DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Everybody (or almost everybody?) wants to be happy, but what is happiness and how does one cultivate it? This course will consider a variety of viewpoints on the promises and pitfalls of happiness through reading an array of leading thinkers including The Dalai Lama, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Sarah Ahmed, Matthieu Ricard, and many others. (Spring 2022, Sarah Jacoby)

This course surveys recent scholarship on the links between religion and political governance in Tibet. The objective is to understand the nature of the relationship between Buddhism, governance, and politics in premodern and modern Tibetan society. Therefore, this course aims at familiarizing students with the existing theoretical literature and empirical research on this topic. Course readings will evaluate recent research on the role of Buddhist actors, institutions, and ideologies in policymaking, state-building, conflict, war, and other political processes that have characterized the history of Tibet. Themes in this course include the relevance of Buddhist monasticism in Tibetan politics, the roles of the Dalai Lamas, the institution of reincarnation as a tool of leadership, and the issue of state-sanctioned conflict and violence in Tibetan Buddhist society. (Spring 2022, Antonio Terrone)

This seminar explores the place of the body in Chinese religion, from the ancient period to the present day. In the course of this exploration, we seek to challenge our presuppositions about a seemingly simple question: what is “the body,” and how do we know? We open by considering themes of dying and the afterlife, food and drink, health and medicine, gender and family. We then turn to Daoist traditions of visual culture that envision the human body as intimately connected with the cosmos and picture the body’s interior as a miniature landscape populated by a pantheon of gods. We read ghost stories and analyze the complex history of footbinding. Finally, we conclude with two case studies of religion and the body in contemporary China, one situated on the southwestern periphery, the other in the capital city of Beijing. *Counts towards Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) and Religion, Sexuality and Gender (RSG) major concentrations. (Spring 2022, Professor Kevin Buckelew)

This course is designed as an introductory survey of Modern Jewish Thought during the modern period, from the perspective of Jewish "revolutionaries"-- individuals and movements-- that sparked radical change and transformation in how Jews expressed their Jewishness. Looking beyond Eurocentrism, we will read a variety of genres, a play, short stories, works of philosophy, political documents, and works of theology. We will begin by investigating various aspects of what constitutes varieties of the "modern" in Judaism in different parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and the Caribbean. We will also examine a variety of historiographical debates on the topic, ranging in their interpretations from the impact of 1492 to the Marrano experience of hiding one's Jewish identity to the Frankist and Sabbatian challenges to Jewish rabbinic authority as well as conversion to Islam and to Christianity. The course will look at the transformation of the economic and political roles played by Jews in modern times and their impact on Jewish religious practices and beliefs, the struggle for emancipation, the rise of antisemitism, and debates among Jews over assimilation versus Zionism. Constructions of "modern" Jewish identity and religious expressions will be studied in relation to the emergence of both Reform Judaism and Hasidism, and by examining differences between the Judaism constructed in Christian Europe and the Judaism constructed in Islamic regions. The course will also examine the crucial developments of the twentieth century, including mass migration to the United States, the Zionist movement, the Russian revolution, the Holocaust, post-WWII recovery and the establishment of the State of Israel. The differing impact of these movements on men and women will be examined, as well as the power of class and race to organize divisions of significance and meaning in the fabric of Modern Jewish Thought.  (Spring 2022, Professor Eli Rosenblatt)

Can religious make believe actually make belief? How is theatre used as both a method of evangelizing and as a platform to critique religious metanarratives? Staging the Bible will explore theatrical projects that aim to “bring the Bible to life” through adaptation. We will study biblical performances as objects of analysis and performance as a critical paradigm for understanding religious expression in the contemporary United States of America. The course will explore theatre productions that dramatize the Bible, ranging from traditional passion plays to Broadway musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and postmodern adaptations like Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi. We will investigate Evangelical projects that use theatrical apparatuses to proselytize across various sites, like Megachurches, Christian theme parks, and Creation Museums. (Spring 2022, Chelsea Taylor)

This seminar is an experiment in studying the intersections of religion, race, and global politics. We discuss how particular understandings of religion and race inform scholarship, shape national and international legal and governmental practice, and contribute to the establishment and maintenance of various social hierarchies and inequalities. Cross-cutting themes include religion and the rise of the nation-state; the politics of religious establishment, law, and freedom; race and the formation of the disciplines of religious studies, international relations and the social sciences more broadly; the formation of modern vocabularies of religious and racial exclusion including religious freedom; and race, indigeneity, and slavery in U.S. American history. (Spring 2022, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd)