Overview of the traditional Hindu narratives found in the Vedic, epic, and puranic literature. We will also examine Hindu myth in their many regional literary and artistic forms, and how these narratives influence culture, philosophy, literature, and folklore.
An investigation of modern psychological theories and their relevance to ancient Greek and Roman myths. All readings in English.
Will examine the role of the visual, material, literary, and performance arts in the construction of religious knowledge in the religious traditions of India. The primary focus will be the historical development of the arts and aesthetic styles in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, and Christianity in South Asia.
Critical, thematic exegesis of indigenous African and Christian contributions to African American religions. Analyzes role of religion in resisting oppression and racial injustice.
An examination of Jesus as an historical figure shaped in the various images of the cultures depicting him. The class will analyze Jesus as the subject of recent scholarly debates as well as his portrayals in 20th century art, film, and literature.
Ever wonder why you believe what you believe? Ever been puzzled as to why other people believe such outrageous things? Spirituality, Psychology, and Mind (SPM) investigates the nature of beliefs and practices from a multidisciplinary perspective. We will explore different ways of studying and understanding religious beliefs and spirituality through psychological, sociological, biological, philosophical, and humanist lenses. This course aims to build connections between different ways of knowing to foster critical thinking and perspective-taking. SPM will not try to prove or disprove any religious, spiritual, agnostic, or atheist claims. But instead, it will use psychological theory and scientific research to examine how we come to believe what we do. The focus will be on scientific approaches to religion's psychological nature and function concerning health, psychopathology, and coping mechanisms.
This course is a study of popular culture and religion in African-American and Latin@ communities, with a focus on the place of rap music in the cultural identity of these traditions. The class will begin with a study of some major themes in cultural studies concerning identity, class, race, and gender in addition to a study of the role of religion in Black and Latin@ communities. We will consider the approaches and self-understandings of identity and culture in rap music with special attention to the voices of protest, resistance, and spirituality among rap artists.
This course provides an overview of Islamic intellectual history from the origins of Islam to the present day. The course is divided into three units: 1) Classical Islam and religious sciences; 2) Classical Islamic thought more broadly; 3) Modern Islamic thought. Students will be introduced to Islamic scriptures as well as original writings in translation by preeminent figures of the Islamic tradition and will learn how Muslim thinkers engaged issues concerning scriptural authority, theology, mysticism, human happiness and flourishing, politics, colonialism and gender. The course approaches these writings with particular attention to analysis of the concepts central to Islamic thought and their interconnections, and to the forms of expression through which these concepts are presented to envisioned audiences. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on the implications of the ideas we study for values pertaining to justice, social hierarchy and inequality, freedom and domination. Ideas regarding the nature of human existence and its place within the universe always have relation to social life and order. Examining this relation in Islamic thought will involve probing our own notions on these matters and their implications in our own social life.
Major forms of Buddhist meditation from both the South Asian and East Asian traditions, with emphasis on the nature of meditation as a variety of religious experience.
This course explores Holocaust memory and representation in Europe, Israel and the United States through various media and genres from diaries, memoirs and oral testimonies to Yiddish and Hebrew poetry, second generation graphic novels and film to memorial gardens and resistance monuments, archives and museums. We engage with some of the most fundamental questions of memory and Holocaust trauma from multiple perspectives and contexts. Is it possible to communicate the horrors of the concentration camp? Who has the right to speak about the Holocaust? How does "Jewish" memory of the Holocaust shape our understanding of the history of Nazism, genocide, World War II and its aftermath? In what ways, has Holocaust memory become associated with movements for historical justice and human rights, in particular, in the United States?