DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

This course examines the history, politics, culture and economy of how Islam and Muslims have been represented in the north Atlantic world (the 'West'). It begins with a brief overview of Western representations of Muslims during the early modern period, then explores how colonialism shaped the modern history and politics of contemporary Islamophobia. The bulk of the course will focus in depth on the politics, culture and economy of Islamophobia in the United States, aiming to empower students to understand and navigate the contemporary context. The course gives particular attention to ways that Muslims have sought to challenge, complicate and subvert how they are represented.

In this course we will explore the ways that global Christianity laid the groundwork for European ideas about diversity and tolerance. The aim of the course is to understand how the historically contingent confrontations with religious diversity were foundational to, and indeed, shaped the terms of the development of modern assumptions not only about religious tolerance, but also about tolerance of cultural diversity broadly speaking.

In this course we will explore the ways that global Christianity laid the groundwork for European ideas about diversity and tolerance. The aim of the course is to understand how the historically contingent confrontations with religious diversity were foundational to, and indeed, shaped the terms of the development of modern assumptions not only about religious tolerance, but also about tolerance of cultural diversity broadly speaking.

Why do we say "bless you" when someone sneezes? How did the design of Starbucks' holiday-themed cups lead to a consumer boycott? Why did the University of Ottawa cancel its yoga classes? And are celebrities the new gods? This course sets out to develop a deeper and broader understanding of religion as a human phenomenon, by focusing on three interrelated questions: What is religion, How to study religion, and Why study religion.

One of the largest and most ancient of all religions, 'Hinduism' is actually a family of related traditions. Over the last 4000 years or more, the Hindu traditions of South Asia have developed an astonishing diversity of rituals, beliefs, and spiritual practices and a pantheon of hundreds of gods and goddesses, from the elephant-headed Ganesa to the fierce goddess Kali. This course will examine the breadth of the Hindu traditions as they developed over time, highlighting the shared features that make them a family, such as ritual sacrifice, world renunciation, law, spiritual discipline, devotion, worship, and theology.

Having begun in India some 2500 years ago, Buddhism now exists in almost all parts of the world. The Buddhist religion has shaped the thought and culture of Asia and has also influenced Western thought and culture in significant ways. To comprehend this diverse religion, this course approaches it from several perspectives: the historical, cultural, philosophical and religious. In the short time that we have in this quarter, our primary emphasis will be on investigating the philosophical and religious systems in the teachings of the Buddha in India as well as the thought of the later Buddhists in other parts of Asia. In looking at both the history and the philosophy, we see Buddhism as a religion that established a system of values, an interpretation of existence and a pattern of cultural practices and rituals that the Buddhists have interpreted in various ways to find meaning in life. (Spring 2018, Professor George Bond)

Today, the New Testament is widely known and accepted as Christians' authoritative and sacred collection of texts. But roughly two thousand years ago, there were no Christians, and there was no New Testament. Rather, there existed in the eastern part of the Roman Empire a small group of people who had begun worshiping a Jewish healer and teacher as divine. It is this historical moment to which we turn in this course. We will study the people, events, and texts of the first and second centuries that shaped a small Jewish movement into the religion now known as Christianity, using as our main evidence the letters and stories of the New Testament.

This course attempts to answer the questions "What is Judaism?" and "Who is a Jew?" by surveying the broad arc of Jewish history, reviewing the practices and beliefs that have defined and continue to define Judaism as a religion, sampling the vast treasure of Jewish literatures, and analyzing the unique social conditions that have made the cultural experience of Jewishness so significant. The class will employ a historical structure to trace the evolutions of Jewish literature, religion, and culture through the ages. (Spring 2018, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

We will explore the development of Western varieties of Christianity by investigating key figures in their contexts:  Jesus, Paul the Apostle, the Emperor Constantine, medieval visionary Hildegard of Bingen, theologian John Calvin, early twentieth-century founders of Pentecostalism William J. Seymour and Aimee Semple McPherson, and Salvadoran martyr Oscar Romero.  In these contexts, we’ll discuss how race, the state, gender, migration, and other cultural forces shaped and were shaped by the movement that became Christianity.  We’ll also explore the imprints of this history in contemporary Christian worship and architecture. (Spring 2018, Professor Traina)

