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- About Amherst College
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- Amherst College Courses
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Introduction
Introduction
BackReligion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
About Amherst College
About Amherst College
BackReligion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Admission & Financial Aid
Admission & Financial Aid
BackReligion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Regulations & Requirements
Regulations & Requirements
Back- General Regulations
- Terms and Vacations
- Conduct
- Attendance at College Exercises
- Records and Reports
- Pass/Fail Option
- Examinations and Extensions
- Withdrawals
- Readmission
- Deficiencies
- Housing and Meal Plans
- Degree Requirements
- Course Requirements
- The Liberal Studies Curriculum
- The Major Requirement
- Departmental Majors
- Interdisciplinary Majors
- Comprehensive Requirement
- Degree with Honors
- Independent Scholar Program
- Field Study
- Five College Courses
- Academic Credit from Other Institutions
- Cooperative Doctor of Philosophy
- Engineering Exchange Program with Dartmouth
Religion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Amherst College Courses
Amherst College Courses
Back- American Studies
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Architectural Studies
- Art and the History of Art
- Asian Languages and Civilizations
- Biochemistry and Biophysics
- Biology
- Black Studies
- Chemistry
- Classics
- Colloquia
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Economics
- Educational Studies
- English
- Environmental Studies
- European Studies
- Film and Media Studies
- First Year Seminar
- French
- Geology
- German
- History
- Latinx and Latin American Studies
- Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought
- Mathematics and Statistics
- Mellon Seminar
- Music
- Neuroscience
- Philosophy
- Physics and Astronomy
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Religion
- Russian
- Sexuality Wmn's & Gndr Studies
- Spanish
- Theater and Dance
- Courses of Instruction
- 01- Bruss Seminar
- 02- Kenan Colloquium
- 03- Linguistics
- 04- Mellon Seminar
- 05- Physical Education
- 06- Premedical Studies
- 07- Teaching
- 08- Five College Dance
Religion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Five College Programs & Certificates
Five College Programs & Certificates
Back- Five College Courses
- African Studies Certificate
- Asian Pacific American Studies Certificate
- Biomathematics
- Buddhist Studies Certificate
- Coastal and Marine Sciences Certificate
- Culture Health Science Certificate
- Ethnomusicology Certificate
- International Relations Certificate
- Latin American Caribbean Latino Studies Certificate
- Logic Certificate
- Middle Eastern Studies Certificate
- Native American and Indigenous Studies Certificate
- Queer and Sexuality Studies Certificate
- Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Certificate
- Russian East European Eurasian Studies Certificate
- Sustainability Studies Certificate
Religion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Honors & Fellowships
Honors & Fellowships
BackReligion
Professors A. Dole†, Heim (Chair), and Niditch; Associate Professor Jaffer; Assistant Professors Barba* and Falcasantos; Visiting Assistant Professor Brodnicka.
The study of Religion is a diversified and multi-faceted field which involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. It includes the study of global cultures from the ancient to the modern, using the methods of textual, historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical disciplines.
Major Program.
Majors in Religion will be expected to achieve a degree of mastery in three areas of the field by taking at least eight courses in the Department. First, they will be expected to gain close knowledge of a particular religious tradition, including both its ancient and modern forms, in its scriptural, ritual, reflective, and institutional dimensions. Second, all majors will be expected to gain more general knowledge of at least one other religious tradition beyond their area of focus. Ordinarily this requirement will be met by one or two courses. Third, all majors will be expected to gain a general understanding of the theoretical and methodological resources pertinent to the study of religion in all its forms.
A religion major must take at least two courses at the 100-level, two courses at the 200-level, and one course at the 300 level in order to fulfill the requirements of the major. Among these, the Department strongly recommends Religion 111, which introduces students to the study of comparative religion by teaching them how to engage in fruitful and meaningful comparative work across religious and cultural traditions. Majors in Religion are required to take Religion 210, "What is Religion, Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies," and the Department encourages majors to take this course early in their studies. The Department strongly recommends language study and study away where they are appropriate to the student's area of focus.
