Faculty of Arts & Sciences

The aim of this course is to introduce students to key categories in the study of religion, both within a comparative context and with significant attention to theoretical and methodological issues in the field. The specific topic of the course will vary from year to year. Topic examples include: scripture, ethics, ritual, body and practice, art, violence, gender and sexuality.

An introduction to the history of religion through selective reading in significant, iconic texts from diverse religious and cultural traditions. Considers important themes (e.g., suffering, death, love, community, transcendence) as well as problems of method and definition as they present themselves in the sources considered. Readings from texts such as the Upanisads, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, Lotus Sutra, Analects, Chuang Tzu, Gilgamesh, Black Elk Speaks, Aeneid, Torah, Talmud, New Testament, and Qur'an.

This course provides an introduction to the study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, often referred as the "Abrahamic" traditions. The course considers key moments in the history of these interrelated traditions, while also attending to how boundaries have been negotiated within and between traditions. Significant themes include scripture and authority; the role of history, revelation, and reason; law, ethics, and community; and the rise of modernity. The course will also consider the interpretive issues at stake in referring to these traditions as "Abrahamic" faiths.

The course presents ethnographic works on Religion in the humanities and social sciences and introduces students to the concept and practice of ethnography.

An exploration of the Jewish religious tradition, from its inception in biblical Israel through its rabbinic, medieval, and modern iterations, with a focus on central theological claims and religious practices. Readings concentrate on classical sources and their various modes of interpretation but also include modern restatements, reformulations, and critiques of tradition.

The course offers an introduction to Christian thought by considering major texts, figures and ideas from the first century to the present in their changing cultural contexts. Central themes include the categories of body, flesh and soul; free will, desire and sin in relation to divine grace; and the meaning of incarnation. Texts include canonical and non-canonical early Christian literatures, Patristic and medieval texts, Reformation theologies, as well as modern and contemporary authors. Students will develop a sense of the distinguishing features of the Christian world view, while gaining an appreciation for the significant diversity across the tradition

This introductory course focuses on 1) the Pauline epistles in their first-century sociopolitical context, and their earliest interpretations; 2) recent trends in Pauline studies, including feminist and postcolonial interpretation, the New Perspective, and European philosophical treatments (Badiou, Zizek). Special attention will be given to ideas of the gendered/enslaved body and its potential for transformation and pollution, ethnicity in the Roman world, the relations of communities to Roman imperial power, and views of time and the impending eschaton.

This course provides an introduction to Christian conceptions of conduct, character, and community, as well as modern disputes over their interpretation and application. How are Christian principles related to modern ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy? What do Christian principles imply for contemporary issues related to religious pluralism, secularism, feminism, racism, and globalization? Readings will provide historical background and highlight a variety of contemporary perspectives and approaches to Christian ethics. Special emphasis will be given to current moral and political challenges, including war and peace, the environment, capitalism and consumption, abortion and euthanasia, and love, sexuality, and marriage.

This lecture course will deal with the major challenges of modernity that the Catholic Church faced in the Twentieth Century through an analysis of some theological classics of the century. Among the challenges to be considered are: the impact of historical critical studies on the understanding of Christianity, the philosophical critique of metaphysics and classical proofs for God's existence, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, the challenge of religious pluralism and religious freedom, the challenge of the modern world with its technological, communicative, and economic development, the changed relation of the church and state and to the claims of human rights. It will discuss these problems in relation to the writings of Maurice Blondel, Alfred Loisy, Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, Karl Rahner, Documents of Vatican II, Gustavo Gutierrez, and select Papal Documents.

This course considers how lines between the religious and the secular have been drawn from the Enlightenment to the present. Although modernity has often been associated with critiques of religion and predictions of religious decline, such predictions have come under serious challenge, calling into question the possibility of drawing a clear distinction between tradition and modernity. Moreover, it has increasingly been argued that the category of religion (along with that of the secular) is itself a modern creation. Readings will offer historical and contemporary perspectives on how distinctions between religious and secular, traditional and modern, have developed and been challenged over the past several centuries, by religious adherents and critics alike.

What is an authentic individual life? How does one find meaning in light of modern challenges to claims about the nature of God, revelation and the soul? Is religious faith compatible with an understanding of historicity and the threat of nihilism? This course introduces central questions in Western philosophy of religion through close reading of fundamental texts in existentialism with some attention to their Christian theological sources. Reading and participatory discussion of text by Plato, Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger, Bultmann and Tillich.

Study of special topics in the history and comparative study of religion on an individual or small-group basis.

Introduction to methods and theories in the study of religion, including major themes and arguments that have defined the field. Course emphasizes critical thinking and writing skills.

Part of the sequence of small seminars focused on critical thinking and writing skills for concentrators, this course provides in-depth study of selected themes, texts, traditions or time periods.

Part of the sequence of small seminars focused on critical thinking and writing skills for concentrators, this course provides in-depth study of selected themes, texts, traditions or time periods.

A required component of the senior year tutorial is a biweekly seminar, led by the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies. Covers research methods and strategies in thesis writing.

The course follows key themes in religion and gender as these were shaped and reshaped through the colonial and post-colonial eras. In particular, the religious history of American women and the history of women in Islam primarily in relation to the Middle East (professors Braude's and Ahmed's fields respectively) are intertwined and brought into conversation. The interaction of religion, gender and sexuality and the turns and complexities imparted to these by the politics of imperialism, race, resistance, and the politics of class, are examined in the context of the emergence of modernity, nationalism, feminism and the globalization of religions in the wake of empire and Christian mission.

This seminar will introduce students to approaches and selected case studies in the archaeology of religion, including current research in the material evidence for sanctuaries, shamanism, and ritual, as well as challenges in identification and interpretation.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the religious practices, beliefs, and movements of African Americans from 17th century to present. Topics include, but not limited to, black religions in North America under slavery, black churches, black Muslims, Jews and conjuring traditions, the civil rights movement, and the relation of African American religion to literature and music. Readings will include Albert Raboteau, Michael Gomez, Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, Barbara Diane-Savage, Karen McCarthy Brown and others.

This course is an introduction to the history of women, gender, and religion in America. We will ask several related questions. How have religious communities shaped understandings of gender and sexuality? How have individuals used religious beliefs, texts, and practices to defend or criticize gender norms? Why has religion in America often been perceived as "feminine"? Among other topics, we will discuss conceptions of femininity and masculinity in early America, the ideology of "Republican motherhood" during the American Revolution, controversies over female preaching in the nineteenth century, Fundamentalist attitudes toward gender, and twentieth-century debates over contraception, women's ordination, and homosexuality. We will discuss a wide variety of religious communities in the United States, including Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Spiritualists, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists.

Conducting fieldwork with groups and people based on their religious/spiritual beliefs requires a complex understanding as well as critical knowledge of both the theory and methods of the "field research" process. This year-long course will provide students interested in conducting anthropological style "field research" with religious/spiritual groups/peoples, an in-depth and critical survey of theory and methodological approaches towards an anthropology of "the religious." The first semester will focus primarily on the theoretical questions/problems in the study of religion in anthropology, including what is a field site, how is it constituted, and how do we understand our own research and theory in relation other academic projects? The second semester is a methodological workshop, where students will be required to conduct method-intensive weekly projects. Through different methodological modalities, students will be required to think about what their research means to the communities they intend to work with as well as questions of positionality, the divide between participant/observer, new forms of research methods and other problematics of research.

See description for Religion 1025a.

This course seeks to give an introduction to contemporary discussions about justice, human rights, and religion. It will survey the conceptions of rights within political theology and within contemporary theories of justice. Special attention will be given to the work of Rawls, Habermas, Nussbaum, Sen, Walzer, Sandel, Motlmann, Woltersdorf, and Schmitt. It will seek to show how a conception of human rights relates to religion with the framework of a discourse ethics.

This seminar will explore the relationship between "religion" and "tourisms. "We will examine theories of "the tour" and the production of touristic moments in relation to contemporary modernist movements and subjectivities including cosmopolitanisms, emigration, travelogues and the notion of "the tourist." This engagement will juxtapose conceptions of "religion" encompassed broadly within ritual, spiritual, diasporic and esoteric practices-as-tours. We will read ethnographies of religious tourisms in different trans-local sites, exploring the engagement with issues of commodification and religion, religion and the state, religion and nationalisms, and the inciting of touristic desires.

This course explores the nature of selfhood as it is constituted in the writing of autobiography. Our questions include: What do autobiographies tell us about the relationship of personal identity, individuality, subjectivity, and alienation to religious truth? What can we say about the relationship of the lived life to what is remembered and written in autobiography? To whom are autobiographers telling their self-stories, and why? What constitutes such critical experiences as moments of conversion, enlightenment, or self-consciousness? Our interpretive methodology will draw from literary theory on autobiographical writing. Autobiographical writings to be studied include those by Augustine, Teresa of Avila, a Tibetan Buddhist hermitess, a Jewish Kabbalist mystic, a contemporary Chinese-American novelist, a 17th century Venetian Rabbi, an American freed slave, a Japanese pilgrim poet, and James Joyce.

This course will explore the intersection between religious traditions and ecological activism, with special attention to current conversations about "ethical eating." We will consider both the resources that religious traditions provide to ecological activists and the ways these activists have challenges aspects of traditional religion. The course will also function as a general introduction to the multiple ways of knowing that comprise the scholarly study of religion, with attention to scriptural interpretation, history, ethnography, theology, ethics, and comparative studies.

This course will explore how secularism and pluralism have figured in recent scholarship on the construction of the category of religion. We will begin by asking how prominent theorists of secularization and pluralization have described these processes and their relation to one another, before turning to the question of how these processes relate to the -isms they inspire: secularism and pluralism. After laying these foundations, we will consider how historians of American religion have portrayed secularism, pluralism, and the relationship between the two, with an eye to the historical metanarratives their treatments imply. Does a robust defense of religious pluralism require an embrace of secularism or antagonism to it? Do secularism's claims to neutrality undermine religious pluralism or allow it to flourish? Are secularism and pluralism opposed to one another, or are they closely related concepts?

This course explores gender and divinity by reading hymns praising Hindu goddesses Laksmi, Maha Devi, Apirami, Kali while asking how feminine divinity is constructed in an environment where gods and goddesses flourish. The course simultaneously explores the cult of the Virgin Mary, theologically, historically, through key texts. This approach is sharpened by attention to performative, social, visual dimensions, and through contemporary feminist and theological insights. Not a survey, but an in-depth introduction.

This seminar examines the relationships between modern states and religion with particular attention to Islam in Muslim majority countries and beyond. We will analyze institutional arrangements from separation to establishment, and we will examine the meaning of secularism as a modern project. We will explore what the formation of the modern state owes to religion, but also how the modern state transforms religion. More broadly, the seminar will analyze the general consequences of the modern states' engagement with religion, and will explore new potential research paths. Readings will include historical, anthropological, theoretical, as well as quantitative perspectives.

An introduction to the Jewish tradition through an examination of its liturgical calendar. The ancient Near Eastern affinities and biblical forms of the Jewish holidays; the observance of the holidays in rabbinic law, their characteristic themes as developed in rabbinic non-legal literature, their special biblical readings, the evolution of the holidays over the centuries, contemporary theological reflection upon them. Emphasis on classic texts, focus on theological and literary issues.

A continuation of Religion 1212a.