This course introduces Islam, one of the major religious traditions of world history, developing a framework for understanding how Muslims in varying times and places have engaged with Islamic scripture and the prophetic message of the Prophet Muhammad through diverse sources: theological, philosophical, legal, political, mystical, literary and artistic. While we aim to grasp broad currents and narrative of Islamic history, we will especially concentrate on the origins and development of the religion in its formative period (the prophetic career of the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur'an, Islamic belief and ritual, Islamic law, and popular spirituality) and debates surrounding Islam in the contemporary world (the impact of European colonialism on the Muslim world, the rise of the modern Muslim state, and discourses on gender, politics and violence).

This course examines diverse Native American religious traditions in the shifting historical and contemporary contexts of Euro-American and Native American interaction and exchange. We will balance our examination of particular traditions—including those originating in the Northwest, Southwest, Great Plains, Midwest and Southeast—with a consideration of broader themes including identity, artistic expression, politics, and the environment. We will also consider ethical issues pertinent to the study of Native American religions, such as the debate about cultural appropriation, and discuss the impact of colonialism on Native American religious groups. (Spring 2018, Professor Sarah Dees)

This course examines major developments, movements, controversies, and figures in American religious history from the end of the Civil War, as the nation struggled to make sense of the carnage of war and to apportion responsibility, to the 1930s, when economic crisis strained social bonds and intimate relations and challenged Americans to rethink the nature of public responsibility. Topics include urban religion; religion and changing technologies; African American religion; religion and politics; and the religious practices of immigrants and migrants.

This course examines major developments, movements, controversies and figures in American religious history from the 1920s, the era of excess and disillusionment, to the 1980s, which saw the revival of conservative Christianity in a nation becoming increasingly religiously diverse. Topics include the liberalism/fundamentalism controversy of the 1920s; the rise of Christian realism in the wake of the carnage of World War I; the making of the "tri-faith nation" (Protestant/Catholic/Jew); the supernatural Cold War; the Civil Rights Movement; the revolution in American Catholicism following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the rise of Catholic political radicalism in the 1960s; religion and the post-1965 immigration act; the religious politics of abortion; and the realignment of American religion and politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

Love seems central to human existence: parents’ sacrificial love for children, erotic love between romantic partners, the love of friendship. Love is also central to the intersection between Christian theology and Christian ethics. Christian theology studies concepts related to God and God’s relation to persons. Ancient Christians described God’s being as a relation of love between Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s enduring presence with God’s people, they then said, comes by way of a gift of love (i.e. the Holy Spirit) into the human heart. This way of understanding God and God’s manner of being with people has circumscribed love into the core of the Christian tradition. The concept of love must be defined by identifying and describing its predicates in order to more fully understand the intersubjective reality that is God and the human person in relation.

Christian ethics is a branch of Christian theology. It zeroes in on the intersubjective reality created between the individual person and the world, but does so on the basis of the individual’s relation to God. Christian ethics begins with the position that God is just. Then, this discipline assesses and prescribes ways in which the self-world relation can be moved closer to God’s justice by promoting human virtue or happiness. Love functions in Christian ethics as a mode and manner of action towards this ideal. ‘God is Love’ may be the nominal predication of theology, but ‘love God and neighbor’ is the active exhortation of Christian ethics. The goal of this seminar is twofold: first, to give predication to the Christian theological concept of love by examining the historical development of this idea in terms of God and God’s relation to human beings; second, to then examine the ethical ramifications of this concept on social life. We seek to understand the theological concept of love on its own terms and as it is used to promote a more just society. (Spring 2018, Professor Candace Kohli)

Examination of Luther's work in the context of his life and times. Introduces basic dimensions of Western thought, showing how theology relates to broader cultural, political, social, and aesthetic issues. Taught with GERMAN 272; may not receive credit for both courses.

