DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

(Fall 2022, Dr. Ashley King)
About half of LGBTQ+ Americans identify as religious, though their stories may be less familiar to us than stories of religious oppression and acrimony. Today, conservative religious institutions lead the opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and provide the public framework for discrimination against queer people. Is religion homophobic and transphobic? Does it have to be?

This course explores how queer religious people in America, past and present, have made sense of their lives as queer and religious. We will ask how religion has shaped queer people’s self-understanding as queer, and how queerness has shaped their understanding of faith through their stories of coming out, conversion, transition, diaspora, desire, loss, and healing from spiritual trauma. We will identify the many contributions queer people have made to American religious history—sometimes while hiding their rainbow under a bushel.

Course materials comprise multiple genres of academic writing (history, theory, theology, ethnography, and cultural criticism) and popular media (memoir, fiction, film, podcasts, music, and social media), drawn from Native American religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Haitian Vodou, and New Age spiritualities like tarot and astrology. Instruction will focus on developing critical thinking, reading, and writing skills through familiarizing first-year students with basic research methods and strategies designed to prepare them for college-level research in any humanities field.

(Fall 2022, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
The unifying theme of this seminar is gender and Buddhism. We take as our point of departure Carolyn Bynum's statement: "No scholar studying religion, no participant in ritual, is ever neuter. Religious experience is the experience of men and women, and in no known society is this experience the same." Bearing this in mind, we will explore historical, textual and social questions relevant to gender in the Buddhist worlds of India, Tibet, and the Himalayas from the time of Buddhism's origins to the present day. Topics covered in this course will include the roles of women, men, femininity, and masculinity in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhism and the family, gender and the body in Mahayana Buddhism, the roles of female goddess figures such as dakinisin Vajrayana Buddhism, Buddhism and sexuality, and the status of Buddhist nuns. Counts towards Religion, Sexuality, and Gender (RSG) religious studies major concentration.

1. Animality, Monstrosity, and Transformation;
2. Demons, Golems, and Jinn;
3. Magic and Necromancy; and
4. Death and Crossing Over.

Each unit will feature selections of medieval literature and art, as well works of media that interpret the middle ages (Monty Python and the Holy Grail; The Seventh Seal) or illuminate the endurance of these themes in the modern world (Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, episodes of Stranger Things, scenes from The Matrix). Drawing on secondary readings and short lectures, we will explore this material from a range of critical and theoretical perspectives, including queer theory, disability theory, and race theory. Students will each produce a creative final project that draws on medieval sources and modern media to explore how the strange, the supernatural, and the macabre can be used to circumscribe and demonize particular groups; or how they can be used radically and subversively by marginalized communities as they work to thrive in strange, hostile worlds. Counts towards Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) religious studies major concentration.