A close reading of selected works of Jewish theology from the twentieth century, with special attention to the questions of God, Torah, and Israel in light of modernity and to the thinkers' understanding of Christianity in relation to Judaism. Authors read will be drawn mostly from the following: Baeck, Buber, Rosenzweig, Kaplan, Soloveitchik, Berkovitz, Heschel, Fackenheim, and Wyschogrod.

Using three renowned sanctuaries at - Brauron, Eleusis, and Samothrace - as foci, this course will consider the role of initiation in ancient Greece in the wider context of mystery cults. We will attend to the archaeological and literary evidence as well as to relevant secondary scholarship.

The texts of the New Testament emerged in the diverse social and complex political context of the Roman empire. This course examines historical-critical approaches that attempt to set New Testament texts within their first- and second-century contexts, pays special attention to archaeological materials which aid our understanding of the world from which these texts emerged, and considers how and why these particular texts came to be a canon. Students will also consider the vibrant and controversial contemporary contexts in which they and others interpret the New Testament.

This introductory course will focus on the major Greek authors of the late antique Christian East (third through eighth centuries). Authors will include Origen, Antony the Great, Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius of Pontus, Cyril of Alexandria, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus.

This introductory course will focus on the major Latin authors of the late antique Christian West (second through ninth centuries). Authors will include Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Cassian, Gregory the Great, Boethius, and John Scottus Eriugena.

This course will consider newly discovered works, as well as engage critical readings of well-known sources, around such topics as the politics of martyrdom, performance and ritual, gender, and intra-Christian controversies.

This course will engage a critical feminist reading of NT texts in order to assess whether they are good news for wo/men. Special attention will be given to a feminist hermeneutics of imagination. Discussion will focus on the significance of social location, critical methods, and historical imagination for the interpretation and significance of these stories about Jewish wo/men, for contemporary religious self-understanding and ministerial praxis. Lectures, group discussions, and group projects seek to foster a participatory democratic style of learning.

An investigation of the Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) and other ancient Christian Gospel literature (Gospel of Thomas, Dialogue of the Savior); discussion of the developments from the oral traditions about Jesus to their written fixation and of the theological and communal concerns that influenced this process. Discussion of the question of the "historical Jesus."

An examination of the dynamics in the shaping of early Christianity, including the development of discourses of orthodoxy and heresy, practices of interpreting Scripture, selected theological disputes, martyrdom, sex/gender, and categories of religious identity. The course will focus on reading ancient literature, including The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mark, Luke-Acts, The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Truth, The Secret Revelation of John), and works ascribed to Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Eusebius.

This course will survey Augustine of Hippo's theological career through the lens of his encounters with three "heresies" of Roman North Africa: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. Particular attention will be paid to following themes: evil, freedom, the will, and selfhood.

This course is designed to provide a historical overview of the Church and society in western Europe from the fourth through the twelfth century. Thus, this course will investigate late-antique and early medieval Christianity in its social and its cultural context. Narrative and theological story lines to be pursued will include the varieties of early Christianity; relations with the Roman state (including persecution of Christians by it); the emergence of normative or "early Catholic" Christianity; early and early medieval monasticism; the search for the Christian doctrine of God and Christ; early Christian architecture, piety and worship; Christianity and other world religions (especially Judaism and Islam); western and eastern Christianity; the emergence of the Roman primacy; the Christianization of the north of Europe; the nature of parochial Christianity; the emergence of the pope, in the eleventh century, as an international religious force; the crusades; and early medieval piety. We will also be strengthening our skills as interpreters of primary sources. Some attention will be paid to major historiographical issues.

This course is designed to provide a historical overview of the Church and society in western Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries. Thus, this course will investigate high and late medieval Christianity in its social and its cultural context. Narrative and theological story lines to be pursued will include medieval monasticism and other new forms of religious life; heresy and its repression; scholasticism, the university and Gothic architecture; the bid for papal monarchy; means of Christianization; saints, relics, pilgrimage and other forms of popular devotion; the decline of the late-medieval papacy and conciliarism; late-medieval heresy; Christianity and other world religions (especially Judaism and Islam); and late-medieval attempts at reform. We will also be strengthening our skills as interpreters of primary sources. Some attention will be paid to major historiographical issues.

This course is a basic introduction to how we make meaning when reading the Bible. We will explore the different paradigms of interpretation which scholars have developed and explore their meaning-making capacities in terms of an ethics of interpretation. Special attention will be given to new approaches such as Signifying Scriptures, Scriptural Reasoning, or Bibliodrama. The course process seeks to embody a democratic ethos of study and deliberation, of knowledge and socio-cultural religious location. Reflection papers, group-discussions, and working with texts provide opportunities for such collaboration.

The course is devoted to close reading and interpretation of 1 Corinthians. Discussion of the Greek text of 1 Corinthians will focus on literary style, use of rhetoric, philology, and the social and theological issues of the text.

This course will survey the life and writings of the third-century Christian writer, Origen of Alexandria, widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential theologians of late antiquity. Much attention will be given to his overall cosmological frame, including such notions as double creation, salvation understood as pedagogy or embodied rehabilitation, and universal salvation understood as apokatastasis</I> or the restoration of all things. Attention will also be paid to his scriptural exegesis, and how the practice of biblical interpretation fits into his overall cosmology and soteriology.

What Is the spiritual significance of money? Wealth and poverty have posed controversial questions for faith since the attacks by the Hebrew prophets; Jesus' warnings to the rich about the eye of the needle; and the sharp objections raised by monastics, St. Francis and reformers. These themes persist in current disputes, sparked in part by Pope Francis's statements about inequality, and by controversies around the prosperity gospel and liberation theology's "preferential option for the poor." This course will explore biblical, theological and ethical dimensions of these issues and will include some comparative discussion of how other religions approach them.

