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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
G. Frank This course explores the understandings of the terms "heresy," "heterodoxy," and "orthodoxy." Students focus on writings from the second through the seventeenth centuries excluded from the Christian Bible (e.g., the "gnostic gospels"). The second part of the course shifts attention to heresy in medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on English and Scottish movements (e.g., Lollards, witch-hunts) and the verbal as well as violent opposition to their ideas and practices. In addition to reading primary sources in translation, students also consider the relation of heterodoxy to ideas of gender, class, authority, power, and ethn
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3.00 Credits
L. Cushing, S. Kepnes This course is an introduction to the Jewish religion in its various historical contexts and in relation to the academic study of religion. The course moves through four key eras in Judaism: the biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern periods. The foci of the biblical section are ideas of nation and covenant, law and community, priesthood and prophecy. With the rabbinic period, students examine Judaism after the destruction of the Temple when the locus of religious life turns to the synagogue, Torah study, and the home. The treatment of the medieval period touches on issues such as Torah commentaries, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), philosophy, and relations with non-Jews. Central topics in the modern period include Haskalah (Jewish rationalism), Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel; the flourishing of American Jewry; and the trend toward humanistic and egalitarian movements in Judaism. Throughout the course, students focus on the dynamics of Judaism as a religion that generates multiple expressions and "traditions" in which innovation and change emerge through asserting continuity with the past. No prerequisites. This course is crosslisted a s JWST 307.
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3.00 Credits
K. Carlsmith, D. Johnson An introduction to statistical procedures and quantitative concepts used in psychology, this course emphasizes principles of research design and analysis in the behavioral sciences. Three class meetings and one computer laboratory per week. Psychology majors should complete this course by the end of the junior year.
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3.00 Credits
H. Sindima This course is an exploration of the nature and varieties of indigenous African religions. Issues examined include cosmology; concepts of divinity; ancestors; person; meaning of sacrifice; symbols and ritual practice; the relationships among art and religion, politics, and religious institutions; and the challenge of social change, Christianity, and Islam to indigenous religions. In addition, students examine the different methods used in studying African religions.
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3.00 Credits
L. Cushing, C. Martin What role does literary art play in the shaping of biblical narrative How does the construction of the sacred text reflect its theological meaning The religious vision of the Bible is given depth and subtlety precisely by being conveyed literarily; thus, the primary concern in this course is with the literature and literary influence of the received text of the Bible rather than with the history of the text's creation. As students read through the canon, they establish the boundaries of the texts studied, distinguish the type(s) of literature found in them, examine their prose and poetic qualities, and identify their surface structures. Students also consider the literary legacy of the Bible and the many ways that subsequent writers have revisited its stories. This course is crosslisted as JWST 317.
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3.00 Credits
C. Vecsey The course introduces students to the variety of American Indian traditional religions and historical religious movements. After an evaluation of the methods used in understanding Indian religions and a survey of culture areas, students look at American Indian concepts of the supernatural, mythology, ceremonialism, dreams and visions, medicine, witchcraft, shamanism, nature-relations, and conceptions of the soul. Navajo, Lakota, Skagit, Inuit, Hopi, and Ojibwa religions are described in some detail, in order to show how the individual characteristics are integrated; then the class examines the effects of Christian missions and the most important religious movements among American Indians since white contact: Handsome Lake's Religion, Ghost Dance, Peyote Religion, and others. First-year students are admitted by permission of instructor.
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3.00 Credits
E. Kent Through close readings of 19th- and 20th-century tracts and debates, mythological and ritual texts, oral traditions, novels and scholarly studies, this course examines the wide-ranging social effects of colonial rule on Indian religious traditions, especially Hinduism, and the creative responses of Indians to the challenges and opportunities of modernity. Emphasizing the political and social dimensions of religion, the course engages topics such as religious change and social mobility, the changing role of women in religion, the religious roots of the movement for Indian independence, religious violence and Gandhian non-violence, the rise of religious nationalism in India, and the development of Hinduism in diaspora. No prerequisites, although familiarity with the religions of India through courses such as CORE 166, RELG 322, ARTS 244, or HIST 362 is advised.
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3.00 Credits
J. Carter, E. Kent As one of the world's most ancient, complex, and fascinating religious traditions, the study of Hinduism provides an ideal arena for examining central questions in the study of religion. Through close readings of primary texts in translation, this course focuses on the history of Hindu traditions from their origins to the development of devotional movements in medieval and early modern India. Following a chronological order, these texts include the hymns of the ancient Vedas, the investigations into salvific reality in the Upanishads, the religious epics, devotional poems in praise of gods, religious philosophy (Yoga and Advaita Vedanta), and classical mythology. While exploring the variety of forms Hinduism has taken, the class engages broader questions in the study of religions such as the construction of religious authority, the definition of the good life, conceptions of the soul, differences between elite and non-elite styles of religiosity, and the significance of gender in conceptualizations of the divine.
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3.00 Credits
J. Carter This course is a study of the teachings of the Buddha as cherished in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in India, Sri Lanka, and parts of Southeast Asia. This "tradition of the elders" is one of the oldest religious traditions known to humankind, a tradition that has formulated responses to fundamental human issues, quite different from those proposed within theistic movements. Emphasis is placed on key expressions of the human predicament, the make-up of the individual, the life context as morally significant (karma), conceptions of salvific truth, the practice of meditation, and the notion of liberation, among others, that have arisen as a result of responses in faith made by men and women in India, Sri Lanka, and parts of Southeast Asia.
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3.00 Credits
J. Carter The path of the Buddha, the "Great Vehicle" (Mahayana), one of the most profound manifestations of religiousness in the experience of humankind, developing in and emanating from India, has spread to and continued to develop among persons living in China and Japan. This course investigates the formative structure of this path in India, considering such notions as "emptiness," bodhisattva, buddhaness. It traces the development of that structure in China, leading to a consideration of forms, from Zen to the Pure Land school, among others, that the path has taken as a result of responses in faith made by men and women in Japa
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