Fall 2021 Class Schedule: Department of Religious Studies

Fall 2021 Class Schedule

Fall 2021 Course Posters

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
REL 101-6-20	First-Year Seminar: When did people first become Christian?	Chalmers	MW 2:00-3:20pm
REL 101-6-20 First-Year Seminar: When did people first become Christian? 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)
REL 172-20	Introduction to Religion, Media, and Culture	Taylor	TTh 2:00-3:20pm
REL 172-20 Introduction to Religion, Media, and Culture 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)
REL 220-20	Introduction to Hebrew Bible	Wimpfheimer	TTh 9:30-10:50am
REL 220-20 Introduction to Hebrew Bible There is no understating the significance of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in Western Culture. The Bible is a text that has been repeatedly turned to for spiritual guidance, for explanations of mankind's origins and as the basis of both classical art and contemporary cinema. English idiom is peppered with phrases that originate in the Hebrew Bible and many a modern political clash can be understood as a conflict over what the Bible's messages and their implications. This course introduces students to the Hebrew Bible by reading sections of most of the Bible's books. But reading is itself a complicated enterprise. The Bible has been put to many different uses; even within the world of academic scholarship, the Bible is sometimes a source of history, sometimes a religious manual, sometimes a primitive legal code and sometimes a work of classical literature. This course will introduce students to the various challenges that present themselves within the study of the Hebrew Bible and the varied approaches scholars take when reading the Hebrew Bible. This course is a critical introduction to the Hebrew Bible. (Fall 2021, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)
REL 230-20	Introduction to Judaism	Sufrin	MW 9:30-10:50am
REL 230-20 Introduction to Judaism Against the background of Jewish and world history, we will seek to understand the roots and evolution of Jewish rituals, literature, traditions, and beliefs in different places around the world. Our challenge will be to understand why Judaism changed in the ways that it did while also identifying the continuities that connect Jews across time and space. (Fall 2021, Dr. Claire Sufrin)
REL 318-20 / ASIAN_LG 290-20	East Asian Religious Classics	Terrone	MW 2:00-3:20pm
REL 318-20 / ASIAN_LG 290-20 East Asian Religious Classics This course explores some of the most influential texts of the major East Asian religious and philosophical traditions including Confucianism, Daoism, Chan/Zen Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism still prominent in China, Japan, Tibet, and several other Asian societies today. The goal is to understand their significance in East Asian cultures, as well as consider what we can learn from these texts today. This course will probe the following questions: What are the major themes, dilemmas, and issues these texts address? How can humans achieve contentment in the world? What are the moral values these texts instill? Beyond this historical focus, this course will also reflect on ways that these literary and religious texts have been appropriated and adapted in the modern context. Each period dedicated to a specific text will be preceded by an introduction to the tradition it represents offering a historical background together with biographical and/or content outlines. Format The course format will include a combination of lecture and discussion. Students will be encouraged to exercise critical thinking and to participate in class discussions. Students will analyze primary source material in translation, critically evaluate content and concepts, and will be encouraged to synthesize the information and communicate it effectively and thoroughly. (Fall 2021, Professor Antonio Terrone)
REL 318-21 / ASIAN_LG 390-20	Buddhist Literature in Translation	Terrone	TTH 3:30-4:50pm
REL 318-21 / ASIAN_LG 390-20 Buddhist Literature in Translation In this course, students will read writings from Buddhist canonical and non-canonical literature on a variety of subjects to gain an introduction to the variety of literary genres used in Buddhist works, as well as to consider the central tenets of the Buddhist literary tradition these works convey. Who was the Buddha? What did he preach? Why do we suffer and how do we realize enlightenment? How should one follow the Buddhist path? What metaphors and parables have Buddhists used to convey these insights over the centuries? Students will be able to explore these and other questions through a selection of English translations of original texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan including the life of the Buddha, his sayings, Buddhist sutras, and Buddhist autobiographies. As this course is an introduction to Buddhist literature, there are no prerequisites, and students will gain familiarity with Buddhist teachings through engaging directly with primary sources in translation. (Fall 2021, Professor Antonio Terrone)
REL 349-20	Blasphemy	Chalmers	MW 11:00-12:20pm
REL 349-20 Blasphemy Can a divine being be offended? If so, what sort of god is that? If not, who does blasphemy hurt? This course explores blasphemy as a concept, a fear, and a practice. We examine its cultural history, its social functions, as well as some key instances of blasphemy, law, and violence in (allegedly) “secular” societies. Far from being a relic of the premodern world, blasphemy takes on its sharpest and most coercive forms in modernity. And through modern ideas about blasphemy, we’ll grapple with the place of religious speech in society and the limits of our ideas about secularization. (Fall 2021, Professor Matthew Chalmers)
REL 360-20 / AF_AM 315-20	The Black and Diasporic Experience - A Religious Interpretation:	Greene-Hayes	TTh 11:00-12:20pm
REL 360-20 / AF_AM 315-20 The Black and Diasporic Experience - A Religious Interpretation: 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.
REL 375-20	Foundations of Christian Thought	Kieckhefer	MWF 1-1:50pm
REL 375-20 Foundations of Christian Thought 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)
REL 379-20	Science Fiction and Social Justice (RLP, RSG)	King	MW 12:30-1:50pm
REL 379-20 Science Fiction and Social Justice (RLP, RSG) This course will examine major utopian and dystopian texts and films in relation to social justice issues in the twentieth century and beyond, while following the stories of artists, organizers, and communities that have used speculative world-building to imagine livable, sustainable futures. We will focus on how feminist, anarchist, LGBTQ, and Afrofuturist art and activism have contributed to a substantial critical discourse on the intersections of science, technology, ecology, war, race, gender, sexuality, health, and ability. This course will further examine how artists and activists have understood religion as both impediment and partner to social justice work, while alternatively embracing, subverting, and defying religious authority. We will attend to how religious myths and imagery are sampled and remixed by science fiction authors to plot an alternative course for history. *Counts towards Religion, Law and Politics (RLP) and Religion, Sexuality and Gender (RSG) major concentrations. (Fall 2021, Ashley King)
REL 386-21 / HIST 292-20	Witches, Heretics, and Demons: The Inquisition in the New World	Ramírez	TTH 3:30-4:50pm
REL 386-21 / HIST 292-20 Witches, Heretics, and Demons: The Inquisition in the New World The Inquisition is one of the most infamous and misunderstood institutions in the early modern world. This seminar examines some of the myths and debates surrounding the working of its tribunals and their impact on society, with special emphasis on the practices, experiences, and worldviews of ordinary subjects. How have the records of the Inquisition been used to reconstruct the histories of Jews, African healers, bigamists, homosexuals, and “witches,” among others? Participants will pursue their own answers, and even construct an alternate archive by which to tell the stories of prosecuted figures. Topics include religious tolerance and intolerance; healing and love magic in the Americas; the policing and politics of gender and sexuality; and the lives of Jewish conversos. (Fall 2021, Professor Paul Ramírez)
REL 471-21	Graduate Seminar: The Study of Religion as Vocation	Orsi	M 6:00-9:00pm
REL 471-21 Graduate Seminar: The Study of Religion as Vocation 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)
REL 473-20	Graduate Seminar: Buddhism in South Asia	McClish	T 2:00-4:50pm
REL 473-20 Graduate Seminar: Buddhism in South Asia 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)
ENVR_POL 390-25	Land, Identity and the Sacred: American Indian Religious and Sacred Sites	Suzukovich III	TTH 3:30-4:50pm
ENVR_POL 390-25 Land, Identity and the Sacred: American Indian Religious and Sacred Sites 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)