This course discusses the forms of spirituality that were associated with women in the Middle Ages. It deals in particular with mysticism but also looks at other forms of religious life (for example service in the hospital). This course also covers the question of the gender of the soul and therefore considers male-dominated debates of female models of spirituality and sanctity. Primary sources (with translations) include Meister Eckhardt, Mechthild von Magdeburg, Bridget of Sweden and Jean Gerson.

This course will examine the history of mystical theology in early and medieval traditions of Christianity. Through a close reading of primary texts in translation students will engage questions of divine mystery, transcendence, and hiddenness; the practice of affirmation (kataphasis) and negation (apophasis); mystical union; and the limits of language.

The course will survey the main features of Christian theology from the 11th through the 15th centuries. We will focus on the particular genres, modes of argumentation, questions, and goals of theology as it emerges in multiple contexts within the medieval West.

This course will explore the relationship between Christianity and slavery from 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in Virginia, to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865. We will discuss biblical defenses of slavery, "scientific" racism, plantation missions, slave resistance and rebellion, abolitionism, and slave worship and theology. Readings include African-American memoirs, fugitive slave narratives, proslavery sermons, abolitionist newspapers, and interviews with ex-slaves. Students will also analyze visual representations of slavery and listen to slave spirituals.

The course will introduce the students to the history of the quest for the historical Jesus by examining the most relevant methodological issues and by reviewing the ideological and socio-political stakes in this enterprise that has been intertwined to the cultural history of the western world from the XVIII to the XXI century.

A study of the life, thought, and actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. An ethical analysis of his primary concepts, ideas, and strategies based upon a reading and discussion of his writings and their sources.

This course asks how Christianity has both shaped and reflected economic developments in America from the eighteenth century to the present. Besides examining diverse Christian attitudes toward consumerism and capitalism, we will ask how economic developments have shaped understandings of God and the self. Among other topics, we will explore the rise of the consumer revolution in the eighteenth century, the relationship between capitalism and slavery, Christian responses to industrial capitalism, Christian marketing techniques, and the popularity of the prosperity gospel in modern-day America.

Using history and anthropology, this course explores the role of Capitalism in the growth and development of Christianity in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This course will examine the history, beliefs, practices and aesthetics of evangelical Christians in the United States, paying particular attention to the relationship between evangelical theology and national politics since the American Civil War. Topics covered will include: the development of the Social Gospel; the Niebuhr Brothers and neo-orthodox theology; women's suffrage and Civil Rights; the "Southern Strategy" and the rise of the so-called Religious Right; as well as Christian Reconstructionism.

A survey of contemporary Roman Catholic theology that discusses issues in the interpretations of God, Jesus, and the church with reference to theological method. The broad spectrum of present-day Roman Catholic theology will be covered through an analysis of diverse theologians and approaches: existential, transcendental, liberationist, feminist, analytical, and hermeneutical.

This seminar seeks to provide a space for exploring the intersections of feminist theory with feminist the*logy and Feminist Studies in Religion. We will focus on different feminist categories of analysis, discuss different feminist the*logical directions and explore how their theoretical frameworks, methods and visions are shaped by their different socio-cultural- religious locations and struggles. In so doing we will engage in a participatory democratic style of learning.

This course offers a historical, theological, and practice-based introduction to Christianity. We will explore key episodes in Christian history and central themes of Christian theology, highlighting the diversities of culture, ideology, gender, and practice that have characterized Christianity throughout its history. We will use integrative case studies as well as readings from the disciplines of church history, systematic theology, and practical theology to discover the many insights that emerge at the intersections of these disciplines.

This course focuses on the American evangelical movement from the 1740s to the present. Beginning with the rise of transatlantic evangelicalism in the eighteenth century, we will explore the role of evangelicals in the American Revolution, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening, the crisis caused by slavery, the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy in the early twentieth century, the emergence of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement, the controversies created by neo-evangelicalism in the 1940s, the relationship between evangelicalism and the civil rights movement, the political activism of the Christian Right, and contemporary evangelical attitudes toward gender and sexuality. Readings will introduce students to both evangelical ideas and practices. Throughout the course, we will focus on the historical development of evangelicalism and the relationship between evangelicals and American culture.

A study of how some of the major philosophers of the West -- many of whom considered themselves Christians -- interpreted Christianity. Through the lens of the philosophical account of Christianity, we consider the content of the Christian message and its implications for the conduct of life and the organization of society. We also explore, from this perspective, the nature of religious experience and its relation to the ambitions of philosophy. Readings drawn from the works of Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and others as well as from the writings of twentieth-century theologians who have worked across the contested frontier between philosophy and theology.

Beginning with John Winthrop's 1630 speech, "A Model of Christian Charity," and ending with the 2012 presidential election, we will examine images of America as a city on a hill. We will ask several questions: How and why have Americans conceived of the nation in sacred terms? How have religious images of the nation developed and changed over time? What are the implications of America's "civil religion"? We will discuss the Puritan idea of a national covenant, the millennial rhetoric of the American Revolution, defenses of manifest destiny, the sacrificial theology of the Civil War, religious and political rationales for global missions, the rise of the Christian Right, and presidential invocations of America as a city on a hill. We will also examine how women's rights leaders, abolitionists, and civil rights activists both critiqued and appropriated the image of America as a city on a hill.

An examination of the intellectual and institutional history of the University that leads students through a chronological exploration of key events and significant presidents. Among themes to be considered are European antecedents, developments in faculty, changes in student life, curricular alterations, as well as the maturation of the built environment. Significant attention is paid to the evolution of the religious context of the school, which was a vital component of the University's identity for several centuries.

Beginning with the religious cultures of Native Americans, and concluding with the religious implications of the American Civil War, this course will survey four centuries of religious history. It will focus on the evolutions of religious thought, the interplay of religious practice with secular culture, religious lives in both mainstream and marginalized groups, and the relationship of church and state. It will also consider the denominational development of numerous movements (e.g., Congregationalists, Friends, Baptists, Shakers, Disciples of Christ, Seventh-day Adventists).

