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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
This course provides an introduction to Islam and Muslim societies. It familiarizes students with the basic teachings and practices of Islam and examines commonalties and diversity in how Islam has been and continues to be practiced by Muslims, paying particular attention to peoples and places in South Asia and the Middle East. We further examine colonial and postcolonial relations through which the West and Islamic world have come to understood as mutually distinct and antithetical to one another and as historical and contemporary forms of global and transnational interrelatedness that belie simplistic binaries and oppositions.
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1.00 Credits
This course is an introduction to Buddhism in its major historical variations. Using both selected secondary sources and primary texts in translation, we will examine "Buddhism" as the product of two ongoing and historically situated discourses: the one belonging to scholars of Buddhism, and the other to the tradition itself. The course begins with the "mainstream" tradition of early India, continues through the Mahayana transformation in South and East Asia, and concludes with a comparative look at the Buddhist traditions of Tibet and Japan and the relevance of these movements for contemporary "Western" Buddhism.
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1.00 Credits
With the dawning of the Age of Reason, Western societies began to witness the gradual erosion--or in some cases, the violent upheaval--of nearly every traditional source of religious and political authority. Events like the Protestant and English Reformations, the invention of the printing press, the emergence of modern science, and the revolutions in France, America, and Haiti prompted the opening of a profound rift between the claims of reason and the claims of revelation. This course will examine some major texts that evaluate the claims of religion in the light of philosophy, or vice versa, to navigate the modern distinction between the sacred and the secular.
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1.00 Credits
The widespread transnational migration of Muslims to North America, Australia, and Europe and the proliferation of interregional and globalizing Islamic movements raise a number of thematic issues this course will explore: How do Muslims understand differences between themselves and non-Muslims, how do Muslims apprehend and manage differences among themselves, and what transnational and interregional forms of identification and sociopolitical forms of organizing do they develop? We will examine these questions not only in relation to contemporary Muslim movements, but historical precursors as well.
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1.00 Credits
Do Hamas, the Taliban, and the Christian Coalition have anything in common? All have been described as forms of religious nationalism. Recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and elsewhere have led political scientists and the popular media to the conclusion that when religion is mixed with nationalism the results are inherently explosive. Yet the annals of anthropology show that violent religious nationalism is only one of many forms of the relationship between religion and politics. Anthropological approaches allow us to think beyond the simplistic picture often presented in the media. Why is religion so effective at mobilizing groups? Is secular nationalism really secular? How does religious nationalism create arguments and motivate its adherents? This course examines the theoretical underpinnings of the current debate on religious nationalism, exploring arguments about the relationships between religion and group identity, religion and modernity, modernity and religious nationalism.
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1.00 Credits
This course will focus on two questions that have thwarted and enthralled scientists, philosophers, and theologians for millennia: Where have we come from? and Where are we going? By reading ancient Greek and early Christian sources alongside contemporary astrophysicists, we will witness the reconfigured resurrection of some very old debates about the creation and unmaking of the world. Is the universe eternal, or was it created? Is it finite or infinite? Destructible or indestructible? Linear or cyclical? And is ours the only universe, or are there others? The semester will be divided into four sections. The first will explore the dominant, or "inflationary," version of the big bang hypothesis in relation to the Christian doctrine of creation. The second will consider the possibility that the whole universe might be a negligible part of a vast "multiverse," in conversation with the early Greek atomists, who posited an extra-cosmic space teeming with other worlds. The third will explore contemporary cyclical cosmologies--that is, theories that posit a rebirth of the cosmos out of its fiery destruction--in relation to early Stoic philosophy and cross-cultural cyclic mythologies. The fourth will explore quantum cosmologies, in which the universe fragments into parallel branches each time a particle "decides" upon a position. We will examine these varied "cosmologies of multiplicity," not with a view toward adjudicating among them, but toward pointing out their mythic and ontological genealogies and consequences.
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1.00 Credits
Borges has written that "the generations of men, throughout recorded time, have always told and retold two stories--that of a lost ship which searches the Mediterranean Sea for a dearly beloved island and that of a god who is crucified on Golgotha." This seminar will examine the fateful construction of an epic hero myth of Christian origins by tracing the social history and patterns of sectarian formation coursing through and under the Gospel of Mark. Through a close reading of Mark's parables and controversies, aphorisms and anecdotes, miracle stories and passion narratives, analyzed contextually with contemporaneous Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian literature, the Gospel will be exposed as an apologetic rationalization of a specific apocalyptic mythology.
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1.00 Credits
For the past several decades, a new movement within Buddhist communities has been emerging that aims at joining the tenets and practices of the tradition with various forms of activism--involving social, political, economic, and ecological concerns. Termed "socially engaged Buddhism," this phenomenon and perspective can be seen throughout Asia--in examples such as the work of Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam, Sulak Sivaraksa in Thailand, the Dalai Lama on behalf of Tibetans, and Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma--as well as, more recently, in various forms and locations throughout the West. This course will explore in some depth the history and contours of this emerging religious and social phenomenon.
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1.00 Credits
Before race became a named category used to differentiate between human bodies, Jewish converts to Catholicism in medieval Spain became suspect subjects due to the "purity" of their "blood" (limpieza de sangre). Beginning with the Spanish debates regarding pure and impure bodies, this course traces the relationship between Jews and racial categories to the 21st century. The course focuses on how evolving definitions of "race" and "Jewishness" have correlated and conflicted in varied and sometimes surprising ways. We will read about theories of race, examine their direct ties to European colonial projects, and discuss the pervasive impact of these theories and projects on contemporary societies. We will consider questions such as: What does "race" mean in particular times and places? How have Jews been racialized and how have Jews represented themselves in terms of racial categories? Why does race continue to inform social thought and institutions in such prominent ways and how do we situate Jews in these contexts? Case studies will address the question of Jewish "whiteness" in various geographical contexts, crypto-Jews in the United States, and mizrahim ("eastern" Jews) in Israel.
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1.00 Credits
This beginning course in Russian language teaches basic grammar while providing extensive practice in speaking and listening to contemporary Russian.
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