black Land, kmt, unique in the ancient world.
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.
Often shrouded in secrecy, ancient mystery cults appealed to people in ways different from traditional Greek and Roman religion. As indicated by their name, the Mysteries come from the Greek word, mystes, which means “initiate.” Membership in the Mystery Cults was based on initiation into rituals, kept secret from the outside world. We rely on the archaeological evidence, myths, and literary references to build an understanding of these cults who offered more personal and individualized experience towards death and the afterlife. In this class, we will explore Mystery Cults across the Mediterranean world, beginning in ancient Greece and ending in the Late Roman Empire. This course provides an exploration of ancient religion its art, architecture, belief systems, origins, and evolution, as well as understanding it in its socio-political and cultural context.
Usually offered every third year.
This course begins from the premise that American education and American religion have always existed in relationship. Religious groups have sometimes tried to use the public schools as vehicles to advance their religion, sometimes, they have created supplemental schools, and sometimes they have created whole parallel school systems. But in all cases, education and religion in American are intertwined. This course asks when education is religious and when religion is educational. It examines a series of case studies drawn from different faith communities including Judaism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, and Islam.
Focuses on the representation of witches, wizards, devils, and magicians in texts by Shakespeare, Marlow, and others. Historical accounts of witchcraft trials in England and Scotland are read and several films dramatizing these trials are viewed.
Usually offered every third year.
Explores European and U.S. literature after Nietzsche'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 "religion"? 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.
A study of major texts of British literature through the lens of religious heresy. Does literature provide a refuge for heresy? Or is there something about literature that encourages heretical thinking? These questions are considered in light of dissident works by Milton, Blake, Shelley, James Hogg, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Laura Quinney
The apocalypse is here. At least that’s the message we get every day from news reports, blockbuster films, and best-selling novels, where the term is used to describe global crises including ecological collapse, a global pandemic, and the breakdown of democratic norms and institutions. In this course we will explore apocalypse not simply as a catastrophic event or the “end of the world,” but as an ancient mode of storytelling that has achieved startling new potency in the modern world, thanks in part to popular mass-media technologies from radio and film to internet chatrooms and Twitter.
Twentieth century fiction of the American South. Racial conflict, regional identity, religion, and modernization in fiction from both sides of the racial divide and from both sides of the gender line. Texts by Chestnutt, Faulkner, Warren, O'Connor, Gaines, McCarthy, and Ellison.
Explores how the religious imagination shaped literary expression in colonial America and the early United States, and how early American religion is represented in contemporary culture. Authors may include Ann Bradstreet, Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Arthur Miller, and Nat Turner.
Through case studies of cities, sites, and monuments, the course presents an overview of the art and the architecture of the Islamic world beginning from the seventh century up to the present. Some of the themes include, but are not limited to, Islamic material culture, orientalist imaginations, systems of governance and the colonial present, search for the local identity, urban modernity and nationalism, and globalization.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Survey of the relationships between medieval Europe and neighboring cultures, beginning with the decline of Byzantium. Topics include a detailed look at the Crusades, the Spanish reconquista, the Crusader kingdoms, economic growth, and the foundations of imperialism.
Usually offered every third year.
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.
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.
Is the universe alive? Yes...according to the European occult tradition, a coherent intellectual stream that has roots in religion, philosophy and history and the more supernatural elements of conventional religion, such as providence, prophecy and messianism.
Usually offered every third year.
Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora.
How do you talk about religion after Darwin, when science has replaced religion as the authoritative discourse, but most people everywhere adhere to some sort of religious belief? By reading together The Varieties of Religious experience (1902) by William James. Usually offered every third year.
David S. Katz
Examines the fundamental dynamics, issues, and findings recent scholarship on the transformation of Christianity in the twentieth century, with particular attention to the impact of war, secularization, and globalization
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.
Examines religious conflict, revolutionary violence, and civil war in modern South Asia. It looks at Jihad, Maoist militancy, rising fundamentalism, and the recent refugee crisis.
Usually offered every second year.
Provides a disciplined study of Islamic civilization from its origins to the modern period. Approaches the study from a humanities perspective. Topics covered will include the Qur'an, tradition, law, theology, politics, Islam and other religions, modern developments, and women in Islam.
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.
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.
Surveys ideas, institutions, practices and events central to critical approaches to the Jewish past and present. Dynamic processes of cross-fertilization, and contestation between Jews and their surroundings societies will be looked, as well as tradition and change, continuity and rupture. No background in the subject matter is required.
