DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

(Fall 2024, Professor Mark McClish)

Ancient India produced two of the world's great epics: the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. The former tells the story of an apocalyptic civil war within a ruling dynasty that comes to engulf all of the peoples of the world. The latter tells the story of the righteous king, Rāma, and the abduction of his beloved wife, Sītā, by the demon-king Rāvaṇa. Both stories have edified audiences, in different versions, for over two-millennia, and both are considered by many to be sacred texts that reveal deep truths about the nature of human existence. In this course, we will read abridged translations of the classical Sanskrit versions of both stories, reflect on their meaning, and explore their continuing significance in different forms to audiences today.

(Fall 2024, Professor Mark McClish)

One of the largest and most ancient of all religions, Hinduism comprises a family of related traditions. Over the last 5000 years, the Hindu traditions of South Asia have developed a remarkable diversity of rituals, beliefs, and spiritual practices and a pantheon of hundreds and thousands of gods and goddesses, from the elephant headed Ganeṣa to the fierce goddess Kālī as well as many local deities. This course will examine the breadth of the Hindu traditions as they have developed over time, highlighting the major elements that characterize them collectively, such as ritual sacrifice (yajña), world renunciation (saṃnyāsa), law (dharma), spiritual discipline (yoga), devotion (bhakti), worship (pūjā), and theology. During the course we will explore both the scriptures of Hinduism as well as its practices. We will pay particular attention to how these traditions have contributed to the development of modern Hinduism.

(Fall 2024, Dr. Lily Stewart)

The New Testament has influenced the lives and experiences of individuals and communities across the globe for thousands of years. It has served as a source of structure, meaning, and hope for many while also influencing ideologies and practices of bigotry and violence. But what do we really know about the world in which the New Testament was produced? What was the project of Jesus and his followers and why was it so polarizing? What authors composed the New Testament’s texts and what can we glean about their audiences and motivations? Why were some texts chosen for the canon of the New Testament and others left out?

This course will consider the New Testament from a range of vantage points. We will use historical methodologies to explore the complex networks of religious practices, cultural ideologies, and political actors that influenced its production. We will also consider how the New Testament has been read and reproduced in the past 2000 years. We will discuss a range of theological perspectives, analyze the impact of the New Testament on art and literature, and assess its role in global politics. Students will be exposed to interpretations of the New Testament from the perspectives of eco criticism, queer theory, disability theory, and liberation theology, among other critical lenses.

(Fall 2024, Professor Kevin Buckelew)

Are our actions free or fated? What larger forces shape the choices we make? To what do we owe our successes, and what is to blame for our mistakes? In East Asian religions, such questions have been answered with reference to a variety of different concepts of fate, fortune, and karma. These concepts shape not only how people have viewed the world, but also how they have made their way through life. This class focuses on religious approaches to questions of destiny in premodern East Asia. We begin by studying Indian Buddhist ideas of karma and early Chinese notions of fate and fortune preceding Buddhism's arrival in China, then turn to the ways people in China and Japan negotiated these various concepts over the many centuries following the arrival of Buddhism. In the end, we discover important throughlines amid the diversity of religious responses to the problem of destiny in East Asian history.

(Fall 2024, Professor Usman Hamid)

This course introduces Sufism, the ‘mystical' tradition of Islam. After critically examining the concept of ‘mysticism' within Religious Studies, we will examine the historical origins of Sufism, its emergence from and relationship to foundational discourses within Islam, its engagement with the Qur'an, and the figure of the Prophet Muhammad in Sufi devotions. We will then investigate notions of ‘sainthood' in Islam, the roles of Sufism in popular Muslim piety, the centrality of the body and bodily disciplines in Sufi practice, and the writings produced by Sufis, their supporters, and critics. Particular attention will be paid to the study of Sufi literature both in prose and poetry. The course will offer a broad introduction to the historical and geographic range of Sufism in Islam, but will give special attention to Sufi traditions in the Indian subcontinent and the broader Persianate world.

(Fall 2024, Professor Sarah Taylor)

It is often said that in riding a horse “we borrow freedom.” From winged Pegasus of Greek mythology, to mystical Kelpies of Celtic lore, to the Hippogriffs in Harry Potter, horses hold a special allure for humans that transcends cultures. Come explore the power of the sacred human-horse bond as represented in art, film, and popular culture. Come learn about the use of horses in healing veterans with PTSD as we visit “Brave Hearts,” the country’s largest healing horsemanship program right here in Illinois. Do “horse whisperers” truly exist? What do we make of divine horses portrayed in myth and symbol, horses as spiritual teachers, practices of horse meditation and healing, spiritual journeys with horses, ghost horses, and those who practice horsemanship as a spiritual life path? Delight in discovering just what it is about horses that fascinates us, captures our hearts, and fuels our imaginations. *Counts toward Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) .

(Fall 2024, Professor Sarah Jacoby)

This course explores a variety of Tibetan-language genres of writing such as history, poetry, philosophy, doctrine, narrative literature, and more, with attention to their form and content. All course readings are in Tibetan, presuming at least an intermediate ability to read Tibetan. Students will focus on Tibetan-English translation techniques while broadening their knowledge of Tibetan literary genres. Course readings will vary depending on enrolled students' specific areas of interest.

(Fall 2024, Professor Elizabeth Hurd)

This course offers students tools for thinking in a critical and comparative way about the intersections of religion, law, and politics from a global perspective. Much ink has been spilt considering and reconsidering definitions of religion, secularism, and politics, and how these concepts work to shape each other and the worlds we inhabit. This course asks, what comes next in the study of religion in politics? What does it look like to not only globalize this question by asking about a wider diversity of contexts and histories beyond Europe and its settler colonies but also to move beyond vocabularies that have framed and limited discussions of these questions for decades? This transdisciplinary seminar is an experiment in thinking the question of religion and politics in modernity anew. Themes to be considered through this prism include sovereignty, governance, coloniality, borders, Indigeneity, human movement, race, and law.