Courses at the 100-level introduce traditions and areas of study and are an ideal way to begin the study of Religion. Courses at the 200-level are also open and accessible to students new to the academic study of Religion; these focus on the study of a particular theme across religious traditions or they offer deeper engagements within a particular tradition, region, or time period. Courses at the 300-level are in-depth research seminars, close readings of particular figures, texts, or schools, or courses with a specific cross-disciplinary focus.
Courses on religion in related fields (including Five College courses and Study Away programs) may count toward the major in Religion only if approved by the student's departmental advisor as part of a course of study designed to cover the three areas described above.
All majors are required early in the second semester of the senior year to take a comprehensive examination. This examination is designed to allow the student to deal with each of the three aspects of his or her program as described above, though not in the form of a summary report of what has been learned in each area. Rather, the emphasis will be on students' abilities to use what they have learned in order to think critically about general issues in the field. The exam topic--a theoretically provocative work on some aspect of religious studies--will be distributed to seniors before winter break. A critical review of 2000 words will be due by early February, and a meeting will be scheduled later that month for seniors and department faculty to discuss the topic and the senior essay. Please see the chair of the department with questions.
Departmental Honors Program.
Honors in Religion consists of all of the requirements for the major as well as the proposal, completion, and oral defense of a thesis, and satisfactory fulfillment of the general Honors requirements of the College. A student in the Honors Program in Religion will also register for Religion 498 in the fall semester and Religion 499 in the spring semester. 498 is a single course; 499 can be either a single or a double course, although it is ordinarily a double course. Upon completion of the thesis, the grade received will be credited to either two courses (498 and 499) or three courses (498 and 499D).
† On leave fall semester 2022-23.
* On leave 2022-23.
111 Introduction to Religion
This year's theme for comparative religion is “Jesus and the Buddha,” focusing on how the founders of Christianity and Buddhism have been remembered and understood by their followers. With this theme, the course examines the ways that scholars draw on contextual information to understand religious practices, ideas or beliefs, artifacts, institutions, and symbols. Both these figures have been central to questions about the natures of humans and gods, ethics, ritual practice, gender, sex, and social hierarchy. In this way, Christian and Buddhist ideas about the lives of their founding figures offer rich ground for comparative work as we consider the role of sacred writings, historical context, and interpretations across time. Our study will include a trajectory from ancient to contemporary sources and draw from a variety of relevant media, historical moments, and popular cultural movements.
Fall semester. Professors Heim and Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
122 Music, Religion, and Ritual in Africa
(Offered as BLST-122 and RELI-122) There is an aura of mystery that surrounds the meaning and practice of African religions. This is due to several factors: limited material on particular religions, the secrecy of most initiations, and the gradual disappearance of their rich heritage as a result of colonization. This course explores current scholarly understandings of the intricate dances, music, myths of creation, and various rituals associated with African religion, while going further to probe the inner meaning of these external manifestations. We will look in particular at African authors who have elucidated the stories, practices, and symbols of specific religions and revealed their esoteric meaning. Often these practitioners have undergone rigorous initiations and are able to engage the complex relationship between spirituality and practice in their writings. This course will address both the spiritual/mystical aspects of African religions as expressed by these authors, as well as the limitations of studying such a topic.
Spring semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023125 Personal Religion in the Bible and Beyond
In contemporary discussions about the role of religion in the lives of individuals we often hear questions such as the following: Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I define myself as a believer? What is the role of prayer? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being, apart from the institutional religion? What roles do material objects, personal images, and private practices play within my religious life? This course will suggest that questions such as these are entirely relevant to the study of early Judaism, especially in the late biblical period, a time when the preserved literature and the evidence of material culture place great emphasis on the individual’s spiritual journey. This course introduces students to ways of thinking about personal religion and applies that theoretical framework to the study of a variety of sources in the Bible and beyond. Topics include the Book of Job, the confessional literature of the prophets, psalms of personal lament, visionary experiences, vow-making, incantations, ancient graffiti, and memoirs written in the first person. This course has no prerequisites and provides students with the methodological and historical background to appreciate this interesting corpus, its social context, and its composers.
