DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

This class focuses on a cross section of religion, law, cultural preservation, land management, and ethno-ecology. We will focus on Native American sacred sites and cultural landscapes and their relationships to land, ceremony, history, and tribal/ethnic identity. Central to the class will be a focus on the sacred aspects of tribal identity and the role that landscape plays in the creation and maintenance of these identities. The class will cover laws pertaining to religious freedoms and how they are applied to Native and non-Native contexts throughout U.S. history, along with the histories and philosophies that have, and still influences these polices.

The class will cover both Federal and Tribal management of sacred sites, ceremonial sites, and religious/spiritual traditions. Important to this discuss, will be the role of oral history in the preservation of culture and relationships to landscapes and how it has/is being utilized the U.S. legal system pertaining to Native American Tribes. The role of treaties and the conflicts that arise between Tribal/U.S. government to government relations and responsibilities will also be covered. (Fall 2021, Dr. Eli Suzukovich III)

We take the existence of Christianity for granted, but it hasn’t always been there. And, for that matter, many people who we might describe as Christian didn’t call themselves “Christian” at all. In this seminar, we explore one of the most pivotal moments in world history: the generation of a religious identity that would grow into the world’s largest religion. When did people first start calling themselves Christian, and what alternative history of Christianity does that help us to write? (Fall 2021, Professor Matthew Chalmers)

Everybody (or almost everybody?) wants to be happy, but what is happiness and how does one cultivate it? This course will consider a variety of viewpoints on the promises and pitfalls of happiness through reading an array of leading thinkers including The Dalai Lama, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Sarah Ahmed, Matthieu Ricard, and many others. (Spring 2022, Sarah Jacoby)

Religion: we think we recognize it when we see it, and yet it is always changing. How does one study a moving target? In the first weeks of the course, we look back in time to understand how the ideas about religion that are familiar to us today are rooted in history. The emergence of the concept of "religion" as an object of comparison and study grew out of early modern European sectarian violence and colonial overseas expansion. We then turn to study some thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries who developed theories about the best ways to study religion. These scholars developed and honed the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology by testing their methods on case studies about religion. To know this history is to know our present, as well as to understand the methodologies that shape the university curriculum. What do we do with this legacy? Are these methods adequate to understanding religion today? In the second half of this class, we critically evaluate these methods by putting them to work to analyze religion in the world, both past and present. We will focus on how religion moves people. People are rooted in space and place by their religious practices, while simultaneously being moved by religion. As will have become clear in the first half of the course, religion is a moving target because people themselves do not stay the same. Throughout the course, we track the tension between rootedness and mobility by examining three themes: "conversion," "borderlands," and "death/afterlives." (Winter 2022, Professor Michelle Molina)

Religion: we think we recognize it when we see it, and yet it is always changing. How does one study a moving target? In the first weeks of the course, we look back in time to understand how the ideas about religion that are familiar to us today are rooted in history. The emergence of the concept of "religion" as an object of comparison and study grew out of early modern European sectarian violence and colonial overseas expansion. We then turn to study some thinkers from the 19th and 20th centuries who developed theories about the best ways to study religion. These scholars developed and honed the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology by testing their methods on case studies about religion. To know this history is to know our present, as well as to understand the methodologies that shape the university curriculum. What do we do with this legacy? Are these methods adequate to understanding religion today? In the second half of this class, we critically evaluate these methods by putting them to work to analyze religion in the world, both past and present. We will focus on how religion moves people. People are rooted in space and place by their religious practices, while simultaneously being moved by religion. As will have become clear in the first half of the course, religion is a moving target because people themselves do not stay the same. Throughout the course, we track the tension between rootedness and mobility by examining three themes: "conversion," "borderlands," and "death/afterlives." (Summer 2022, Professor Michelle Molina)

Dive into one of today’s most exciting and rapidly growing areas of scholarship – the intriguing entanglements of religion and media in society and culture. This course draws from an array of sources, such as television, film, and radio, digital gaming worlds, billboards, advertisements and media campaigns, popular music, streaming video, social media, and even tattoos, body art, and graffiti. Study media while getting to make your own media for course projects! (Fall 2021, Professor Sarah Taylor)

