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  • REL 203: Judaism: Innovation and Tradition

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    What is the relationship between modern notions of Jewish identity, thought and practice and the Hebrew Bible? How does the modern Reform movement link itself to the laws of the rabbinic sages? Are there consistent values and ideals that mark Jewish moral thought throughout its history? What elements of the Jewish tradition have enabled its elasticity and historic persistence? By providing an introduction to the traditions of Jewish thought and practice through the ages, this course will take up these questions. Though the course's method of progression will be primarily chronological, commencing with myths of Israel's beginnings and culminating with contemporary debates over Jewish identity, we will additionally emphasize the strong ties between methods of Jewish thought and practices and the surrounding cultural environments in which they developed. We will approach the tradition not only with historical concerns, but with literary and philosophical aims as well. We will analyze the interpretive strategies, theological presuppositions, and political aims that accompany the tradition both in its continuities and its ruptures. Finally, we will consider the extent to which we can speak of Judaism under the category of religion, considering as well the other categories that have been proposed for Judaism, Jews and Jewishness, such as nation, people, race and ethnicity, and the motivations behind such designations. Texts will include the Hebrew Bible, Holz (ed), Back to the Sources; Halbertal, People of the Book; Mendelssohn, Jerusalem; Hertzberg (ed), The Zionist Idea; Levi, Survival in Auschwitz as well as excerpts and articles available in a course packet.
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  • REL 206: The Book of Job and Joban Literature

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    The Book of Job has often been described as the most philosophical book of the Hebrew Bible. The story of one man's struggle to understand the cause of his suffering and his relationship to God represents the finest flowering of the Near Eastern wisdom literature tradition. Through its exploration of fundamental issues concerning human suffering, fate and divinity, and the nature of philosophical self-examination, Job has served as a touchstone for the entire history of existential literature. At the same time, the sheer poetic force of the story has inspired some of the greatest artistic and literary meditations in the Western tradition. This course will engage in a close reading of the Book of Job in its full cultural, religious, and historical context with special attention to its literary, philosophical, and psychological dimensions. We will then proceed to investigate key modern works in several genres that involve Joban motifs, themes, and text both explicitly and implicitly. These texts will include Franz Kafka's The Trial, Archibald MacLeish's J.B., Robert Frost's "Masque of Reason," Carl Jung's Answer to Job, and William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job. All readings are in translation.
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  • REL 208: Ancient Greek Religion

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    This course explores the nature and evolution of ancient Greek religion from the Bronze Age (1200s BCE) to the rise of Christianity, with a focus on ritual and cultic practices in their cultural and historical context. We will draw on the rich evidence provided by literary and documentary texts, and also take into account archaeological evidence, including works of art such as sculpture and vase painting. We will pay special attention to ritual in civic and political life, and its role in expressing and forming individual and group identity. We will also examine the intersection of religion and literature by reading works that describe or depict cultic practice, or that were composed for performance in ritual contexts. Readings include Homer's Iliad, Hesiod's Theogony, Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmophoria, and selections from the Homeric Hymns and Pindar's Odes.
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  • REL 210: Reading Jesus, Writing Gospels: Christian Origins in Context

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    What were the religious and cultural landscapes in which Christianity emerged? How did inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean world speak about the concept and significance of religion? How have scholars of early Christianity answered these questions? What are the implications of their various readings of early Christian history? In the first half of this course, we shall address these questions by examining the formation of Christianity from its origins as a Jewish movement until its legalization, using a comparative socio-historical approach. In the second half of the course, we shall examine the earliest literature produced by the Jesus movement and consider it within a comparative framework developed in the first half of the course. Prerequisite:    Open to all classes
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  • REL 214: History of Christian Thought: Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    This class will familiarize students with the history of Christian theology, its major trends, figures, and debates, roughly from the fifth century C.E. to the mid-thirteenth century C.E. We will focus on the transition from Roman antiquity to the medieval period, paying particular attention to the rise of scholasticism and monastic theology, the role of Biblical interpretation in theology, shifting notions of authority, and the institutional context of theology in the Roman Church. Course readings will focus on primary source materials. Authors/texts include: Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius, Gregory the Great, John Scottus Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Victorines, and Bonaventure.
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  • REL 215: History of Christian Thought: High Middle Ages and Early Modernity

