DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

In developing Middle-earth, Tolkien intentionally sought to create a mythology. In this course, we will read The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings as mythology. We will analyze theories of myth, examine how Tolkien's scholarship and understanding of mythology shaped his tales, and explore the mythic themes in these works. We will also consider the enduring appeal of these stories as modern myth. (Fall 2018, Professor Mark McClish)

One of the largest and most ancient of all religions, 'Hinduism' is actually a family of related traditions. Over the last 4000 years or more, the Hindu traditions of South Asia have developed an astonishing diversity of rituals, beliefs, and spiritual practices and a pantheon of hundreds of gods and goddesses, from the elephant-headed Ganesa to the fierce goddess Kali. This course will examine the breadth of the Hindu traditions as they developed over time, highlighting the shared features that make them a family, such as ritual sacrifice, world renunciation, law, spiritual discipline, devotion, worship, and theology. (Fall 2018, Professor Mark McClish)

Theology is one of the oldest academic disciplines in the university, and possibly its most misunderstood. In this course we get to know theology’s unique way of making sense of human existence on the planet. Or more precisely, we learn how to ask theological questions that have preoccupied humans for centuries: What does it mean to be human? Why does evil exist? What does God do with the world? We will address these questions by considering theologians from past, such as Martin Luther, and present, namely Black theologian James Cone and feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson. (Fall 2018, Professor Christine Helmer)

Back by popular demand, Professor Helmer's seminar "Why College?" invites students to think about their college experience in light of new research about the "crisis" in higher education today. (Fall 2018, Professor Christine Helmer)

This course will bring together Medill and Weinberg students with an interest in the politics and practices of reporting on Islam and Muslims in the United States and in U.S. foreign policy. Through a combination of readings, site visits, individual and group projects, and critical writing assignments, the goals of this course are, first, to empower students to recognize the pitfalls of how Islam and Muslims are reported and represented in U.S. print media and other formats, and second, to innovate new ways of writing about Islam and Muslims that do not replicate the Islamophobic or Islamophilic tropes that dominate much of this reporting. To these ends, the course will include a 'master class' on reporting religion led by by Manya Brachear, religion reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The course is part of the "Talking 'Religion': Publics, Politics and the Media" project which is co-directed by the instructors, and students will have an opportunity to participate in project related activities including lectures and a spring 2019 workshop. Counts towards Religion, Law and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration. (Fall 2018, Professor Brannon Ingram and Professor Elizabeth Hurd)

What is "theory"? What does it mean to have a theory about something? How are theories helpful? What do theories do? What is "religion"? How do things get excluded or included in this category? What counts as "religious" and why? Who gets to decide? This course is an introduction to foundational theories of religion and to the history of the construction of the category of "religion" over time. Throughout the term, you will be working on formulating your own theory of religion, which you will articulate and defend in your final seminar paper. In this course, you will gain (as ritual theorist Catherine Bell says) "the skills and tools to make sure that very complicated situations and ideas can be put into words, thereby making it possible to have discussions about issues that can only be discussed if there is language for reflexivity, nuance, counter-evidence, and doubt." In the process, you will be asked to make theory translatable to your peers by actively engaging theoretical concepts in creative ways. (Fall 2018, Professor Sarah Taylor)

This seminar explores theoretical approaches to the problems of embodiment/materiality/affect. One aim of the course is to examine various methodological approaches to embodiment, materiality and affect, making use of sociology and philosophy (Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Spinoza, Massumi). The second and closely related aim is to situate bodies in time and place, that is, in history. Here we look to the particular circumstances that shaped the manner in which historical actors experienced their bodies in the Christian west (Peter Brown, Caroline Bynum, Mary Carruthers, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault). Ultimately, we will be examining theoretical tools while we put them to work. The goal: how to use these thinkers to write more dynamic, creative, interesting scholarship? (Fall 2018, Professor Michelle Molina)