This course is a survey of American religion from Reconstruction to the present. We will ask several related questions. How did religious communities shape social and political movements like women's suffrage, the anti-lynching campaign, the Civil Rights Movement, and second-wave feminism? How did religious communities respond to developments like urbanization, segregation, industrialization, the Great Depression, and the creation of new media? How did ordinary people practice their faith? We will discuss a wide variety of religious communities and movements, including the Social Gospel, Catholicism, Fundamentalism, Judaism, Pentecostalism, New Thought, and the Christian Right. We will also discuss the transformation of the American religious landscape after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In addition to reading major scholarly accounts, we will consult a wide variety of primary sources, including memoirs, sermons, religious periodicals, speeches, and music.

General introduction to hermeneutical theory and theology. It surveys the development of theories of interpretation from classical to modern and contemporary times and shows the relation between the theory of interpretation and the understanding of theology. The course will especially attend to the influence of nineteenth and twentieth century theories of interpretation upon sacred texts, the diverse approaches to theology, and key theological categories such as revelation, experience, method, foundations, classics, community, and practice. It introduces students to some of the modern debates about the importance of interpretation for religious and theological studies.

An exploration of the interplay of aesthetics, politics, and religion in contemporary American poetry. Poets to be read will likely include Juliana Spahr, Claudia Rankine, Susan Howe, Dan Beachy-Quick, C.D. Wright, Elizabeth Robinson, Lisa Robertson, Anne Carson, Jorie Graham, Myung Mi Kim, and Harryette Mullen.

This course explores some of the recent literature on the relation between religion, theology, and culture. Specific attention will be given to issues of method, tradition, and the intersection of theology and culture, and the relation between faith and critical inquiry. Authors to be considered include: Niebuhr, Tanner, Geertz, Rorty, Stout, Benhabib, and Fraser.

This seminar examines will explore major figures and issues within political theology. The focus will be on the relation between religion and society, especially public and political life. The seminar will consider the relation between the development of diverse modern political theologies and their contrasting interpretations of modernity. It will also focus on relation between political theology and the notions political justice, law, and human rights. Special emphasis to the work of Schmitt, Agamben, Metz, Moltmann, Charles and Mark Taylor, Wolterstorff, Nancy Fraser, Iris Young, Amartya Senn, Martha Nussbaum, and Jurgen Habermas.

This course will explore the possibilities for fruitful interchange between classic liberal theologies and contemporary theologies of liberation. We will begin with major texts of American liberal theology (Channing, Emerson, Bushnell, Rauschenbusch), then turn to the defining liberationist texts (Gutierrez, Cone, Daly), and conclude with several attempts to integrate the traditions.

The nineteenth century formulated many of the questions and frameworks that continue to dominate theology and religious reflection in the West. This course considers the developing interplay between modern Christian theology (primarily continental) and the principal philosophical and social critiques of religion in the nineteenth century. Topics include human nature, religion, the divine-human relationship, religious knowledge, the social, and historicity. Readings from Lessing, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Harnack, and Troeltsch.

This seminar will explore the intellectual shapers of the Unitarian and Universalist traditions in the nineteenth century, with special attention to the founders and formative theologians of each tradition, the challenges of Transcendentalism and Spiritualism, and the interactions of Unitarianism and Universalism with broader currents of religious liberalism in the United States. Male and female, lay and ordained, elite and popular thinkers will all be represented. Featured writers may include John Murray, Judith Sargent Murray, Hosea Ballou, Joseph Priestley, William Ellery Channing, Andrews Norton, Hannah Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Lydia Maria Child, Adin Ballou, James Freeman Clarke, Lucy Stone, Francis E. Abbot, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Celia Parker Woolley.

A growing number of books have appeared recently recounting personal journeys of faith &#151 faith searched for, wrestled with, lost, found, abandoned, affirmed, re-imagined, understood in new ways &#151 or any combination of these. We will read contemporary works in this genre exploring, among others, themes of religion, gender and identity. Our readings will include Sarah Sentilles, Breaking Up with God, Joanna Brooks, The Book of Mormon Girl, Sheila Weinberg, Surprisingly Happy, Tariq Ramadan, What I Believe, Chris Stedman, Faithiest, Colleen Carroll Campbell, My Sisters the Saints, and Lauren Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis.

Takes the numerical dominance of women in most religious groups as the point of departure for an exploration of American history focusing on the interrelation of gender systems and religious world views. Topics include witchcraft, African American women evangelists, ideologies of domesticity, and the relation of gender to religious dissent, among others. The course emphasizes historical research methodology using gender as a category of analysis.

This course considers the classical figures in the American pragmatic tradition, seeking both to understand the genesis and claims of "pragmatism" and its relation to and implications for religion. Ordered chronologically, the course begins with Charles Sanders Pierce, but give particular attention to the writings of William James and John Dewey. Topics include belief, human experience, truth, action, ethics, rationality, and the nature and role (socially and individually) of religion.

This survey course will trace the history of both Unitarianism and Universalism from their eighteenth-century origins to the present. Focusing especially on the experiences of local congregations, we will explore the diverse starting points of liberal religion in the United States; the challenges of Transcendentalism, spiritualism, and humanism; the interplay between liberal religion and social reform; and the experience of consolidation in the twentieth century.

This seminar will explore the major shapers of the Unitarian and Universalist traditions in the twentieth century, with special attention to the influence of the social gospel, religious humanism, process thought, and liberation theology. Featured writers will include Francis Greenwood Peabody, Clarence Skinner, John Haynes Holmes, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Curtis Reese, Frederick May Eliot, James Luther Adams, Sophia Fahs, Henry Nelson Wieman, Charles Hartshorne, A. Powell Davies, Kenneth Patton, William R. Jones, and Rebecca Parker.

