Sample Course Descriptions

Religion 471-0, Studies in the History of Religions: Ethics and Ethnography
Cristina Traina

This interdisciplinary course examines contemporary literature at the frontier of ethics and the social sciences that explores the methodological challenges of combining the two disciplines. Within the past ten years first ethicists have begun to use ethnographic methods systematically in their work in order to deepen their appreciation for the values, commitments, and contexts that inform moral decisions “on the ground.” Simultaneously, ethnographers and social scientists have delved more carefully into questions about their obligations to the populations they study and about their initial and eventual moral stances toward their subjects. How do subjects’ contexts, experiences, and world views shape their moral and religious reasoning? What kinds of moral commitments does ethnography demand of us? Does our research sometimes demand morally that we reorient our questions? What are honest and dishonest uses of ethnography (and social sciences generally) in ethics? What role does autobiography play? How can both disciplines honestly acknowledge their combined descriptive and prescriptive missions without giving up their distinctive critical vantage points? These are some of the questions addressed.

Sample readings: Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping; Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter; Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power; Charles Bosk, Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure; Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down; Arthur Kleinman, Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Ethics; AanaVigen, Women, Justice, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living”; Loic Wacquant, Body and Soul.

Religion 460, Studies in Christianity: Politics, Sex, and the Law of God: Christian Ethics through the Reformation
Cristina Traina

Interpreting contemporary western institutions and intellectual positions entails a solid understanding of their intellectual roots. We will explore some of these by reading and discussing important texts of Christian authors who have had a deep influence upon Western ethics, religious and secular. We will concentrate especially on political ethics, sexuality and marriage, and law (both divine and human).

Sample readings:
Excerpts from the Old and New Testaments; the Didache; Excerpts from Clement of Alexandria; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Twelve Steps of Humility and
Pride and On Loving God; Augustine of Hippo, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, The City of God (Books 14 and 19), On the Good of Marriage,and On Grace and Free Will; Thomas Aquinas, excerpts from Summa Theologiae; Martin Luther, "Sermon on the Mount," "The Freedom of a Christian," “Lectures on Galatians," "The Estate of Marriage," and "On Temporal Authority";
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, excerpts; Thomas Muentzer, "Sermon Before the Princes"; Menno Simons, "On the Ban"; Schleitheim Confession; "The Martyrdom of Michael Sattler"; excerpts from John Barclay; and (looking forward) John Wesley.

Religion 471-0: Studies in the History of Religions: Pecking Orders
Cristina Traina

This course examines the relative ontological, spiritual, and social status of women, children, slaves, and animals in the sacred writings of three religions, as well as in the religious and religious studies traditions of interpretation of these texts. We will begin with readings, scholarly commentaries, and interpretations of biblical texts from Judaism and Christianity. We will move on to Hindu texts dealing with Ganesh and Hindu traditions on human and animal status generally. At the end of the course we will examine contemporary debates–on the relationship (or lack thereof) among misogyny, denigration of animals, and the use of animals as food, and on the connection (or lack thereof) among slavery, animal abuse, and child abuse–in light of the foregoing discussions.

Sample readings: Genesis, Exodus; Leviticus; Deuteronomy, I Corinthians, Galatians, Matthew, Philemon, John; L. William Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today; Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach, ed. Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich; Genesis; Gary Kowalski, The Bible According to Noah: Theology As If Animals Mattered; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School; Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East; Carolyn Osiek and David Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches; The Ramayana; Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery; John A. Grimes, Ganapati: Song of the Self; articles by Phyllis Trible, Mary Douglas, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, John T. Carroll; Yonder Moynihan Gillihan, JudithGundry-Volf, Madeleine Boucher, Craig S. de Vos, Brigitte Kahl, Paul Courtright, A.K. Narain, Carol J. Adams, Stephen Webb, D.N. Jha,Ludo Rocher, Leonart T. Wolcott, Wendy Doniger.

Landscapes of the Sacred
Sarah McFarland Taylor

This course explores the multifaceted connections between place and the construction of personal and spiritual identities in American culture. What is the idea of “place”? What are the tensions between American notions of “space” and “place”? How are certain places deemed “sacred” in America, and how are these places contested over time, by whom, and to what ends? How are mythical landscapes recreated in physical landscapes, and what drives such recreations? How are “sacred places” symbolically represented over time? What is the relationship between sacred narratives and the “storied landscape” for a variety of native peoples in North America? How are certain religious experiences understood “through place” in diverse communities (urban, suburban, rural, etc.)? And how do displacement, alienation from place, and the fragmentation of place affect spiritual understandings of self, nature, and nationhood? Theoretical perspectives for this course will be drawn from religious studies, landscape studies, and cultural studies. We will analyze a series of case studies (derived from primary and secondary sources) throughout the quarter.

Religion and American Popular Culture
Sarah McFarland Taylor

This seminar is geared to graduate students in Religious Studies, but advanced undergraduates in Religious Studies, American Studies, and related areas are welcome. Admission for undergraduates is by instructor approval, and Religion majors and American Studies majors will receive priority. In this course, we will examine religion and popular culture in theoretical perspective, self-reflexively considering what counts as "religion" and what counts as “popular culture” in America and why. How might these definitions change over time, and who has the authority to decide what kind of phenonmena falls into which category? What is the purpose of studying popular culture and what methodologies might be most useful and appropriate for doing so? What might the study of popular culture contribute to our understanding of how Americans experience the “religious”? Students will be asked to problematize "high culture" versus "low culture” distinctions, theoretical divisions between what is labeled "religious" and "secular," and classifications of “religion” and “culture.” Examining a series of case studies drawn from film, television, popular music and art, consumer items, kitsch, and other sources, we will explore different scholarly approaches to the study of religion and popular culture. Students then compare and evaluate these approaches, choosing their own approach as they conduct original research for the final seminar project.

Relg 482-0 Themes in Comparative Religion: Religion and Magic
Richard Kieckhefer

This seminar will be devoted to a series of related questions about magic and religion: the assumption that magic is fundamentally premodern and irrational, the possibility that it can be modern or rational, and the notion that religion differs from magic in regard to either rationality or modernity. We will examine these questions primarily with reference to specific historical contexts: late ancient Rome, late medieval and early modern Europe, postcolonial Africa and India, contemporary Britain, etc. Classical theories of religion and magic (Frazer, Durkheim, Mauss, Malinowski, et al.) will be presupposed rather than highlighted. Students are expected to have read S.J. Tambiah’s Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality before term begins.

Readings:

T.M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Harvard, 1989).
Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Sutton, 1997).
Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, trans. Peter Geschiere and Janet Roitman (Virginia, 1997).
Michael Mangan, Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring (Intellect, 2007).
Lee Siegel, Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India (Chicago, 1991).
Elias Kifon Bongmba, African Witchcraft and Otherness: A Philosophical and Theological Critique of Intersubjective Relations, new ed. (SUNY, 2001).

Religion 481-2 Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
George Bond

This seminar will focus on the modern development of the field of history of religion and the relation of this field to the study of Asian religions. The origins of both of these fields are closely linked, with many of the pioneers in history of religion having been scholars of Asian religions. These interconnections between the two fields have continued down to the present in various forms. The seminar will investigate the development of the field of history of religion by considering some of the major scholars of Asian religions whose work has defined this field in the past and present and some of the key issues that they represent. Central to our discussion will be the issues of Orientalism and Post-colonialism and their influence on the study of Asian Religions.

Course procedure and requirements:
Seminar format. Students will be expected to write response papers on the weekly readings and a term paper for the quarter. Grades will be based on these papers and on participation in the seminar discussions.

Readings:
Gananath Obeyesekere, Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist and Greek Rebirth.
Other readings and a course packet.