Fall Semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
127 Ethics and the Hebrew Scriptures
This course explores legal and narrative traditions of the Hebrew Bible as they pertain to questions about the nature of just and unjust behavior. We will study biblical texts that underscore the moral choices encountered by individuals and societies in a wide array of arenas: economic, ecological, sexual, gendered, political, and military. The goal is to understand variations in the responses of biblical writers to a range of ethical issues within their social and historical contexts. We will also attend to the influence of these ancient materials on subsequent cultural attitudes and human interactions, for the ethical traditions of the Hebrew Bible have been received, understood, and remade with varying results, positive and negative.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023152 Introduction to Buddhist Traditions
(Offered as RELI 152 and ASLC 152) This course is an introduction to the diverse ideals, practices, and traditions of Buddhism from its origins in South Asia to its geographical and historical diffusion throughout Asia and, more recently, into the west. We will explore the Three Jewels—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—and how they each provide refuge for those suffering in samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth). We will engage in close readings of the literary and philosophical texts central to Buddhism, as well as recent historical and anthropological studies of Buddhist traditions.
Spring Semester. Professor M. Heim.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
210 What Is Religion Anyway?: Theories and Methods in Religious Studies
What does religious studies study? How do its investigations proceed? Can a religion only be truly understood from within, by those who share its beliefs and values? Or, on the contrary, is only the person who stands “outside” religion equipped to study and truly understand it? Is there a generic “something” that we can properly call “religion” at all or is the concept of religion, which emerged from European Enlightenment, inapplicable to other cultural contexts? This course will explore several of the most influential efforts to develop theories of religion and methods for its study. We will consider psychological, sociological, anthropological, and phenomenological theories of religion, along with recent challenges to such theories from thinkers associated with feminist, post-modern and post-colonial perspectives.
Spring semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2024
210, 220 Christianity and Islam in Africa
(Offered as BLST 210 [A] HIST 210 [AF] and RELI 220) The course will examine the central role of Christianity and Islam in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial African societies. Focusing on case studies from West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, course lectures will explore the following issues in African religious, social, and political history: Christianity, Islam, and African indigenous belief systems; Muslim reformist movements in West African societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; mission Christianity and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Christianity, Islam, and colonialism in Africa; Christianity, Islam, and politics in postcolonial African states.
Limited to 25. Spring semester. Professor Vaughan.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
218, 229 The Problem of Evil
(Offered as RELI 218 and PHIL 229). Christian religious traditions have assumed that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. But attributing these attributes to the creator of the universe makes the existence of evil puzzling. If God is omnibenevolent, then God would not want any creature to suffer evil; if God is omniscient, then God would know how to prevent any evil from occurring; and if God is omnipotent, then God would be able to prevent any evil from occurring. Does the obvious fact that there is evil in the world, then, give us reason to think that there is no such God? Alternatively: if an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does exist, then what could possibly motivate such a God to permit the existence of evil? This course will survey classical and recent philosophical discussions of these questions. Among other topics, we will explore the free-will defense and its recent revisions, skeptical theism, open theism, and the "multiverse theodicy."
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2015, Fall 2018
223, 323 West African Religion as Philosophy
(Offered as BLST 323, PHIL 215 and RELI 223) This course explores the structure, beliefs, and practices of West African indigenous religions with an eye to their deeper philosophical meanings. We will examine several West African religions from the perspective of experts and practitioners who present the underlying philosophy of these traditions, exploring their epistemology (how knowledge works) and metaphysics (the nature of being). We will focus on concepts of the person, the word, the world, and community as well as the important role of orality as the foundational paradigm of this philosophy.
Fall semester. Visiting Professor Brodnicka.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
227 Hell
How do ideas about Hell and the possibility of eternal punishment shape attitudes toward death, influence understandings of morality, and reflect lived realities? Focusing on the history of Christian formulations of Hell, this course explores the variety of ways people have imagined what happens to them after death, how those ideas have developed, and what those ideas can tell us about the people who wrote, read, and talked about Hell. We will explore depictions of Hell from the ancient world to today, including literature, architecture, art, film, video games, and music, and our discussions will consider how the geographies, punishments, and monsters of Hell have fit within religious discourses, reflected social contexts, and helped shape human behavior.
Fall semester. Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
241 Ancient Philosophy in Dialogue: China, India, and Greece
(Offered as PHIL 241 and RELI 241). This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.
