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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 Since the rise of Islam in the early seventh century C.E., Jews have lived in the Islamic world. The historical experience of Jews in the Islamic world has shaped their religious traditions in ways which have touched Jews throughout the world. This course will place certain developments in Jewish liturgy, thought, and identity within the context of Islamic history and society in order to answer the question of how Jews perceive themselves and Judaism with regard to Muslims and Islam. The course will conclude by analyzing the significance of the Jewish experience under Islam for current debates in Judaism and in Middle East politics.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 Non-Muslim cultures have always been an impetus for growth, change, and frank discussion within Islam. This course will begin by surveying Islam's encounter with ancient Greek civilization. We will then analyze how seminal Islamic thinkers such as al-Ghazali (d. 1111 C. E.) and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1407 C. E.) reacted to the presence of Greek thought within Islam. The second half of the course examines how the rapid development of Europe and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries provoked some Islamic thinkers to call for reforms of Islam and led others to criticize the West. An emphasis of the course will be using Islamic intellectual history to understand contemporary fundamentalist movements within Islam. Open to all students.
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4.00 Credits
not offered in 2008-09 Jews first arrived in the United States in the 17th century. The Jewish population in the United States grew rapidly during the 19th century and today Judaism is an important part of the American religious fabric. This course will begin with a survey of the early history of American Judaism and then proceed to a study of the various forms of American Judaism including the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Hasidic movements. May involve field trips. Prerequisite: one prior course in religion, or consent of the instructor. Distribution area: humanities.
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
The life of the Buddha has captivated religious imaginations for 2,500 years, but the biography of the Buddha is not singular: in its traverse of millennia and continents Buddhism has generated many Buddhas, each appropriate to the time and place in which he was imagined. This course examines select biographies of the Buddha from Asia and Europe, modern as well as ancient, in order to investigate the impact of historical and intellectual circumstances upon the composition of each. It serves both as a case study in religious biography and as a broad overview of the origin and development of Buddhism. Prerequisites: Religion 221, or 250, or 251, or 257, or consent of instructor.
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3.00 Credits
The Pacific Northwest is a microcosm of the diversity that characterizes religion in America today. In addition to mainline Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations, there exists on either side of the Cascade Range a number of religious groups of particular interest: Bahais, Buddhist congregations of various ethnic stripes, Hindus, Hutterites, Indian Shakers, Islamic communities, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, members of the Native American Church, Russian Old Believers, Pentecostals, native practitioners of the Pom Pom Religion, Scientologists, Sikhs, and devotees of Wicca. After a brief historical survey of the regional religious landscape and the forces that produced it, this course will examine some of the techniques (theological, historical, phenomenological, sociological, psychological, and anthropological) used for interpreting religious movements. In the second half of the course, teams of students under the guidance of the instructor will initiate research projects for in-depth study of selected religious communities and traditions. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 This course focuses on the existence and nature of God as an intellectual problem. The course will explore conceptions of God in the Western religious traditions and how God came to be a problem with the emergence of skepticism and atheism in the modern world. Historical and literary approaches, as well as philosophical and theological perspectives, will be included. Contemporary attempts to rethink the nature of God and to argue for the reality of God will be considered. Two class meetings per week. Not open to first-year students.
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3.00 Credits
This seminar is an exploration of recent scholarship on the problem of the historical Jesus - the attempt to distinguish the historical figure of Jesus from the theological portraits of him in early Christian literature. Attention will be given to the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar regarding the authenticity of the reported sayings and deeds of Jesus, as well as to recent books on Jesus of Nazareth by scholars representing a variety of methodological perspectives. Each student will report to the class on a recent work on Jesus. Religion 202 is a useful prior course, but not a prerequisite.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 This course explores several important facets of religious tolerance and intolerance in the United States today. It begins with the development of religious pluralism and the separation of church and state, but then questions the limits of this separation through examining the evidence for "public Protestantism" in the United States The rest of the course examines instances of religious intolerance in the United States - both intolerance of specific religions and religiously based intolerance of specific groups - in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Students will explore the contours of religious intolerance, from hate crimes and violent protest to more subtle events and attitudes in our own communities and our own lives, as well as ways to combat such intoleranc
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3.00 Credits
Since the 1960s Western religious thinkers have been giving explicit attention to the relevance of gender, race, and class for religious thought. This course is a comparative exploration of Latin American liberation theologies, African American theologies, and feminist theologies (Jewish, Christian, and Post-Christian). Format: readings in primary sources, class discussions, oral reports, and papers. Not open to first-year students.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 Gender and the human body are nearly ubiquitous in religion. They are evident in one religion's images of the divine and in another's refusal to image the divine; in the control and maintenance of the body through asceticism, sexual regulations, dietary restrictions, and other practices; in debates over human nature and reality; in questions of clothing, leadership, and rites of passage; and in many other areas. Over the past 15 years, studies of gender and the body have multiplied within the field of religious studies, but much more remains to be done. This class has two goals: to explore some of the work that has been done to date, and to consider new ways in which theories on gender and the body can be applied to religion. This is a highly theoretical class and is recommended for juniors and seniors.
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