Religious Studies

Courses

RLST 510a, Method and Theory  Travis Zadeh

Required seminar for doctoral students in Religious Studies. Others admitted with instructor’s permission.
T 9:25am-11:15am

RLST 522b / HIST 565b, Early Modern Spain  Carlos Eire

Reading and discussion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish texts (all available in English translation) and also in recent scholarship on early modern Spain.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

RLST 537b, Readings in Indo-Islamic Texts  Supriya Gandhi

Close readings from a wide range of Persian and/or Urdu texts produced in South Asia. The selection of texts accommodates the research interests of enrolled students.
W 2:30pm-4:20pm

RLST 538a, Religion and State in Early Modern South Asia  Supriya Gandhi

Exploration of religion, state, and society during a formative period in South Asian history, from 1500 to 1800. Topics include models of empire and sovereignty, spheres of temporal and religious authority, the circulation of texts and ideas across regions, linguistic and religious traditions, and vernacular literary and religious cultures. We also consider the question of epistemological disruption arising out of colonial rule.
W 2:30pm-4:20pm

RLST 567a / SAST 562a, Readings in Pali Texts  Phyllis Granoff

In this course we read a selection of ritual texts from India’s three classical religions, Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Prerequisite: a knowledge of Sanskrit.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 592b / HIST 888b, Society and Religion on the Silk Road  Eric Greene and Valerie Hansen

An introduction to artifacts and documents pertaining to social history and religion from the most important sites on the Northern and Southern Silk Roads in China, including Niya, Kizil, Turfan, and Dunhuang. Assigned readings are in English. Readers of Chinese also participate in a separate section reading documents in classical Chinese from Turfan and Dunhuang.
W 1:30pm-5:20pm

RLST 594a / EALL 700a / EAST 700, The Three Teachings in Medieval China  Lucas Bender and Eric Greene

This course explores intersections between the Three Teachings—Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism—in late medieval China, focusing on the seventh through the ninth century. Too often studied in isolation from one another, these religious and intellectual teachings were deeply intertwined throughout this period, and scholars aiming to understand the religious, intellectual, and literary history of the Tang need to be able to read broadly across their boundaries. All primary readings are in classical/literary Chinese. Open to undergraduates with sufficient language skills. Prerequisite: reading ability in classical/literary Chinese.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

RLST 595a, Readings in Indian Philosophy  Phyllis Granoff

In this course we read selections from a variety of sanskrit texts, the samkhyatatvakaumudi, madhyamika karika, brahmasutra bhasya, and pramananayatattvalokalankara.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 598b / EAST 511b, Modern Korean Buddhism from Sri Lanka to Japan  Hwansoo Kim

This course situates modern Korean Buddhism in the global context of the late nineteenth century to the present. Through critical examination of the dynamic relationship between Korean Buddhism and the Buddhisms of key East Asian cities—Shanghai, Tokyo, Taipei, and Lhasa—the course seeks to understand modern East Asian Buddhism in a transnational light. Discussion includes analyzing the impact of Christian missionaries, pan-Asian and global ideologies, colonialism, Communism, capitalism, war, science, hypermodernity, and atheism.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 613a / CLSS 877a / CPLT 556a, Rhetorics of the Ancient World  Michal Beth Dinkler and Irene Peirano

This interdisciplinary course takes as its starting point Greco-Roman rhetoric as a codified system and explores its relevance for contemporary interpretation of ancient texts. Moving back and forth between rhetoric as a set of norms and rhetoric as a condition of discourse, we engage with contemporary rhetorical studies in Classics and Biblical studies. Topics include rhetoric and narrative, exemplarity and imitation across the literary and spiritual realms, “anti-rhetoricism,” embedded rhetorical performances (e.g., speeches, oratory, etc.), and nonverbal forms of persuasion (e.g., visual, emotional, etc.).
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 649a, Jesus to Muhammad: Ancient Christianity to the Rise of Islam  Stephen Davis

The history of Christianity and the development of Western culture from Jesus to the early Middle Ages. The creation of orthodoxy and heresy; Christian religious practice; philosophy and theology; politics and society; gender; Christian literature in its various forms, up to and including the early Islamic period.
TTh 11:35am-12:25pm

RLST 653a, Gnostic Texts in Coptic  Harold Attridge

The course reads selected portions of important texts from the Nag Hammadi collection, including the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, Thunder, the Treatise on Resurrection, the Tripartite Tractate, as well as other noncanonical texts preserved in Coptic, including the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas. Prerequisite: EGYP 510 or equivalent.
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

RLST 658b / EGYP 512b, Egyptian Monastic Literature in Coptic  Stephen Davis

Readings in the early Egyptian classics of Christian ascetism in Sahidic Coptic, including the Desert Fathers and Shenoute. Prerequisite: EGYP 510b or equivalent.
TTh 9am-10:15am

