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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Jewish Studies, Theology The Golden Rule figures in the ethical teachings of all the important religions in the world. This seminar examines the roles of the Golden Rule in various religious systems and compares them. Students review papers by scholars who specialize in major world religions and by those who analyze the Golden Rule as an ethical norm.
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4.00 Credits
Theology This seminar takes up the ideas of major world religions on how to make sense of religious difference. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions are asked to explain the basis for toleration. Each religion is presented through academic papers written for this seminar by various experts.
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4.00 Credits
Philosophy See Theology 310 (Interdivisional Studies) for description.
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4.00 Credits
Anthropology The modern study of religion is an eclectic field, drawing upon many other disciplines in its attempt to circumscribe and comprehend the diversity of human religiosity. This course examines critically various approaches-including psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological-to the study of religion in the 20th century. The class considers where this field of study may be heading in its postmodern present. Required for religion majors.
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4.00 Credits
Human Rights In its root meaning of "struggle," jihad is one ofthe key generative categories for Islam and Islamic law. The term refers to the believers' struggle against evil inclinations, the jurists' struggle to make sense out of the sacred texts, and the armed struggle against unbelievers. Taking jihad as its primary lens, this course traces the history and development of Islamic law from its Qur'anic roots to its modern applications, considering the place of jihad alongside rules of ritual, prayer, business transactions, and inheritance. Strong emphasis is placed on the classical texts of the early centuries in order to understand the interpretive strategies employed by later generations. Students work primarily with Arabic sources in English translation. An Arabic tutorial is available for students who have completed two years (or the equivalent) of Arabic language study.
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4.00 Credits
Human Rights, Theology The proximity of religious traditions in an increasingly global society tends to undermine absolutist and exclusivist truth claims by rendering them both socially and psychologically untenable. What are the alternatives? This seminar explores the question by tracing its biblical and historical roots and antecedents and examining its modern emergence among diverse religious thinkers, including C. S. Lewis, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and John Hick. Prerequisite: Moderation in social studies or permission of the instructor.
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4.00 Credits
Asian Studies This course first provides a historical overview of the movements that have shaped the religious diversity of the Hudson Valley, and then offers excursions to local sites of interest. It considers the influx of Buddhism into the region as a case study, focusing on the major and still evolving Buddhist presence from the Wappingers Falls stupa to the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra temple and Zen Mountain Monastery of the Woodstock area, to the first Tendai institution in America, in Chatham. Finally, students devote their attention to a location and religious tradition of their choice and produce both a contribution to our collective research on area institutions as well as a critical paper about religious pluralism and diversity.
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4.00 Credits
GSS Depending on which biography you read, the prophet Muhammad can be either the perfect model of a righteously guided Muslim or the vilest example of tyranny, manipulation, and sexual depravity. In between these two polarities is a vast range of attitudes about Muslim prophecy and Islamic faith. This class studies the politics inherent in biographies of Muhammad and his wives. Its aim is to analyze religious biography as a historical and polemical form of writing and to trace developing traditions of Muslim and non- Muslim accounts of Muhammad and his female companions. Readings include the first historical accounts of the early Islamic community by Ibn Ishaq, traditions found within sayings of the prophet Muhammad, universal histories, devotional literature, and contemporary popularmanuals and children's comic books. Non-Muslim sources include medieval European tracts about Muhammad, the first printed biographies in early modern and Victorian England, and early and contemporary books about Muhammad in America.
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4.00 Credits
Art History, Asian Studies In India one sees them everywhere: bright, wideeyed Hindu deities, in poster form, perched above cash registers, glued to the dashboards of taxis and buses, and framed on the walls of temples and home shrines. These mass-produced chromolithographs or "god posters" occupy acentral place in the visual landscape of modern India, but until recently they have not received scholarly attention. This seminar explores the world of Indian god posters, considering iconographic features, stylistic developments, political and religious significations, and devotional responses to these popular commercial prints. Students examine the way artists have adapted their visual practices within commercial structures of production, and how they have directed their arts toward devotional needs. This pervasive genre is also studied in relation to other modern forms of South Asian visual arts, such as tribal and folk arts, pilgrimage paintings, Parsi theater, and especially Bollywood cinema.
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4.00 Credits
Asian Studies This course explores the genre of chronicle ( vamsa) as employed in Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist cultures. It examines the relationship between myth and history, and considers how mythically infused histories are conceived, preserved, explained, and employed. Following a review of the social history of Theravada Buddhism, the course focuses on the earliest texts from Sri Lanka, the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa, where stories of three visits of the historical Buddha bolster Sinhala Buddhist claims of authority. Students examine how these texts have been employed in current nationalist and Buddhist fundamentalist movements, and then consider an informative case from 15thcentury northern Thailand, where an orthodox Theravada chronicle follows similar patterns and claims a preordained status for the nascent kingdom of the 7th-century Queen Cama.
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