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    This class will familiarize students with major trends in Western European Christian thought during the late medieval and early modern periods, from the middle of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century. We will focus on: (1) trends in high scholasticism, including the impact of Greek philosophy on theological method; (2) the increasing diversity of theological expression in vernacular and in professional contexts; (3) shifting views on liturgy, human freedom, and divine power; (4) the meaning of history and tradition. Authors include: Albert the Great; Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Marguerite Porete, Hadewijch, Angela of Foligno, Meister Eckhart, William of Ockham, and Nicholas of Cusa.
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  • REL 216: Greek Art and the Gods

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    In the Iliad, when the god Apollo is visualized, it is as a man, angry in his heart, coming down from the peaks of Olympos, bow and quiver on his shoulders, the arrows clanging as the god moves, "like the coming of night," to bring dogs, horses, and men to their deaths. By the end of the Classical period, one statue of the archer god depicted him as a boy teasing a lizard. In this course, we will examine the development of the images the Greek gods and goddesses, from their superhuman engagement in the heroic world of epic, to their sometimes sublime artistic presence, complex religious function, and transformation into metaphors in aesthetic and philosophical thought. The course will cover the basic stylistic, iconographical, narrative, and ritual aspects of the gods and goddesses in ancient Greek culture. The course will address in detail influential artistic monuments, literary forms, and social phenomena, including the sculptures of Olympia and the Parthenon; divine corporeality in poetry; the theology of mortal-immortal relations; the cultural functions of visual representations of gods, and the continued interest in the gods long after the end of antiquity. Readings assignments will include selections from Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Aischylos, Euripides, Plato, Walter Burkert, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Nikolaus Himmelmann, Erika Simon, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
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  • REL 221: Modern Christian Thought

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    Christianity in the Western world has undergone numerous challenges since the early eighteenth century. Many thinkers have turned inward, developing pietistic theologies compatible with the modern world, while others have searched for an adequate expression of Christianity after the "Death of God." Another, remarkably resilient strand has actively turned against the Enlightenment in ironic ways, appropriating modern technologies, for example, while repudiating scientific discoveries that undermine their belief. This course will examine these issues, along with a careful consideration of the way gender, identity, and community have come to play a powerful role in contemporary expressions of Christian belief.
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  • REL 223: Religious Roots and Trajectories of Asian Americans

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    he objective of this course is to broadly examine the meanings and significance of different forms of religious practices and beliefs among Asian Americans. It treads across many layers of diversity--from religious traditions to ethnicity, place, and time--and we will draw upon theoretically-based historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives to understand their complexities, convergences, and (dis)continuities. Thus, although the course is focused on the religious life of Asians in the U.S., it also grounds and connects this topic to Asia, societal phenomenon that shaped this society and its people, and contemporary global manifestations such as migration and diasporization. Books will include: Tony Carnes and Fenggang Yang, Asian American Religions; Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America; Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down; Kenneth J. Guest, God in Chinatown; Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America; Khyati Y. Joshi, New Roots in America's Sacred Ground: Religion, Race, and Ethnicity in Indian America.
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  • REL 228: North American Apocalyptic Thought

    3.00 Credits
    Williams College

    Apocalyptic thought pervades much of contemporary American culture, whether among Protestant evangelicals, new religions, novelists and filmmakers, or even scientists and environmentalists who warn of ecological catastrophe and the deadly consequences of nuclear proliferation. This course will introduce, using historical, sociological, and philosophical accounts, how North Americans have thought about and continue to think about questions of the End, both in a cultural and in a personal sense. Prerequisite:    Open to all
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