Mysticism is often defined in terms of some specific type of mystical experience, or a mystical relationship with the divine, or a mystical form of prayer, or mystical consciousness, all of which may be grounded in specific religious traditions but often moves beyond the boundaries of those traditions. Spirituality is a less specific term; it often refers to a sense of spiritual presence or to spiritual practices, and it may be unconnected with any religious traditions. This course examines the ways both mysticism and spirituality relate on the one hand to experience, and on the other hand to traditions. It focuses also on the ways texts (the writings of the mystics and those claiming spiritual inspiration) can be read, and introduces ways of studying these matters not only across religious traditions but outside traditions.

This class is a survey of one of the most dynamic and important periods in world religious history, in which Buddhism, Jainism, and Classical Hinduism all were born. This course explores the religious history of South Asia from the Vedic period to the fall of the Gupta Empire, about 1500 BCE – 600 CE. We will cover the migration of the Indo-Aryan tribes into South Asia, Vedic Hinduism, the rise of city-states and empires, foreign invasions and the influences they brought, the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, the reign of the Buddhist emperor Aśoka Maurya, the development of Mahāyaṇa Buddhism, the so-called ‘Brāhmaṇical revival’, the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’, and the end of the classical period. We will explore this history through texts, archaeology, and art. One of our main goals will be to identify the contingencies that led to the development of Classical Hinduism in the early centuries of the Common Era. Counts towards (RLP) Religion, Law and Politics. (Spring 2018, Professor McClish)

The unifying theme of this seminar is gender and Buddhism. We take as our point of departure Carolyn Bynum's statement: "No scholar studying religion, no participant in ritual, is ever neuter. Religious experience is the experience of men and women, and in no known society is this experience the same." Bearing this in mind, we will explore historical, textual and social questions relevant to gender in the Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, and the Himalayas from the time of Buddhism's origins to the present day. Topics covered in this course will include the roles of women, men, femininity, and masculinity in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhism and the family, gender and the body in Mahayana Buddhism, the roles of female goddess figures such as dakinisin Vajrayana Buddhism, Buddhism and sexuality, and the status of Buddhist nuns.

Some say America is currently undergoing a process of “Buddhification,” meaning that Buddhism is cropping up everywhere, even in places one would least expect. Tech industry billionaires tout Buddhist mindfulness techniques at the annual Wisdom 2.0 conference, and Google offers mindfulness training courses taught by a Zen abbot. Mindfulness is also being presented as a panacea for those suffering from physical and mental pain, readily available in American hospital settings and psychological counseling services. Buddha images too can be found far from Buddhist temples—at the hip restaurant Buddha-Bar located in many cities around the world one can sip cocktails and dine before a massive Buddha statue while listening to lounge music. And in the Chicago area, one encounters Buddha head sculptures positioned on the ground in parks, by roads, and even in public school playgrounds as part of the Ten Thousand Ripples art project.

How, and why, did aspects of Buddhism enter all of these different social locations? 

Why does Buddhism receive a pass more often than other religions by the “spiritual but not religious” crowd? Can Buddhism be secular? In what ways is Buddhism compatible with science, and can Buddhist practices be proven effective using scientific methods? Can paying better attention by means of Buddhist meditation practices liberate us from suffering caused by digital distraction? In what ways can Buddhist articulations of interdependence, no self, and compassion be resources for addressing racial and structural injustice, even as sexual abuse, racism, and trans/homophobia continue to traumatize members of some Buddhist communities? These are some of the many questions we will consider through readings by some of the most creative Buddhist leaders, critics, and consumers of our time. (Spring 2018, Professor Sarah Jacoby)

This course covers the history of Jews of Middle Eastern origin, commonly referred to as "Sephardim" or "Mizrahim," in the State of Israel, a community that is often erroneously viewed as monolithic and whose contributions to Israeli culture are frequently downplayed or ignored in favor of a historiography that is more focused on the contributions of Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of northern European descent) to the country. This course will focus on the importance of the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, its history, origins, meaning, and future trajectory through the lens of Mizrahi history.

