Semester Offering

This course will examine the ways different religious beliefs and practices are represented in a variety of print, film, television, and other media in our culture and the ways in which those representations may function to influence opinions, actions, and policy. Analysis of media content will accompany an introduction to the study of religions presented and misrepresented in popular culture.

Meets general academic requirement HU.

In this course we will use travel narratives to explore how religion has motivated human movement—migrations, colonization, and even tourism—and how this travel has affected the religious practices, traditions, and identities of both the travelers and the peoples they encounter. We will look at both early moments of religiously motivated movement such as the Muslim incursions into Spain during the so-called convivencia, often viewed as a model of religious tolerance, and the expulsions that followed during the Inquisition; and also modern-day travel and migration. Key concepts for consideration will include globalization, transnational, multiculturalism, and identity, as well as religion.

This course, in conjunction with FLM 230, satisfies the IL requirement.

Assertions that “the end is nigh” have appeared within a multitude of religions and cultural traditions from around the globe and throughout history.  These claims, which often foretell a dramatic reversal of cosmic fates and the destruction of established social orders, can reside at the center of a major tradition or represent an alternative narrative that speaks to the interests of a persecuted minority.  In this course, we will explore different ways of understanding such assertions: as a literary genre, social phenomenon, political commentary, or even rhetorical device.  Students will thereby gain the tools necessary to critically analyze a diverse body of apocalyptic and eschatological traditions, from early Jewish and Christian literature to the Native American Ghost Dance.  These examinations will reveal the many ways in which the apocalyptic imagination continues to resonate in the present, addressing persistent human questions of violence, imperialism, identity, technology, and the environment.

Meets general academic requirement DE and HU.

In this course, students explore the methodological and theoretical frameworks that define the academic study of religion. Coverage includes analysis of multiple disciplinary perspectives including sociology, anthropology, history, phenomenology, and psychology. Additionally, students will put the theoretical into practice by using the methods studied in class to analyze the beliefs and practices of various religious traditions.

Meets general academic requirement HU (and W when offered as 202).

From its origins in India to its development throughout East and Southeast Asia and beyond, Buddhism has prospered in a wide variety of cultures and environments. This course will introduce students to the origins, evolution, and manifestations of Buddhism in scripture, practice, and artistic expression.

Meets general academic requirement HU and DE.

Jews and Christians alike regard the books of the Hebrew Bible as scripture. Yet, modern scholarship has sought an alternative approach to understanding this complicated collection of ancient texts that sets aside its identification as revelation and attempts to grasp the historical, political, and cultural contexts that surrounded its composition. Consequently, this course will introduce students to the Hebrew Bible as a repository of ancient Israelite traditions that were developed and shaped in specific historical and social contexts. To that end, rather than read the Bible from front to back like a novel written of whole cloth, we will begin by reading the final portion of the Bible, known as the “Writings,” first and work our way back through the Prophets, finishing with the Torah. By doing this, we will examine first those biblical books that provide the clearest glimpse of the scribal practices that framed production of the Hebrew Bible as a whole, as well as its compositional complexity. In addition, students will place particular biblical passages in dialogue with texts from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Moab, and Ugarit, illuminating Israel’s place in the religious and political world of the ancient Near East.

Meets general academic requirement HU. Also counts toward Jewish Studies.

Meets general academic requirement W, DE, and HU. Also counts toward Women's and Gender Studies and International Studies.

Writers, philosophers, and scholars have engaged a fascinating array of questions from within the Jewish tradition since before the Common Era.  In this seminar, we will survey the works of particular Jewish thinkers, from antiquity to the modern day, with special attention to certain topics and historical developments.  Subjects to be considered include the Jewish people’s encounter with the religious or cultural “other,” the opposition or congruence of faith and reason, the persistence of evil, the nature of God and scripture, and what it means to be “Jewish.”  The structure of the course will constitute a “who’s who” of Jewish thinkers through history, such as Philo of Alexandria, Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, and Ahad ha-Am.  The final project will also allow students to discover and present the thought of a Jewish intellectual not included in this selective survey at the end of the semester.

Meets general academic requirement HU.

Meets general academic requirement DE, IL, and HU. Also counts toward Asian Studies, Environmental Science, and International Studies.

This course will offer a history of Jewish life in the United States. It will examine the different ways that American Jews have defined Jewish life in America and consider the challenges faced by Jewish immigrants as they worked to build a distinctly American Jewish culture. The tension and balance between religious meaning and the value placed on secularism in America form a vital part of this study.

Meets general academic requirement HU.

The very words Zion and Zionist have become powerful political signifiers both within and without Jewish communities, as well as in international discourse. Why are these words so hotly contested, and what do they signify? This course examines the historical evolution of modern Zionism. It considers the different religious, political, and cultural forms that Jewish nationalist thought has taken over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and situates these ideas within their historic and geographic contexts. Students will read the works of Jewish nationalist thinkers like Theodore Herzi, Max Nordau, Ahad Ha'am, Yitzchak Baer, Simon Dubnow, and Louis Brandeis and analyze their competing visions of Jewish nationhood and the specific historical concerns that fuel the emergence of different nationalist ideologies.

Meets general academic requirement W and HU. Also counts toward Jewish Studies and International Studies.