RLST 691a / HIST 560a, Society and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe  Carlos Eire

Readings in primary texts from the period 1500–1700 that focus on definitions of the relationship between the natural and supernatural realms, both Catholic and Protestant. Among the topics covered: mystical ecstasy, visions, apparitions, miracles, and demonic possession. All assigned readings in English translation.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

RLST 703a, Interrogating the Crisis of Islam  Zareena Grewal

In official and unofficial discourses in the United States, diagnoses of Islam’s various “crises” are ubiquitous, and Muslim “hearts and minds” are viewed as the “other” front in the War on Terror. Since 9/11, the U.S. State Department has made the reform of Islam an explicit national interest, pouring billions of dollars into USAID projects in Muslim-majority countries, initiating curriculum development programs for madrasas in South Asia, and establishing the Arabic Radio Sawa and the satellite TV station Al-Hurra to propagate the U.S. administration’s political views as well as what it terms a “liberal” strain of Islam. Muslim Americans are also consumed by debates about the “crisis” of Islam, a crisis of religious authority in which the nature and rapidity of change in the measures of authority are felt to be too difficult to assimilate. This course maps out the various and deeply politically charged contemporary debates about the “crisis of Islam” and the question of Islamic reform through an examination of official U.S. policy, transnational pulp Islamic literature, fatwas and essays authored by internationally renowned Muslim jurists and scholars, and historical and ethnographic works that take up the category of crisis as an interpretive device.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 705b / AMST 705b / HIST 582b, Readings in Religion in American Society, 1600–2018  Tisa Wenger

This seminar explores intersections of religion and society in American history from the colonial period to the present as well as methodological problems important to their study. It is designed to give graduate students a working knowledge of the field, ranging from major recent studies to bibliographical tools. In short, the seminar is a broad readings course surveying religion in American history from colonization to the present. It is not a specialized research seminar, but it does require a basic understanding of historiography.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 715a, The Theology and Philosophy of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi  Frank Griffel

Recent research has shown that Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was the most influential Muslim theologian in the so-called postclassical period in Islam after 1100. In his works, Islamic theology and philosophy reached a mature state that brings together several intellectual traditions, among them that of classical Ash’arism, of Aristotelian philosophy (falsafa), of al-Ghazali’s critique of falsafa, and of Sufism. The kind of synthesis that Fakhr al-Din al-Razi created dominated the education of Sunni theologians up to the mid-eighteenth century, when the confrontation with modernity created new priorities. This seminar takes a close look at this understudied thinker. The goal is to understand the most widespread kind of Islamic theology of the centuries between 1200 and 1750, a time that is not yet covered in textbooks on Islamic intellectual history. We read selections of Fakhr al-Din’s work in the Arabic original. Prerequisites: a firm grounding in classical Arabic and permission of the instructor.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 717a, Islamic Theology and Philosophy  Frank Griffel

Historical survey of major themes in Muslim theology and philosophy, from teachings of the Qur’an to contemporary Muslim thought. The systematic character of Muslim thought and of the arguments given by thinkers; reason vs. revelation; the emergence of Sunnism in the tenth through eleventh centuries; the reaction of Muslim theology (from 1800) to the challenges of the West; and contemporary Muslim thought.
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

RLST 720b, The Qur’an and Its Interpretation  Gerhard Böwering

Intensive study of the Qur’an with special emphasis on its biblical roots. Readings in Arabic commentaries on the Qur’an. Prerequisites: advanced knowledge of Arabic and permission of the instructor.
T 4pm-6pm

RLST 724b / NELC 775b, Topics in Islamic Cosmography  Travis Zadeh

Arabic readings on creation and design drawn from early Quranic exegesis, hadith, theology, the lives of prophets and saints, natural histories, geographies, and encyclopedias.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

RLST 731a, Islam, Conquest, and Conversion  Travis Zadeh

Through examination of conquest and religious conversion in the formative periods of Islamic history, this course interrogates the idea that Islam was spread by violent domination. Case studies are drawn from the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, Iberia, and West Africa.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 733a, Seminar on Sufism  Gerhard Böwering

A study of Islamic asceticism and mysticism with emphasis on the early development of Sufism. Readings in Arabic Sufi sources of the ninth to eleventh century. Prerequisites: reading knowledge of classical Arabic and permission of the instructor.
T 4pm-6pm

RLST 739b, Jonathan Edwards and American Puritanism  Harry Stout and Kenneth Minkema

This course offers students an opportunity for intensive reading in and reflections upon the significance of early America’s premier philosophical theologian through an examination of the writings of the Puritans, through engagement with Edwards’s own writings, and through selected recent studies of Euro-Indian contact. Through primary and secondary literature, the course familiarizes students with the life and times of Edwards and encourages reading and discussion about his background, historical and intellectual contexts, and legacy.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 746a / JDST 736a / NELC 701a, Midrash Seminar: The Exodus from Egypt  Steven Fraade