This class discusses the Israeli “Settlement Movement” in the West Bank and its relationship to the “National Religious” (or “Religious Zionist”) Camp in Israel. We will explore the political, ideological, economic and social underpinnings, implications, and political effects of Religious Zionism, National Religious politics, and the Settlement Movement – underpinnings that, though currently related and overlapping, are distinct and often in tension with one another and reflect the heterogeneous nature of both the settlement movement and the National Religious camp. Counts towards (RLP) Religion, Law and Politics. (Spring 2018, Professor Joseph Ringel)

This course explores the historical development and socio-political impact of the relationship between religion and state in Israel both in terms of its domestic and foreign policies. As part of our exploration, we will delve into the extent to which the Israeli model represents broader trends in the Middle East specifically and in the world at large; the complex nature of the relationship between democracy and religion, and between religion and politics in a democracy; and the impact of religion on political violence and peace-making.

The past few years have come to be labeled a "transgender movement" because of the increasing visibility of transgendered individuals in law, the media and popular culture. This course is a theoretical rumination on the intersection of Jewishness and gender fluidity in terms of personal identity, cultural politics and institutional normativity. Both Jewishness and gender identity are cultural constructions with strong relationships to biological "facts." They share the experience of internal cohesion through external labeling and persecution. Modernity has transformed both gender identity and Jewish identity into somewhat autonomous self-characterizations even as the choice to transform one's identity comes with significant social judgment and cost.

The Talmud is one of the most important works of Jewish literature. For the last millennium, Talmud study has been a central part of Jewish religious and cultural practice. Despite the splintering of Judaism into different denominations, Jews the world over are unified by their commitment to studying Talmud. The Talmud is an unusual work of literature, and it has been credited as an influence on codes of law, sermons, modern works of Jewish literature, and even Seinfeld. This course will explain the Talmud's import and durability within Jewish culture while introducing students to the rigors of legal analysis that lie at the heart of most talmudic passages. The course is ideal for those interested in religion, law, logic games and questions of textural interpretation. The course will study the Talmud entirely in English translation; there is neither a language prerequisite nor an expectation of prior experience reading the Talmud.

Rabbinic literature contains a large corpus of stories. In this course we will explore different methods of reading such stories. These range from naïve historiography to sophisticated historiography, from reading these stories as fables with didactic morals to reading them as windows onto a class-stratified and gender-divided rabbinic culture. Our analysis of these methods of reading rabbinic stories will be conducted in conversation with different twentieth century literary theorists. (Spring 2018, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

The phenomenon of sainthood opens a range of issues: a saint is an exemplar of heroic virtue, and ideas of sainthood reflect the ethical norms of a particular Christian society; a saint is the focus of veneration, and the ways people behave toward saints (going on pilgrimage to venerate their relics, showing reverence to their images, etc.) tells a great deal about official and unofficial Christian piety; a saint is a figurehead for some interest group such as a religious order or a city, and in churches that have a process of canonization this becomes a mirror of ecclesiastical politics.

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Islamic law, the sacred law of Islam grounded in the Qur’an, the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, and the writings of Muslim scholars and jurists, stretches back nearly 1400 years. After critically examining the concept of ‘law’, we will explore the emergence legal discourses in the Qur’an and prophetic model (sunna). We will trace the development of Islamic legal methodologies and schools in the classical era by way of key primary and secondary sources. We then examine case studies from both classical and contemporary angles, covering family, ritual purity, gender, jihad and just war, commerce, and criminal law. Finally, we seek to understand the dual impacts of colonialism and the attempt to implement Islamic law through the apparatus of the modern nation-state. We conclude with reflections on new trends in Islamic legal hermeneutics. Prerequisite: 250 or consent of instructor. Counts towards (RLP) Religion, Law and Politics. (Spring 2018, Professor Brannon Ingram)