Usually offered every second year.
[ dl fl hum ] Prerequisite: HBRW 20b or the equivalent as determined by placement examination. May not be used to satisfy the World Languages and Cultures requirement.
An accelerated grammar course in Biblical Hebrew. Students engage with biblical Hebrew texts from the first class. They build from words and phrases to a literary translation and grammatical analysis of a student’s choice of biblical Hebrew narrative. Topics include: phonology and the Tiberian pronunciation tradition, syllables and stress patterns, nouns, articles, conjunctions, pronouns, adjectives, possession, prepositions, the prefix and suffix conjugations, derived stems, tense and aspect, volitives, infinitives, and irregular roots. The class uses music and digital tools to aid memorization. It builds students’ vocabularies and understanding of the unusual features of biblical grammar and syntax compared with other semitic languages and modern Hebrew.
Staff
[ hum ] Open to all students.
The Hebrew Bible (Christian “Old Testament”) is a collection of diverse and powerful books that is central to worldwide social, political, and religious experience. Despite this centrality, there are innumerable misconceptions about how the Bible came into being and what it really says. In this class, we will ask and answer questions about the Bible’s historical context and ancient meaning, with a focus on matters of composition and early reception. Who wrote the Bible? When was it written? To what circumstances were its authors responding? Moving beyond the often impossible project of identifying complex texts with individual authors, we will use both biblical and ancient non-biblical sources to situate biblical authors with respect to chronology, geography, institutions, class, gender, and more. Usually offered every second year.
Madadh Richey
[ hum ] May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 18a in prior years.
Designed to introduce students to some of the Western classics that deal with the impact of evil on human destiny. Suffering, justice, and death are studied in their relationship with God, the world, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Reuven Kimelman
[ hum ] Open to all students.
Introduces the New Testament, its authors, and early Christian communities. The course examines the development of the New Testament in a broader Jewish and Roman context and how communities selected both canonical and non-canonical texts for shaping Christian life. Focus on decolonizing scholarship and scholars of the New Testament with attention to migration, empire, authority, race, ethnicity, gender, personhood, and reading communities within a historical framework. Usually offered every second year.
Staff
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.
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 122a or b, NEJS 10a, or permission of the instructor.
A study of the language and text of the Targumim, Qumran Aramaic Paraphrases, and the Syriac Peshitta. Usually offered every second year.
Staff
A study of narratives in the Hebrew Bible that feature ritual motifs, with attention to ritual theory, literary, and historical-critical analysis
The Bible’s depiction of gender, relationships, and social values in narrative, poetry, and law. Topics include the legal status of women, masculinity, prostitution, and how particular readings of the biblical text have shaped modern ideas about gender and sexuality.
[ hum nw ]
Open to all students.
An introduction to the religion, mythology, and thought of the ancient Near East. Usually offered every third year.
Staff
Examines magical literature, rituals, and beliefs in the ancient Near East. 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.
A study of Jewish mysticism through history. While investigating the nature of mysticism and the idea of mysticism itself and the transformation of key motifs of Judaism into a mystical key, the course will also be concerned with how to read a Jewish mystical text. All readings are in English.
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.
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.
This is a course on the nature of Jesus, the Trinity, and Christian scripture in the first four centuries of Christianity. Together we will establish a visual and textual history of early Christianity through the analysis of documents and material culture related to a wide array of diverse Christian voices related to the New Testament, the Apocryphal Gospels, the Gnostic Gospels, and efforts by dominate voices to suppress and quell different perspectives in late antiquity. We will explore the nature of white, European collectors in their pursuit of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament and shaped early Christian studies. We will also explore scandals, heresy, and dissension along with points of unity and changing alliances with a new religious community seeking to forge an identity separate from the religious landscape around it.
Introduces the New Testament and related early Christian literature as sources for the history and theology of the early church. Focus on exegetical methods, literary genres, and relationship to Judaism and the Roman world.
Investigates how Christians (1st-4th C.) contested and reshaped attitudes toward the family gender expectations (for nonbinary persons, men, and women), sexuality, and aging in cities, the countryside, and in monasteries. Readings include the New Testament, early Christian literature, and modern studies regarding the body, sexuality, and theological frameworks for defining how to maintain the Christian body.
Usually offered every fourth year.
Studies the dynamics of Judaism in the Roman empire in the first century CE through a study of the textual, archaeological, and art-historical evidence from the late Second Temple period to explore the cultural context out of which both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism emerged. Special one-time offering, fall 2021.