This course surveys spiritual practices and movements that have been labeled as "metaphysical," "esoteric," "occult," "harmonial," or "New Age." Beginning with colonial practices of astrology, alchemy, and spirit possession, we will consider Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, and their myriad descendants in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The course will explore the theoretical articulation of sex, gender, and sexuality in twentieth-century theory, particularly in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and feminist and queer theory. Readings will include texts by Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Julia Kristeva, Monique Wittig, Judith Butler, Moira Gatens, and others.

This course analyzes the resurgence of vitalisms in contemporary philosophy and theology, in its relationship with the developments in science and technology that motivate it.

This course will explore the lives and works of the Protestant theologians and ethicists Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) and H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962). Throughout their long careers, the Niebuhr brothers carried on a remarkable intellectual dialogue in both their published and unpublished writings and their private correspondence. In addition to surveying the similarities and differences between the brothers and their intellectual projects, we will also consider how their thought was shaped by various interlocutors, including Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, William James, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner, John Dewey, and Will Herberg, and by the broader historical contexts in which they lived and worked. We will pay particular attention to how the Niebuhr brothers viewed God and human nature, democracy and politics, secularism and pluralism, church-state relations, and the meaning and character of history.

The question how one goes about thinking theologically&#151in light of the situated-ness of language, human experience, other domains of knowledge, and a deepening understanding of the contextual location of theological expression&#151is a dominant concern for Christian theology in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. This course provides an introduction to the contemporary context for theological reflection by exploring conversations around method and the nature of theology in selected key twentieth century figures, such as Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Daly, Cone, Kaufman, Tracy, Schussler Fiorenza, Lindbeck, Grant, Milbank.

Based around a series of traditionalist guest speakers, this course interrogates the study of religion in general and of Native American traditions in particular in light of indigenous religious experiences, perspectives and histories. Questions of appropriation, repatriation and religious freedom will be approached through legal as well as cultural frameworks.

An introduction to the many distinct yet interrelated religious traditions of South Asia that are often labeled "Hinduism." This course considers the ways in which Hindus from a variety of historical time periods, local traditions, and social backgrounds have attempted to make sense of their world and their lives within it.

This course explores the lives, practices, and experiences of contemporary South Asians from Hindu, Muslim, Jain, and Sikh perspectives. Concepts central to South Asian worldviews will be carefully considered in the context of both rural and urban day-to-day activities, rituals, and family life. Readings are drawn from a wide range of ethnographic literatures, and films documenting a diverse range of religious, cultural, and social settings from across South Asia will frequently be shown.

This course introduces the remarkable diversity of religious literature, philosophical thought, ritual and contemplative practices, and cultural forms that have emerged on the South Asian subcontinent. Focusing on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, the course examines common South Asian religious patterns in the areas of textual practices, social institutions, and contemplative traditions. We will explore intellectual achievements and religious experiences lived by householders and ascetics alike. By engaging with South Asian materials and becoming familiar with the scholarship in the field, students will gain refined perspectives on religions in the world.

Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu classic of devotion and theology, has received extensive classical and contemporary commentary. The seminar explores selectively the interpretations of classical commentators (Sankara, Ramanuja, and Madhusudana Sarasvati), and 20th century interpreters (B. G. Tilak, Mohandas Gandhi, Bede Griffiths). Part of the series, Reading Hindu Texts Interreligiously, meant for students interested in closely reading Indian/Hindu texts, with attention to textual analogues from other religions.

An examination of Hindu bhakti (devotional) traditions, focusing on three specific geographic/cultural regions within the Indian subcontinent. Keeping in mind both continuities and differences in the bhakti traditions of these three distinct cultural areas, this course will explore a variety of devotional literature in English translation and consider the enduring significance and use of that deeply emotional poetry in the lives of Hindus today.

Focusing on the genres of itihasa, purana, and katha, this seminar explores the relevance of both classical Indic and contemporary Euro-American literary theories for the understanding of pre-modern South Asian narrative.

An introduction to basic issues in the contemporary understanding of textuality, history, and interpretation and their relevance to the study of Buddhist scriptures. Examples of Buddhist scriptures will be drawn primarily from the Mahayana traditions.

A close look at practices and cultural productions of Tibetan Buddhism and other religious traditions in light of their distinctive historical contexts in Tibet. Topics include: yogic, lay, and monastic religions; visionary practices; religion, magic and the state; Buddhism in literature and art; medicine and Buddhism; death and reincarnation practices; the creation of sacred landscape; and certain distinctive literary genres including "mind training," "advice" writings, self-revelatory autobiography; and religious historiography. Throughout the course we will be considering a number of new publications that have recently enriched our understanding of Tibetan religious cultures and institutions.

A very close and contextual reading (in translation) of Buddhist "doctrinal" and "philosophical" texts. We will select chapters from Vasubandhu's Treasury of Metaphysics, Nagarjuna's Basis of the Middle Way, and Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses. Attempt to understand these texts on their own terms and in their South Asian contexts, while also inquiring into their significance for the study of Buddhism and religion in South Asia.

An introduction to basic issues in reading Buddhist Scriptural Anthologies, both historical and hermeneutic. Special emphasis will be given to issues of intertextuality that the formation of scriptural anthologies generates. Examples of Buddhist scriptural anthologies will be drawn from across the Buddhist world.

A systematic exploration of Buddhist views of moral anthropology and the place of moral reflection in Buddhist thought and practice. The scope of the course is wide, with examples drawn from the whole Buddhist world, but the emphasis will be given to the particularity of different Buddhist visions of human flourishing. Attention will also be given to the challenges and promises of describing Buddhist ethics in a comparative perspective.

An introduction to the study of narrative and story literature in the Buddhist world. A primary focus will be on the narrative and story literature found in Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, but there will also be consideration of examples of narrative and story literature that circulated independently. Examples will be drawn from across the Buddhist world.

