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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course is an introduction to the most influential figures and texts in the history of modern Christianity. It will demonstrate how one cannot understand such figures and texts in isolation, for each must be situated as a creative but conditioned response to a specific historical context. The course will explore many instances of thought responding to the stimulus of changing historical conditions. The course tracks the contentious fragmentation of the medieval catholic church in the post-Reformation era. From the unity symbolized by the reign of Charlemagne, when one could plausibly speak of Christendom as a single entity, and thus as one religion, this course will track the way that prominent Christians slowly created and embraced a religiously plural world. It is as if by an internal dynamic, through great tension and distress, the primary irritant propelling Christians through this process was the repeated confrontation with the religious otherness of their own neighbors, friends, and family. The course will examine the way that people make history: with obstructed vision and limited resources, driven by motivations of which they are only dimly aware, leading to consequences that rarely match their intentions. Lecture-conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course introduces themes and problems in the historical reconstruction of Christianity from the early "Jesus Movement" to circa 250 CE. These include ritual practices, art and architecture, social organization, literary production, and early canon formation, as well as issues relating t o gnosi s and Hellenistic philosophy. It requires extensive reading of the Greek, Latin, and Syriac sources in English translation. Intended to provide both an introduction to the materials and a narrative context in which to pursue more advanced studies, the course is open to first-year students. Lecture-conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. An introduction to the history, theology, and religious practices associated with the establishment of Catholic Orthodoxy in the Roman Empire during the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The course investigates the variety of ways in which Christians framed their identities and their experiences of empire in ritual, ascetic practices, theology, art and architecture. Special attention will be paid to the network of social relations that undergirded a Christianizing empire. Primary sources originally written in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac will be read in translation. Lecture-conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. An introduction to Eastern Orthodox Christianity as an incarnational religious tradition, this course investigates the various ways that Eastern Orthodox Christians have understood and recapitulated the person and work of Jesus Christ. Historical and phenomenological analyses of Eastern Orthodox art and architecture, ritual practices, and a wide array of liturgical, theological, canonical, and historical texts will provide interpetive strategies for further exploration of the tradition and bases for comparative understanding. The course focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Eastern Orthodoxy with special attention to the diaspora experience. Lecture-conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. An introduction to various interpretive frameworks and methodological issues that inform religion as a critical, reflexive, academic discipline. Texts pertaining to the definition and scope of the inquiry and methods of investigation will be critically engaged and their applicability tested with an eye toward their utility for understanding religion and religious phenomena. Prerequisites: Humanities 110 and at least one 100-level course in religion. Lecture-conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course will explore the religious significance of three different types of social transactions-exchanges, gifts, and sacrifices-in relation to different social contexts, such as families, communities, and congregations. How do religions variously construe these transactions, and, specifically, how do they relate individual motivations to complex systemic effects and unintended consequences The readings in this course will cover a cross-section of the most influential writing on these topics, including texts by Adam Smith, Marx, Simmel, Hubert and Mauss, Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu, and Appadurai. In addition, we will have frequent recourse to detailed ethnographic case studies in order to test the explanatory power of different theories. Prerequisite: one 100-level course in religion. Lecture-conference.
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3.00 Credits
See English 357 for description. English 357 Description
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course frames a series of critical inquiries into the varieties of rules and practices that affect the historical understanding of religions. It is best understood as motivated by one question: what might it mean to say that one is doing history of religions It presumes that work in the history of religions requires reflection on the relationships among the human experience of time, the interpretive practices of the historian, and religions construed as an object of social-historical inquiry. The course is open to nonmajors who have met the prerequisites. Prerequisites: at least one 100-level course in religion and Religion 201. Conference.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. Why are humans religious This course will evaluate the answers put forward by the greats of sociology (such as Weber and Durkheim), anthropology (Rappaport and Geertz), psychology (James and Freud), and even evolutionary biology (Dawkins and Boyer). Each disciplinary lens gives us different tools to define religion, to understand its mechanics, and to scrutinize its role in society. Prerequisites: Religion 201 or the consent of the instructor. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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3.00 Credits
Full course for one semester. This course is an examination of the diverse cosmological traditions that underpin later institutional faiths, and will explore early Chinese attempts to locate the human being within a larger natural order. Early Chinese scholars wrestled with ideas of a pervasive yin and yang as well as other forms of correlative interaction, and in their application of these ideas they formulated systems that explained everything from the inner workings of the body to the greater astronomical order. The course examines their broader concepts such as time and space as well as specific topics such as astronomy, alchemy, and afterlife. It also considers the ritual response to this cosmology-that is, the means whereby humans accessed the larger natural order. Rituals mimicked cosmological hierarchies, and they also interacted with that cosmology through sacrifice, divination, shamanism, and seasonal festivals. Students will explore the archeological evidence, and their readings will focus upon primary texts in translation. Prerequisite: Religion 157. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.
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