2nd 8-week course. What is religion? Where does it come from? What does it do? How should we study it? This course introduces students to the many different ways that theorists and scholars of religion have tried to answer these questions.
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2nd 8-week course. This course examines the debates which continue to shape contemporary understandings of what it means to be ‘religious’ and ‘American.’
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This course considers the ways that religion and sports are alike and argues that you can learn a great deal about one through careful attention to the other.
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We will explore a range of reading practices and themes within the Bible, especially the significance of particular interpretive issues for ancient and modern religious communities.
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This course surveys the development of Buddhism, from its origins in India to its subsequent expansion across the globe, including its presence in the United States.
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Our goal is to gain a basic understanding of Hinduism as a religious tradition, to expand our own ideas of what it means to be human, and to broaden our understanding of what “religion” is.
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What is Christianity? What does it mean to be Christian? How should a Christian act in the world? In asking these questions, this course draws upon key texts, themes, concepts, and practices. In doing so, it reveals that Christianity might just be both a possibility and an impossibility.
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This course involves an introductory examination of Deep Ecology from a Religious Studies perspective that investigates traditions in terms of their thought, action, and communities.
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This course begins by learning about the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, and about the similarities and differences between Islam and other monotheistic religions. Then we will explore how Muslims put into practice God’s teachings—and the various resulting outcomes.
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In this course will introduce students to ways of reading the Hebrew Bible with attentiveness to imperial power in ancient and modern contexts.
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This course explores how ancient Indians answered these questions in the Mahābhārata, a foundational text of Indian civilization.
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This course thinks about the weirdness of American religion in the 19th century—a time when scientific discovery, migration, free love, new revelations, and political resistance led to the development of new religious movements and radical challenges to established religious groups.
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This course thinks about the Americas (with particular attention to the Caribbean and the United States) as a simultaneous racial, religious, and political formation.
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This course asks what superheroes can tell us about religion, spirituality, and science—as well as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and class and age—in American culture.
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This discussion-oriented course introduces students to Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, and the East Asian diaspora.
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This course surveys the history and literature of ancient Christianity from its origins as a Jewish sect in Palestine to its establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fifth century.
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This course introduces the early history of monastic traditions in late ancient Syria and Egypt, focusing pioneers like Antony the Great and the desert fathers, Evagrius Ponticus, Pachomius, Symeon Stylites and Messalian monks. We will study how they disciplined themselves, organized their communities, conceptualized and fought with demons, and prayed to God.
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Who are evangelicals? What do they believe, and how do they behave? Should non-evangelicals be worried about them? This course explores the causes, nature, and implications of evangelical influence through the lenses of history, literature, and religious studies.
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This course explores Buddhist art and its multiple social and ritual contexts, with particular attention given to works produced in India and Tibet.
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This course explores the ways in which sacred biography is used in various contexts to develop theories of authority and history.
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This course focuses on tourism, a major aspect of globalization that involves the cross-cultural consumption of experience.
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The College of Arts