This course surveys recent scholarship on the links between religion and political governance in Tibet. The objective is to understand the nature of the relationship between Buddhism, governance, and politics in premodern and modern Tibetan society. Therefore, this course aims at familiarizing students with the existing theoretical literature and empirical research on this topic. Course readings will evaluate recent research on the role of Buddhist actors, institutions, and ideologies in policymaking, state-building, conflict, war, and other political processes that have characterized the history of Tibet. Themes in this course include the relevance of Buddhist monasticism in Tibetan politics, the roles of the Dalai Lamas, the institution of reincarnation as a tool of leadership, and the issue of state-sanctioned conflict and violence in Tibetan Buddhist society. (Spring 2022, Antonio Terrone)

This seminar explores the place of the body in Chinese religion, from the ancient period to the present day. In the course of this exploration, we seek to challenge our presuppositions about a seemingly simple question: what is “the body,” and how do we know? We open by considering themes of dying and the afterlife, food and drink, health and medicine, gender and family. We then turn to Daoist traditions of visual culture that envision the human body as intimately connected with the cosmos and picture the body’s interior as a miniature landscape populated by a pantheon of gods. We read ghost stories and analyze the complex history of footbinding. Finally, we conclude with two case studies of religion and the body in contemporary China, one situated on the southwestern periphery, the other in the capital city of Beijing. *Counts towards Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) and Religion, Sexuality and Gender (RSG) major concentrations. (Spring 2022, Professor Kevin Buckelew)

This course will examine the role of religion in post-1980’s China with an emphasis on the political implications of the practice of religion in the People’s Republic of China. Students will read various forms of literature and policy documents to assess the extent to which Marxist theory is central to the interpretation of “religion” in Communist China. Primary sources will include Chinese constitutional articles, white papers, and editorials in English translation. Secondary sources will cover a wide range of interpretations and perspectives on the position of religious institutions and religious practices in the PRC. The first part of this course will investigate the expression of religiosity under Communism in China; the rehabilitation of Confucian values; the constitutional protection of religion and religious belief in China; the relationship between ethnicity and religious policies; the Sinicization of religion; and the administration of the five officially accepted religious traditions in the People’s Republic of China (Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam). The second part of the course will focus on the recent cases related to the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Tibetan Buddhists of Western China. The class will explore some of the most controversial issues related to these two ethnic minorities including terrorism, religious violence, nationalism, assimilation, foreign influence, and soft power. The course format will consist of both lectures and discussions, during which students will be encouraged to exercise critical thinking and lead in-class presentations. Students will analyze various types of documents, critically evaluate content and concepts, and endeavor to synthesize the information and communicate it effectively and thoroughly.Counts towards Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) major concentration. (Winter 2022, Professor Antonio Terrone)

This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. The course will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia.

Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

(Winter 2022, Professor Antonio Terrone)

This course is designed as an introductory survey of Modern Jewish Thought during the modern period, from the perspective of Jewish "revolutionaries"-- individuals and movements-- that sparked radical change and transformation in how Jews expressed their Jewishness. Looking beyond Eurocentrism, we will read a variety of genres, a play, short stories, works of philosophy, political documents, and works of theology. We will begin by investigating various aspects of what constitutes varieties of the "modern" in Judaism in different parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and the Caribbean. We will also examine a variety of historiographical debates on the topic, ranging in their interpretations from the impact of 1492 to the Marrano experience of hiding one's Jewish identity to the Frankist and Sabbatian challenges to Jewish rabbinic authority as well as conversion to Islam and to Christianity. The course will look at the transformation of the economic and political roles played by Jews in modern times and their impact on Jewish religious practices and beliefs, the struggle for emancipation, the rise of antisemitism, and debates among Jews over assimilation versus Zionism. Constructions of "modern" Jewish identity and religious expressions will be studied in relation to the emergence of both Reform Judaism and Hasidism, and by examining differences between the Judaism constructed in Christian Europe and the Judaism constructed in Islamic regions. The course will also examine the crucial developments of the twentieth century, including mass migration to the United States, the Zionist movement, the Russian revolution, the Holocaust, post-WWII recovery and the establishment of the State of Israel. The differing impact of these movements on men and women will be examined, as well as the power of class and race to organize divisions of significance and meaning in the fabric of Modern Jewish Thought.  (Spring 2022, Professor Eli Rosenblatt)