An advanced introduction to the roughly 800 year history of the Buddhist Epistemological tradition in India through a reading of primary sources in translation and recent secondary scholarship.

Introductory survey of Sufism, focusing on its fundamental concepts, ritual practices, institutions, and its impact on literary and sociopolitical life in different Muslim societies.

This course explores the doctrines and practices of the Ismailis, adherents of a minority branch of Shia Islam that recognizes the continuation of religious authority after the Prophet Muhammad through a particular line of his descendants known as the Imams. Focusing on their historical evolution and manifestations in diverse political, cultural and social contexts, the course will consider three major communities: the Nizari Ismailis (in Syria, Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia); the Tayyibi (Daudi Bohra) Ismailis (in Yemen and South Asia) and the Druze (in Syria and Lebanon). Principal themes to be considered include conceptions of the Imamah and notions of authority, messianic doctrines, philosophy, ritual practice and devotional traditions. The course will also briefly consider the contemporary situation of these communities as minorities in North America and Europe.

We will read contemporary works in the history of Islam in the U.S. and Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries.

We will read autobiographical works mainly by 20th century 'Arab' writers, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, paying particular attention to issues of religion, gender and identity, exploring how these are at play in the texts and in authorial constructions of self, history, and meaning.

An examination of the study of religion from early modernity to the present, with attention to key thinkers, methods, and theories.

An engagement with the theoretical and methodological issues that scholars of religion deem to be the most urgent and compelling in the discipline today, across the various research areas.

If secularism privileges the temporal over the eternal, what are the ramifications for how death is thought by those who live within a secular frame? We will explore the question as it is posed and answered, however provisionally, within modern Western philosophy, literature, and the visual arts. Material will include work by Henry James, William James, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, Carole Maso, Janet Kauffman, and Susan Howe.

This seminar offers an intensive examination of Euro-American and South Asian approaches to time and history and considers their importance for the study of South Asian religions.

The first portion of the course will introduce students to working with archaeological data from the Greco-Roman world (inscriptions, architecture, sculpture, coins). The second portion consists of seminars in Greece and Turkey during May, including some meetings with archaeologists and other scholars abroad.

The course will introduce students to papyrology through the reading of literary and documentary papyri, with a particular emphasis placed on materials pertaining to religious history in the Greco-Roman world.

The course will examine the phenomena of witchcraft in selected early Christian texts to explore its socio-cultural and rhetorical implications by positing them within the broader context of Greco-Roman culture and society.

The course will be devoted to a close reading and interpretation of the Gospel of Mark. The Greek text will be discussed with specific attention paid to literary structures, textual critical issues, historical context, and history of interpretation.

The main focus of this course will be on the apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple and early Christian periods through the close reading in translation of four representative texts (1 Enoch, Daniel, the Apocalypse of John, and 4 Ezra). The course will not be limited to the reading of apocalyptic texts, but it intends to address the main themes that characterize historical research on and the exegesis of this subject, as the definition of the apocalyptic genre, the counter-hegemonic elements in the texts, or the role of violence, which often informs apocalyptic imagery.

This seminar is designed to provide a historical overview of the ecclesiastical and political society in which Dante was nourished and from which he was exiled in order better to understand this great fourteenth century Christian epic, known originally simply as the Commedia, the poem in three large parts we will spend our time reading critically against that background. We will be using some of Dante's minor works and his own biography to appreciate the poem more deeply. Among the medieval ecclesiastical and political themes we will be studying include the medieval mystical and neoplatonic tradition of journeys (itineraria) to God; the influence of scholastic, especially Thomistic theology; the four-fold sense of scriptural interpretation; the late-medieval papacy; the strife between Guelfs and Ghibellines; the influence of Roman epic; the inspiration of St. Francis and the Franciscans; the rise of the city; numerological patterns, especially threes, in pre-modern Christian thought; the medieval cosmos; and the literary afterlife of the poem.

The seminar will focus on both ethical discourses in the NT and on the ethics of interpretation Special attention will be given to the rhetoric of subordination and empire and how they have shaped the theological vision, symbolic worlds and rhetorical practices of NT writings. We also will explore how the theoethical discourses of the NT have shaped and still shape religious communities and society today. The seminar will engage in a collaborative style of learning.

Whatever else the word modern means, it has named a crisis in European and American styles or a crisis of inheritance for traditional forms--a crisis of confidence about form as such. Histories of modern arts or literatures tell familiar stories about how the crisis played itself out by defacing the old or improvising the new. It is not so obvious what story could be told about modern Christian theology. Indeed, it may not be clear how much modern theology there has been in this sense--namely, theology written as deliberate response to a general crisis of form. This course will pose the question, what modernity means for writing about God. It will look within and beyond theology's academic boundaries to a selection of formally deliberate texts in a variety of genres, from scriptural commentary to massmarket fiction. These texts will include works by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Barth, Dorothy Day, Simone Weil, Leo Strauss, and Michel Foucault, among others.

At the center of the Summa of Theology, the reader finds a broad analysis of the motives and purposes of human action. But the analysis remains incomplete until Thomas takes up the incarnation, narrated life, and memorial sacraments of the Christ. Incarnation is the pedagogical principle that makes moral formation possible. It also justifies the teaching of Christian theology, not least in a summa. This course will read selected questions from Thomas's Summa. It will seek to understand the logic of divine teaching that explains God's choice to become incarnate, the events of Jesus's life, and the legacy of sacramental scenes of instruction. It will then ask how this logic was already at work in Thomas's description of moral life, perhaps especially in his treatments of the passions, the succession of laws, and vocation to a way of life.

