In this course, we will explore key events and themes in Jewish history from Late Antiquity to the 18th century, with a focus on Jewish life in Europe and the Mediterranean. Students will examine how Jewish communities adapted and persisted in the face of challenges like exile, persecution, and political instability, through the close reading of primary sources such as legal texts, autobiographies, chronicles, and letters. They will engage with important questions about how Jewish culture evolved across different regions and historical periods, and what has contributed to its remarkable resilience. This transnational, global course connects Jewish history to broader world events and cultural shifts. For students interested in understanding how cultures endure and adapt, this course provides valuable insights into the historical forces that shape identity and community across time and space, while engaging deeply with primary sources that bring these experiences to life.

Survey of major political, socioeconomic, and cultural developments in the history of Diaspora Jewry: Modern Jewish history.

In this course we examine the philosophy, practice, historical roots, and development of yoga. Students are asked to use and reflect on the disciplinary perspectives of the historian to examine premodern primary texts (in English translation) that provide a window into the origins of yoga, as well as the perspectives of the anthropologist and cultural critic to examine contemporary yoga practices. Students will compare and contrast perspectives of Indian yogis and contemporary international yoga influencers in order to understand how the experience of yoga differs across time and culture and how social systems of power and inequality are both subverted and reinforced by yoga and its practitioners.

This course investigates how consciousness of "the West" as a rival cultural entity emerged in Muslim societies, and how the West has been represented and evaluated by Muslim intellectuals from the colonial period to current debates over US hegemony and globalization.

In this course, students will analyze attitudes towards sexuality in major world religions, both globally and in the context of the United States.

Concentrating mostly on early Celtic Christianity and its later struggles with Roman Christianity, this class examines art, literature and theology from the myths of the ancient Celts to the revivals of the present day.

This course explores the relationships between humans, religious traditions, and the environment. We will examine how a variety of religious traditions have shaped human relationships with nature, how the natural world has influenced religious beliefs and practices, and how religions influence people's understanding of and responses to climate change.

Is Buddhism a tradition of healing? In what ways has Buddhism been involved in reviving, sustaining, and curing human individuals? This course explores relationships and encounters between Buddhism and the domains of religion, science, and medicine. It considers historical relationships between Buddhism and traditional medicine in Asia as well as contemporary Western discourses involving Buddhism in popular culture, psychology, and spirituality. Finally, it invites a critical approach to the current dialogue between Buddhism and science. In the process, it reveals hidden assumptions behind commodifying `mindfulness' and the quest to document the therapeutic impact of meditation upon health, happiness, and success in the modern age. Students will have the opportunity to apply the ideas they have learned through analysis of relevant initiatives at the U of A such as the Neuropsychology, Emotion, and Thought Lab and the Center for Compassion Studies as well as of broader Tucson community events like the Gem Show.

How do Tibetans Buddhists innovate while staying connected with tradition? In the Tibetan language, biographies are referred to as liberation tales. In this course, students explore the life experiences of Tibetan Buddhists striving for a variety of forms of liberation, from samsara as well as from social marginalization and political oppression. Students disassemble stereotypes about Tibet by exploring fundamental aspects of its distinct Buddhist tradition. They analyze the stories of figures as diverse as an eighth-century demon-tamer and his enlightened female partner, a contemporary artist exploring questions of identity, a Buddhist yogi seeking to move beyond the confines of the self, and a debut novelist reflecting on writing as a form of agency. Students apply their knowledge to interpret representations of Tibet in sources ranging from early texts on the nature of reality to an Instagram takeover by contemporary Tibetan female poets. In the process, they generate tools for interpreting the host of representations they encounter in their daily lives.

This course will examine how the three genres of Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony/tea culture, and poetry, have been presented over time as not only compatible, but as representative expressions of each other. We will consider the contemporaneous cultural, historical, and political factors that contributed to the formation of this discourse. We will also hold up to critical scrutiny the very concept of "genre" in pre-modern East Asia, as well as the distinction between "Zen Buddhism" and what may be termed "Zen culture." We will also investigate in depth how modern commentators such as Okakura Tenshin, Suzuki Daisetsu, and Hisamatsu Shin'ichi's dialogue with the West and Western models informed the now ingrained idea that the tea ceremony represents an artistic, aesthetic, and spiritual nexus of the other two genres, and indeed of East Asian Culture as a whole.