DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

This course provides an introduction to key aspects of the Buddhist religious traditions of multiple Asian countries and the United States. Through careful examination of a variety of literature produced by these traditions, we will consider the ways in which Buddhists have understood human suffering, life after death, karma, merit, the nature of the world and human's place within it, and the path to enlightenment. Our emphasis will be on attempting to understand the moral values, philosophical insights, ritual practices, and social concerns that have shaped Buddhism over centuries of dynamic change in diverse cultural contexts. We will examine not only the history of Buddhism and its three-fold division into Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana, but also facets of the contemporary practice of Buddhism with a focus on the place of mindfulness in America. In addition to textbook readings, course readings privilege primary source readings in order to introduce students directly to the narrative, doctrinal, liturgical, and biographical texts that inform our knowledge of what it has meant to live a Buddhist life over time and across cultures. (Winter 2019, Professor Sarah Jacoby)

This course attempts to answer the questions "What is Judaism?" and "Who is a Jew?" by surveying the broad arc of Jewish history, reviewing the practices and beliefs that have defined and continue to define Judaism as a religion, sampling the vast treasure of Jewish literatures, and analyzing the unique social conditions that have made the cultural experience of Jewishness so significant. The class will employ a historical structure to trace the evolutions of Jewish literature, religion, and culture through the ages. (Winter 2019, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

If mysticism involves some kind of union with God, is that necessarily the same experience, involving the same deity, whether the mystics are Jews or Hindus, Christians or Muslims?  What does it mean when mystics use erotic imagery for their relationship with Christ, Krishna, or Allah?  What sorts of prayers or meditations do mystics promote, and what are they meant to accomplish?  If spirituality sometimes involves séances and healing crystals, does it also have areas of overlap with mysticism?  Which of the two, mysticism or spirituality, is more closely tied to mainstream religious traditions and institutions?  Why are mysticism and spirituality sometimes criticized and even attacked?  What basis is there to the claim that spirituality promotes health of the body or the mind?  This course will examine all these questions and others. Counts towards Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) religious studies major concentration. (Winter 2019, Professor Richard Kieckhefer)

Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, is an esoteric (secret) tradition of deliberating about and experiencing the mysteries of those spaces that are inaccessible to the five senses. Though for much of its history Jewish mysticism has been the province of a select few devotees, at times Kabbalah has flourished as a popular religious movement. Recent years have seen a rise in the popularity of Kabbalah as various celebrities (including Madonna and Kanye West) have become affiliated with The Kabbalah Center. This course will introduce the discourse of Kabbalah, think about mysticism as both an experiential and an intellectual tradition and consider why Kabbalah has become so popular today. (Winter 2019, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

Usually, Asian American religions are confused with Asian religions in the United States. This situation sometimes produces confusion about how to talk about the everyday religious practices of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders themselves, including those of Asian Americans  and Pacific Islanders who claim to be nonreligious. I have assigned some texts that might be able to help us to parse what Asian American and Pacific Islander religions are. The crux of this course will be student projects conducted over the quarter on one practice in one community of their choice exploring the question of what Asian American and/or Pacific Islander religion might be. We will begin by exploring how the confusion between Asian American religions and Asian religions came to be. We will then look more closely at the lived religious practices of Asian Americans and their communities. We will conclude by sharing our projects. (Winter 2019, Professor Justin Tse)

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 also attend to how religious myths and imagery are sampled and remixed by science fiction authors to plot an alternative course for world history. Counts towards Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) and Religion, Sexuality and Gender (RSG) religious studies major concentrations. (Winter 2019, Ashley King)

This seminar is an experiment in studying the intersections of religion, race, and global politics. We discuss how particular understandings of ‘religion’ and ‘race’ have informed contemporary scholarship and also shaped national and international legal and governmental practice. These questions are examined in contexts ranging from anti-superstition laws in Haiti, to religious aspects of the colonial encounter in the Dutch East Indies, to the celebration of “moderate” religion at the US State Department, to the politics of secularism, magic and spirituality in India and China, and beyond. Cross-cutting themes include religion and the rise of the nation-state; the politics of religious establishment and religious freedom; the role of race in the formation of the disciplines of religious studies and international relations; the formation of modern vocabularies of religious and racial exclusion; the role of race and secularism in American history at home and abroad, and the international politics of religion and race in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Readings are comprised of books and articles, including new and not yet published work, which draw on international politics, religion, political theory, law, anthropology and history. (Winter 2019, Professor Elizabeth Shakman Hurd)