Christian theology has long relied on notions about images to declare its central doctrines. Human beings are said to be made in the image of God, and Jesus Christ is the image of the one he called Father. But Christian theology has also both explained and regulated images in more ordinary cases, whether of experience or of art. This seminar will read a selection of theological works in order to think about the theology of images. It will begin with earlier Christian texts and their philosophical conversation-partners. It will then juxtapose recent works of Christian theology with contemporary philosophical critiques of images and their viewers.

Early Christians wrote their ethical teaching not only in response to existing religious law or rite, but in competition with philosophical programs for soul-shaping. The religious traditions and the philosophic schools alike wanted to discipline bodily actions and passions, but even more to elicit certain roles or characters. This course reads some ancient philosophical examples of ethical persuasion before turning to early and medieval Christian texts that want to surpass them in power to shape lives.

Whatever else it might be, European "modernity" is a transformation in Christian projects for ethics. Controversies over Reformation can conceal how far both Protestant and Roman Catholic writers begin to make modern assumptions about moral learning or to exercise modern forms of control over moral subjects. The course will try to trace some of this transformation and the increasingly radical reactions to it without pretending to any completion. Readings will include major texts from the Reformation through the 19th century.

An analysis of select theologians in their approach to the knowledge and the nature of God. Special attention will be paid to their theological method and philosophical presuppositions.

In this course we will examine the emergence in the interwar period in Europe, especially in Italy and Germany of fascist and totalitarian regimes. The focus of the course will be on the relationship of the churches to these regimes and to the importance and effects of antisemitism in these regimes. Note: Minimum of one year of European history, preferably in the post-medieval period.

This course will study the role of Christian images, theologies, traditions, histories, and identities in contemporary American fiction. The course will seek to ask what it might mean for a literary text to bear religious meaning in contemporary America. What does it mean for a text (or a person, for that matter) to be religious in America today? We will pursue these questions primarily through the study of literary texts (novels and short stories) published within the last twenty years, with authors to include Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Lorrie Moore, among others.

According to one narrative, the encounter or collision of feminist, liberationist, and erotic theologies mainly within Christianity has produced something called queer theology. Wherever it comes from, whatever its exact genealogy, queer theology has attracted or claimed writers working on the whole range of theological topics, from scriptural exegesis or doctrines of God to ethics and liturgy. This course will attempt both to sample what has been written and to speculate about what might be written next.

This course will examine the writing of American religious history from the nineteenth century until the present. In the first part of the course, we will trace the creation of an American religious historical canon. Readings will include Robert Baird's Religion in America (1844), William Warren Sweet's The Story of Religions in America (1930) and Sydney E. Ahlstrom's A Religious History of the American People (1972). In the second part of the course, we will explore the transformation of the field of American religious history since the 1970s. In addition to reading textbooks such as Catherine Albanese's America: Religion and Religions (1981) and George Marsden's Religion and American Culture (1990), we will read case studies of new approaches and methodologies. Our goal is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of both the canon and the new religious history that has taken its place.

An in-depth analysis of the investigation into and construction and critique of "religious experience" in philosophy of religion, theology, critical religious thought and contemporary neuroscience. Issues will include asking what is at stake in the appeal to experience, what experience is or might be, and what evidence for such experiences currently looks like. Authors will include Edwards. James, Katz, Otto, Proudfoot, Schleiermacher, as well as contemporary neuroscientists.

A close reading of major works of Kant relevant to theology and philosophy of religion. The seminar focuses on issues such as the nature and limits of reason, the concepts of freedom, morality and faith, and the idea of God.

Practices of piety that are also acts of protest provide access to contemporary developments relating religion, gender and sexuality. This course historicizes current women's cultures of protest within, against and on behalf of their religious faiths. Case studies drawn primarily from Judaism, Christianity and Islam include ecological critiques; the resurgence of the veil in Islam; the ordination of women; the return to orthodoxy in Judaism; as well as consolidations of heterosexuality. The course concludes by interrogating international iconoclastic political protests in light of earlier feminist art work in which the female body is a site of piety and protest, such as Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party.

Readings will vary each year. 2014-15 Topic: Hysteria, Trauma, Melancholy.

This advanced level seminar engages on selected works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It focuses on the influence of Christian ideas on his work and the relationship between philosophy and theology. It also engages the works of thinkers influenced by Merleau-Ponty, including Franz Fanon, Judith Butler, and others.

What does it mean to study South Asian religions in a postcolonial context, in the wake of scathing critique, in light of the work of Said, Chakrabarthy, Inden, Pollock, and others? Through careful examination of recent works in the field, this seminar explores the current state of Hindu Studies and assesses possible directions for future work.

The first section of this course will study writings that exhort us to take up the Buddhist path. The second part will turn to meditation theory. The third section will consider how study of the modes of being encouraged in path writings can shed light on the relationship between meditation practice and breakthrough. The course readings, all in English translation, will be chapters from Visuddhimagga, Abhidharmako&#7777a, Abhisamayalamkara, and Indo-Tibetan path literature.

We will read contemporary autobiographical works by Western authors of 'Arab' and Iranian heritage - Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. - paying particular attention to issues of religion, gender and identity, and to exploring how these are at play in the texts and in authorial constructions of self, history, and meaning.

Reading and research conducted in a specific foreign language, normally French or German, to satisfy the modern language reading proficiency requirement for PhD students in the Study of Religion.

The Religion, Gender, and Culture Colloquium explores the intersections of feminist theory with feminist theologies and gender studies in religion.

Topic for 2014-15: Authors, Books, Religion: Ancient Christianity. The course will consider material, social, economic, and political practices with regard to Christians' production and use of books. The goals of the course are to introduce students to current work being done on these issues, to bring the results of this work to bear on early Christian literature, and to examine the implications of these shifts in understanding about the nature and inter-relationship of authors, writing(s), and religion.

Biweekly presentation of research projects.

Presentation and discussion of the research of doctoral candidates in American religious history.