Jillian Stinchcomb
A history of interreligious polemic, disputation, and dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims from antiquity to modernity. The course highlights points of difference and contention among the traditions as well as the ways in which the practice of disputation played a formative role in the coevolution of those traditions. Usually offered every second year.
Jonathan Decter
How did human rights work arise in recent decades, and why only then? Is it a new sort of religion? What critical thinking will help this vast work of advocacy, international law, democratization and humanitarianism alleviate human suffering? Usually offered every second year.
Yehudah Mirsky
Examines social and cultural history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Special emphasis is placed on the pre-modern Jewish communities.
A survey of Jewish political, intellectual, and social history in the Islamic and Christian spheres from the beginnings of Jewish life in Spain until the expulsion in 1492. Students develop skills in reading historical, literary, and philosophical texts.
Usually offered every second year.
Explores Hasidism, from the 18th century until today, as one of the dynamic forces in Jewish life, mixing radicalism and reaction, theology, storytelling and music, thick community and wild individualism, deep conformity and spiritual abandon.
Explores the relations between pluralism, religious resurgence, secularism and democracy in our time through readings in history, literature, philosophy, sociology, theology and law. Focuses on one fascinating, contentious and deeply consequential place: The State of Israel. Usually offered every second year.
Traces the history of Jewish law from the Bible to the present. Jewish law is indispensable for understanding Jewish life, past, present and future, and is a rich source of reflection on law, ethics and religion. This course examines contemporary debates and controversies and explores its spiritual dimensions.
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
Examines the role of Jewish women in the broader feminist movement and the impact and the impact of feminist theory and activism on Jewish thought, law, ritual practice and communal norms in the 20th and 21st century. We will explore classic feminist critiques and transformations of traditional Judaism and examine contemporary controversies involving issues such as equality under Jewish ritual and family law, sex segregation in public life, inclusion of Jewish People of Color and of LGBTQ Jews and antisemitism in the women's movement.
Usually offered every year.
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.
A close examination of three American anti-Semitic episodes: U.S. Grant's expulsion of the Jews during the Civil War, the Leo Frank case, and the publication of Henry Ford's The International Jew. What do these episodes teach us about anti-semitic prejudice, about Jews, and about America as a whole?
Usually offered every second year.
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.
Highlights the central role the question of “Who is a Jew" occupies in modern Jewish life and consciousness against the backdrops of social-scientific writings on status and identity, the history of conversion to Judaism, and present day Israel-Diaspora relations.
What does it mean to study a sacred text? What are the problems with doing so? What is sacred about a sacred text? How is studying a sacred text similar to and different from studying other texts? How do different religious traditions study texts differently?
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 Islamic teachings and its global impact.
Examines the historical development and collection of the Quran, and the emergence of the different schools of Quranic commentary within various branches of Islam throughout the Islamic world and the central themes upon which they focus. Emphasis is placed upon the guiding principles of Quranic commentary and the way in which they give rise to a hermeneutical tradition that is particular to Islam and has shaped the lives of Muslims around the globe.
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.
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
An examination of the teaching and practices of the Sufi tradition. Explores the foundations of Sufism, its relation to other aspects of Islam, the development of Sufi teachings in both poetry and prose, and the manner in which Sufism is practiced in lands as diverse as Egypt, Turkey, Iran, India, Malaysia, and Europe.
Examines how religion can either escalate or mitigate conflict. Students study the influence of ideology, relationships, and actions of various faith traditions. We will explore the motivations of moderates and extremists as well as faith-based intervention roles and reconciliation processes.
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.
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
Studies the French philosopher Simone Weil, revolutionary and mystic. Is divine perfection reconcilable with human suffering? Weil shook the foundations of Christianity and Judaism attempting to answer this question and this course will rejoin her quest.
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.
Introduction to Hinduism
Explores Hindu practice and thought through four millennia of scriptures, scholarship, and film. More specifically looks at the variety of forms, practices, and philosophies that have been developing from the time of the Vedas (ca. 1500 BCE) up to present day popular Hinduism practiced in both urban and rural India. Examines the relations between Hindu religion and its wider cultural, social, and political contexts, relations between the Hindu majority of India and minority traditions, and questions of Hindu identity both in India and abroad.
An exploration of the history, societies, cultures, religions, and literature of South Asia--India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Uses perspectives from history, anthropology, literature, and film to examine past and contemporary life in South Asia. Usually offered every year.
Jonathan Anjaria, Ulka Anjaria, or Harleen Singh
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.