The Exodus from Egypt as seen through rabbinic eyes. Close readings of the early rabbinic commentary (midrash), Mekhilta, to the narrative of Exodus 13:17ff (the lection Beshallah). Particular attention to the methods and language of rabbinic exegesis and to the rhetorical interplay of tradition and scriptural commentary. Interpretations and interpretive strategies compared and contrasted with those of other ancient biblical exegetes (Jewish and non-Jewish) where available. Prerequisite: reading fluency in ancient Hebrew.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

RLST 751b, Introduction to Judaism in the Ancient World: From Temple to Talmud  Steven Fraade

The emergence of classical Judaism in its historical setting. Jews and Hellenization; varieties of early Judaism; apocalyptic and postapocalyptic responses to suffering and catastrophe; worship and atonement without sacrificial cult; interpretations of scriptures; law and life; the rabbi; the synagogue; faith in reason; Sabbath and festivals; history and its redemption.
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

RLST 752a / JDST 727a / NELC 702a, Mishnah Seminar: Tractate Sanhedrin  Steven Fraade

Close study of a section of the Mishnah, the earliest digest of Jewish law, treating religious courts and their jurisprudential practice. Dual attention to the historical significance of the institutions of law represented and to the cultural significance of the rhetoric of that representation. Consideration of the textual practices of rabbinic legal discourse in relation to its social function, as well as to the interplay of law and narrative. Prerequisite: reading fluency in ancient Hebrew.
W 9:25am-11:15am

RLST 756b / JDST 756b, Ancient Judaism Seminar: Modalities of History in Ancient Judaism  Steven Fraade and John Collins

This seminar, required of all doctoral students in the fields of New Testament, Ancient Christianity, and Ancient Judaism, examines a wide range of approaches to the writing and interpretation of history in the form of Jewish texts and images from Greco-Roman times. Possible topics for oral presentations and written papers include the books of Maccabees, Hellenistic Jewish historians, the Letter of Aristeas, Philo, Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, early Christian writers, early rabbinic chronologies and midrash, and synagogue art. Among the questions to be asked of each: To what extent do the historical perspectives of these texts allow or impede their employment for the critical writing of history? To what extent are they products or shapers of social memory? How might we understand them as historically performative, rhetorical enactments? Prerequisite: reading competence in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 763a / JDST 701a, The Bible  Christine Hayes

This course introduces students to the writings common to both Jewish and Christian scripture (the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh found in all Bibles) and examines these writings as diverse and often conflicting expressions of the religious life and thought of ancient Israel as well as a foundational element of Western civilization. Special emphasis on the writings’ cultural and historical setting in the ancient Near East; close reading of selected passages; the interpretive history of selected passages influential in Western culture. Students are also introduced to a wide range of critical and literary approaches to biblical studies, including source criticism, tradition criticism, redaction criticism, and contemporary literary criticism. Students view course lectures, which survey the entire Bible, online; class time focuses on comparative materials, close readings, and the interpretation of specific biblical passages in Jewish and Christian culture.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

RLST 774b, History of Jewish Culture, 1500 to the Present  David Sorkin

A broad introduction to the history of Jewish culture from the late Middle Ages until the present. Emphasis on the changing interaction of Jews with the larger society as well as the transformation of Judaism in its encounter with modernity.
MW 2:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 775a / CPLT 688a / JDST 842a, Political Theology  Hannan Hever

This course investigates the theological aspects of modern political ideologies. Subjects include sovereignty, universalism, law, election, commandment, and messianism. Primary readings include Carl Schmitt, Martin Buber, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Daniel Boyarin, and Giorgio Agamben.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

RLST 776a / HIST 601a / JDST 790a, Jewish History, Thought, and Narratives in Medieval Societies  Ivan Marcus

Research seminar that focuses on the two medieval Jewish subcultures of Ashkenaz (northern Christian Europe) and Sefarad (mainly Muslim and Christian Spain).
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 782a / JDST 654a, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Judaism  John Collins

This course explores various forms of early biblical interpretation in the Second Temple period, including Philo and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and implicit interpretations in biblical paraphrases. Prerequisites: Hebrew and Greek.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 797a / HIST 597a / JDST 861a, Twentieth-Century Jewish Politics: Holocaust, Israel, and American History  David Sorkin

This course explores the changing nature of Jewish politics in relationship to three of the twentieth century’s major events. First we examine Jewish political behavior during the Holocaust, especially the notion of “resistance” vis-à-vis the so-called Jewish councils and the controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Second, we probe the continuities and discontinuities in the establishment of the State of Israel, focusing on the politics of the “Yishuv” (Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine) and its relationship to British imperialism. Third, we analyze shifts in the domestic and foreign policies of the organized American Jewish community during the era of the civil rights movement (1946–64).
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

RLST 799b / HIST 587b / JDST 793b, Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought  Eliyahu Stern