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 textual 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. (Winter 2022, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

What, or rather who, is Israel? This course explores the name “Israel” as it marks place, an identity, and a claim to belong. We examine its history, from the earliest appearances of the name in the archaeological record of ancient West Asia to the complex politics of the modern Middle East, and its significance for three groups to whose identity the claim to be Israel is fundamental: Jews, Samaritans, and Christians. In the process, we engage head-on with how people differentiate themselves from one another by means of a common past. How do you know you have a collective identity? And what happens when people with whom you don’t identify claim to have that identity as well – or instead – of you? (Spring 2022, Matthew Chalmers)

What is the relationship between Black Diaspora and Religion? The categories of religion and race emerge within the encounter between Europeans and Africans in New World conquest and enslavement. This suggests geography, conflict, and the entanglement and or emergence of cultures offer a story of religion in spatial, relational and temporal ways. This course will trace religion as a mapping of space, a motion of time and a making sense of encounter of Black movement. Black Diaspora, a religious interpretation will therefore examine key words, or themes, such as: SOUL, SPIRIT, AFRICA, ABOLITION, BLACK, MUSIC and more in a multi-sensory exploration of sound, sight, texts, tastes, ritual, resistance and more. This course will use readings, music, visual art and videos.
*This course is hybrid. Students can do in-person, online, or a mixture of both.

What is the relationship between Black Diaspora and Religion? The categories of religion and race emerge within the encounter between Europeans and Africans in New World conquest and enslavement. This suggests geography, conflict, and the entanglement and or emergence of cultures offer a story of religion in spatial, relational and temporal ways. This course will trace religion as a mapping of space, a motion of time and a making sense of encounter of Black movement. Black Diaspora, a religious interpretation will therefore examine key words, or themes, such as: SOUL, SPIRIT, AFRICA, ABOLITION, BLACK, MUSIC and more in a multi-sensory exploration of sound, sight, texts, tastes, ritual, resistance and more. This course will use readings, music, visual art and videos.
*This course is hybrid. Students can do in-person, online, or a mixture of both.

Times of crisis and collective suffering give rise to theological innovation and creative shifts in religious expression as people seek to understand their traditions in light of their experiences. In the wake of the Holocaust, Jews and Christians faced such a 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? As Christians? As human beings? Focusing on theological and literary texts, in this course we will explore how Jews and Christians reshaped their thinking about God and religion in response to the Holocaust and the experience of suffering in the modern world. (Winter 2022, Professor Claire Sufrin)

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 interpretations of God and Christ as set forth by Eastern and Western theologians. (Fall 2021, Professor Richard Keickhefer)

This course examines the co-constructed histories of religion, sexuality, and race in the Americas. Drawing upon foundational and newer works in the field, we will explore how the construction of these categories, rooted in biological essentialism, has had immense consequences for the enslaved and her descendants, indigenous peoples, other people of color, and women, queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals. The historical record shows that individuals born cisgender male and socialized as men, namely white heterosexual men, have historically and contemporaneously dominated and controlled the North Americas and the globe. They have upheld their hegemonic and institutional power by wielding the social constructions of “gender” and “sexuality” to their benefit, often using religion, and specifically white Christianities, biblical fundamentalism, and “religio-racial race making” to regulate sexual bodies gendered and understood as non-white and non-man. This course examines the interconnected histories of race, sexuality and religion in the Americas through the vantage point of African American Studies, and specifically Black Queer Studies, and charts the construction of these categories and how racialized people—both within and beyond religious institutions—have resisted and challenged their centrality. Counts towards Religion, Sexuality, and Gender (RSG) religious studies major concentration. (Spring 2022, Ahmad Greene-Hayes)

Can religious make believe actually make belief? How is theatre used as both a method of evangelizing and as a platform to critique religious metanarratives? Staging the Bible will explore theatrical projects that aim to “bring the Bible to life” through adaptation. We will study biblical performances as objects of analysis and performance as a critical paradigm for understanding religious expression in the contemporary United States of America. The course will explore theatre productions that dramatize the Bible, ranging from traditional passion plays to Broadway musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and postmodern adaptations like Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi. We will investigate Evangelical projects that use theatrical apparatuses to proselytize across various sites, like Megachurches, Christian theme parks, and Creation Museums. (Spring 2022, Chelsea Taylor)

This seminar is an experiment in studying the intersections of religion, race, and global politics. We discuss how particular understandings of religion and race inform scholarship, shape national and international legal and governmental practice, and contribute to the establishment and maintenance of various social hierarchies and inequalities. Cross-cutting themes include religion and the rise of the nation-state; the politics of religious establishment, law, and freedom; race and the formation of the disciplines of religious studies, international relations and the social sciences more broadly; the formation of modern vocabularies of religious and racial exclusion including religious freedom; and race, indigeneity, and slavery in U.S. American history. (Spring 2022, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd)

The Study of Religion as Vocation

This seminar addresses the question of what it means to be a scholar of religion(s)—as opposed, or in addition, to being a scholar of Catholicism, for instance, or Islam, or Judaism, or US religions, or queer religion, etc.—in the contemporary academic and social context. What habits of mind and heart ought/might the scholar of religion cultivate? How are these habits best nourished? Beginning with an old and out-of-date, but learned and thorough, history of the discipline, Sharpe’s Comparative Religion: A History (selections), we will read excerpts from texts that proved essential in the making of the contemporary study of religion. The point is not to develop a genealogy, let alone a history  (although what this would be like might be one of our topics), but a kind of exigent dialogue across generations. The whole seminar will be haunted by planetary climate crisis, and we will end with a reading of Ghosh’s The Great Derangement in order to consider how we might not only avoid derangement, but enlarge our vocation in response to it. In advance of our first meeting, students are asked to read Max Weber, “The Scholar’s Work.” (Fall 2021, Professor Robert Orsi)

A survey of Buddhism in South Asia from the time of the Buddha to the 12th century CE. This course will explore the cultural and social history of the Buddhist traditions as well Buddhist doctrine and practice from the time of the Buddha until the decline of Buddhism in India. We will also look at the transmission of Buddhism to Sri Lanka, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. (Fall 2021, Professor Mark McClish)

This course will survey the state of the field of Buddhist Studies by examining a broad range of monographs, with an emphasis on a selection of recent scholarship on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. Topics covered in this course will include Buddhist ritual, cosmology, literature, philosophy, society, politics, and intellectual history. We will attend not only to the range of subject matter covered in Buddhist Studies scholarship, but also to the methodologies and theoretical approaches that scholars have used in the past and those in favor today to get a sense of the shifting terrain of this field. Through engaging in what we can call a type of “reverse engineering process” in which we analyze the parts that comprise the whole of recent monographs in the field of Buddhist studies, our goal will be not only to critique, but to consider how others have put together recent projects with an eye toward preparing students for their own research and writing. All required course readings are in English; this is a graduate seminar but motivated undergraduates with a background in Buddhist Studies courses are welcome to request permission from the professor to register. (Winter 2022, Professor Sarah Jacoby)

This course aims to provide a genealogy of the category of religion in European history and explores how the category became appropriated, debated, and/or contested in a variety of contexts beyond Europe. It gives particular attention to ways that the category migrated within, and was mediated by, colonial and imperial networks, with a particular focus on Asia and Asian diasporas. It continues by examining recent debates about secularity as a discourse that attempts to draw boundaries between ‘religion’ and not-religion (‘culture’, ‘politics’, ‘superstition’, and so on), and of ways that the category of religion was/remains imbricated in notions of race. (Spring 2022, Brannon Ingram)