|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
Staff This course seeks to introduce students to the academic study of religion, emphasizing a variety of approaches. Instructors touch on such themes as differing interpretations of texts and scriptures, religion's role in organizing communities, religious constructions of gender and sexuality, and humanity's converse with natural and supernatural worlds. Students are encouraged to think about both the nature of religion and approaches to its study. In what ways is religion a basic response to and expression of the human condition How are conceptions of the sacred shaped by societal institutions and structures How do these conceptions reshape and, in turn, contest the societies that shape them A common aim of the course is to open the concept of religion to critical scrutiny and prepare the way for advanced work in religious studies.
-
3.00 Credits
L. Cushing This course acquaints students with the Hebrew Bible, known to Jews as the Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament. The course offers an understanding of the cultural world out of which the Bible came and of the modern cultural world it helped create. The primary approach to the text is literary, with the syllabus roughly following the canonical order of the Hebrew Bible and class discussion focused primarily on the text itself. Another emphasis is the ways the Bible has been interpreted by subsequent religious communities and the role of the Bible in American life. This course is crosslisted as JWST 208.
-
3.00 Credits
G. Frank, C. Martin This course explores the writings collected in the New Testament and related ancient literature as sources for the history of early Christian communities in the first century of the Common Era. The origins of the Jesus movement within Judaism and its growth in various religions and cultural settings of the Graeco-Roman world are considered.
-
3.00 Credits
L. Cushing The Torah/Pentateuch (the first five books of the Jewish and Christian scriptures) was the first part of the Bible to be regarded as scripture and has played a central role in modern debates over the nature of scripture. This course explores the theological import of the Torah for Jews and Christians, and investigates critical issues in the modern study of the Torah, including its composition, literary form, canonization, and interpretation in modern biblical criticism. This course is crosslisted as JWST 210.
-
3.00 Credits
Staff This course focuses both on the phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israelite society and on the texts concerning this prophecy within the Hebrew scriptures. Students wrestle with questions regarding functions, genres and forms, compositional history, historicity, and theology (nature of God, inspiration, etc.) in the prophetic writings. The scriptures are the primary source material for understanding the social and religious phenomenon of Hebrew prophecy; outside material is also considered. This course is crosslisted as JWST 211.
-
3.00 Credits
L. Cushing The Hebrew Bible is often thought of as univocal, presenting itself as the word and the law of the God of Israel. The Writings, known in Hebrew as Ketuvim, constitute the third part of the Hebrew Bible and show just how varied the Bible can be. The literature in this group is diverse: it comprises religious poetry (Psalms, Lamentations), love poetry (Song of Songs), wisdom writings (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), theological history (Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah), didactic fiction (Ruth and Esther), and apocalypse (Daniel). In reading these books, students consider the cultural, historical, and social worlds that shaped these writings. Particular emphasis is placed on the interrelationships between the writings' literary forms and their theological meaning. This course is crosslisted as JWST 212.
-
3.00 Credits
R. Ahmed This course is designed to introduce students to the various ways in which the Qur'an has been received in history and continues to be received today. Students examine the theological, legal, literary, historical, mystical, and modern approaches to the Qur'an in an attempt to understand holistically various methods of exegesis and their ramifications. Throughout, the class engages in the debates that have historically surrounded the Qur'an and explore methods of interpretation both classical and modern, especially those of fundamentalists, reformists, and feminists. No prerequisites. This course is crosslisted as MIST 214
-
3.00 Credits
S. Kepnes, B. Stahlberg This course examines the similarities and differences between rational and religious understandings of God. By pursuing close readings of classic texts in the field of philosophy of religion, this course considers how both philosophical and religious ideas are often developed together. The course explores various arguments about the rationality of God as responses to wider intellectual, cultural, and historical contexts in which they are made and to the specific shape and needs of a particular religious tradition (e.g., Catholicism, Protestantism, or Judaism). The course also explores the "rationality" of religious forms such as scripture, symbol, ritual, and prayer. In different semesters, select themes such as revelation, theodicy (the justification of God in the face of human suffering), providence and free will, or the theism/atheism debate are investigated.
-
3.00 Credits
E. Kent This course explores several Asian medical systems and practices, including yoga, Ayurveda, Indian shamanism, Japanese new religions, and Chinese medicine, all of which are grounded in the belief that the body is a microcosm of universal, macrocosmic processes. Students begin their investigations of these "exotic" healing traditions by reflecting on how illness functions as a metaphor in 20th-century North American culture. How does one's own conceptualization of disease affect one's experience of it Does the way one imagines disease reflect larger social processes, such as those based on gender or class These questions inform students' investigations of health and healing in Asian religions. The course is organized around a systematic examination of the models of the body that people in China, Japan, and India have used for centuries to heal from illness, maintain good health, and, in some instances, aspire to a state of super-health that transcends the limitations of bodily existence altogethe
-
3.00 Credits
A. Chaudhry, L. Cushing, E. Kent, M. Thie This course examines autobiographical, biographical, descriptive, and historical materials that present and analyze the lives of women in the context of various religious traditions. In a given term, the course focuses upon specific geographical areas, historical periods, and/or religious traditions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Privacy Statement
|
Terms of Use
|
Institutional Membership Information
|
About AcademyOne
Copyright 2006 - 2025 AcademyOne, Inc.
|
|
|