This class introduces you to a wide variety of ethnographies on Muslim communities in Asia, both in the range of regions and states – Iran, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China – as well as in terms of themes – how Muslims engage secularizing states, coexist with hegemonic non-Muslim majorities, survive as refugees on the battleground of rival nation states, and, with native languages other than Arabic, make the Qur’an collectively meaningful. At the same time, you will sharpen your ability to read and evaluate difficult books.  We will analyze the ethnographies as texts to understand how the authors combined different kinds of texts to achieve the effect of a unified ethnographic whole, which different fieldwork activities yielded specific forms of data or empirical materials, which writing techniques authors used to give voice to different groups of informants, and how authors attempted to represent the hold of the past on the “now” of fieldwork. (Spring 2018, Professor Stefan Henning)

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• What dynamics drive the relationships between religion and modernity, faith and ethics, reality and the supernatural, observable phenomena and invisible causes? 
• How does one make sense of death in a meaningless universe? 
• Is the universe meaningless? 
• Can meaning be found in realism itself?   
• Within realist film, how can we explain the simultaneity of critique of religion and nostalgia or longing for absent religious meaning?

(Spring 2018, Professor Molina)

Throughout the history of the Jewish religion, times of crisis and collective suffering have given rise to theological innovation and creative shifts in religious expression as Jews sought to understand their tradition in light of their experiences. In the wake of the Holocaust, Jews and others faced a similar need for religious rethinking. In theological terms, they asked: where was God and should we expect God to act in human history? What does this event indicate about God's existence? In human terms, they asked: how do we live as Jews today? How do we live as human beings?

This course will examine the central issues in premodern Christian thought. We will begin with two works that show Christian thinkers struggling with theological issues that arise largely from their own experience: St. Augustine's Confessions and Julian of Norwich's Showings. Then we will examine the teachings on God and Christ, as set forth by writers in the Eastern and Western Churches.

Death is the most universal of all human experiences, and the process of coming to terms with our own death and coping with the death of others stands at the center of much of religion, philosophy, and culture since the immemorial. This class offers an exploration of central myths, beliefs, practices, questions, fears, and hopes associated with death, and ranges across different times and places, from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America. The purpose of this class is to get acquainted with some of the most interesting and influential ideas on death in the history of human civilization, and to acquire a kit of intellectual and conceptual tools to help us better understand our own death and the death of others as an inescapable part of life.

This course will examine the ways magic is viewed and practiced in various cultures, its relationship to
mainstream religious practice in each of those cultures, and a range of theories that have been proposed
regarding the relationship between magic and religion. Counts towards the Religion, Sexuality, and Gender (RSG) major concentration.

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Roman Catholicism was one of—if not the—major force in shaping modern sexualities, as irritant, fantasy, boundary, and more. From whatever perspective—aesthetics, theology and ritual, penitential practice and disciplines, of the control of bodies and desires, the construction of sexual identities over time, missionaries and the extension of Catholic sexuality beyond Europe and North America—the Catholic imaginary is central to the history of modern sexuality. In the era after the Council of Trent in 1545, when the history of modern Catholicism begins, there was a determined effort within the Church to discipline Catholics around the world into obedience and submission to Roman rules and rubrics. Sexuality was mobilized in different ways as a site of disciplinary action and of resistance in this project, within Catholicism and at the border between Catholicism and other cultures.

This course will survey the state of the field of Tibetan Buddhist Studies by examining a selection of recent monographs in the field covering a broad array of topics including tantra, medicine, ritual, literature, history, and art history. The focus will be on analyzing how authors of recent monographs in Tibetan studies constructed these works including their main methodological influences and primary sources with an eye towards preparing graduate students for their own writing projects.

This course covers the emergence of the field of religious studies by exploring its early theorists and their impact. Authors covered include but are not limited to Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, William James, Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, E.B. Tylor, and Ludwig Feuerbach. Students will give brief presentations on resources they have prepared for common use and will write a final paper on the reception history of one author.

This course builds on the foundation of Rel 481-1. Focusing on recent monographs in the field, the course aims to provide a genealogy of the category of religion itself as it was constituted within Euro-American intellectual and social history. It gives particular attention to ways that the category migrated within, and was mediated by, colonial and imperial networks in Asia and Africa, and to recent debates about secularity as a discourse that attempts to draw boundaries between 'religion' and not-religion ('culture', 'politics', 'superstition', and so on).

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