No prerequisites. Limited to 60 students. Spring semester. Professors Gentzler, and Heim, and Harold.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023262 Folklore and the Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a rich anthology of traditional, communicative media including a range of genres that might be compared to the folktales, myths, proverbs, riddles, symbolic dramas, and other creative works of more familiar contemporary cultures. This course introduces students to the cross-discipline of folklore studies and explores the ways in which that field in comparative literature enriches our appreciation of Israelite literature. We will explore the ways in which professional students of traditional literatures describe and classify folk material, approach questions of composition and transmission, and deal with complex issues of context, meaning, and message. Topics of special interest include the relationships between oral and written literatures, the defining of "myth," feminism and folklore, and the ways in which the biblical writers, nineteenth-centure collectors such as the Brothers Grimm, modern popularizers including film-makers such as Walt Ddisney, cartoonists, and the creators of contemporry advertisements recast peices of lore, in the process helping to represent, shape, or misshape us and our culture.
Spring semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023277 Religion and Violence in the Roman Empire
(Offered as RELI 277 and HIST 274 [TC/TE/P] ) Literature from the later Roman empire abounds with accounts of heightened acts of violence between religious groups: Roman judges torture religious deviants; monks massacre banqueters and destroy temples with their bare hands; Christians clash with each other on darkened city streets; Christians attack Jewish synagogues and festival-goers. What about the late Roman world encouraged such violence? Were some religious groups more or less tolerant than their counterparts? Were incidents of violence primarily rhetorical, or do they reflect the real volatility of social interactions? How might the literary representation of violence be an act of violence itself or encourage physical violence? This course investigates the intersection of violence and religion from the third through the seventh century C.E., paying particular attention to questions of definition, legitimacy, and the interpretation of violent acts. As we explore these questions, we will engage with ongoing theoretical discussions about identity, violence, social performance, and boundary construction. Over the course of the semester, students will compile research portfolios that examine and analyze incidents of inter-religious violence.
Spring semester. Assistant Professor Falcasantos.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023280 The Qur'ān As Literature
(Offered as RELI-280 and ENGL-297.)
Intensive study of the rich literary repertoire of the Qur’ān. An introduction to its literary qualities, including style, structure, eloquence, and unity; and an introduction to its characters (principally the prophets) and themes. We will further study the Qur’ān as Arabic literature, as Abrahamic literature, as Late-Antique literature, as Mystical literature, and as World literature. No pre-requisites. First year students welcome.
Spring semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023285 The Qur'an and Its Controversies
(Offered as RELI-285 and ASLC-285) An exploration of several salient questions concerning the Qur’ān, the Islamic Revealed Book. How have Muslims explained the Qur’ān’s own proclamation of its supernatural origin and its miraculous quality? How does the Qur’ān engage with and respond to the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures? Who has the authority to interpret the Qur’ān and why? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions that will occupy us over the course of the semester. We will also discuss the ways that the Qur’ān has been read as a work of law, theology, and mysticism, and how it has shaped theories of the state. Finally, we will isolate the Qur’ān from the Islamic tradition and explore the many ways that it can be read as a work of literature.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
321 Replacing Religion
For as long as “religion” has been a distinct object of reflection and inquiry, opinion has been divided about whether it is good or bad, necessary or contingent, universal or parochial. And accompanying such differences of opinion have been revisionary projects with different levels of ambition, ranging from the renovation of existing religious traditions to the abolition of all forms of religion. The middle range of this spectrum is occupied by proposals not to eliminate religion but to replace it with something better. The idea that animates this sort of project is that there may be forms of culture that, if they are not religion precisely, can serve those functions that religion serves without causing the problems that religion causes. This course will explore a range of attempts to replace religion with one or more alternatives that are evident in the historical records of the past two centuries. We will explore attempts to create “religions of humankind”; the creation of explicitly non-religious intentional communities that are nevertheless modeled on religious communities in important ways; explorations of such phenomena as competitive sports and political ideologies as alternatives to religion; and the emergence of the term “spiritual but not religious” to name a recognizable, if loosely defined, relationship to religion. Students in this course will write an independently researched paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the semester.
Spring semester. Professor A. Dole.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023367 Reading the Rabbis
For the Rabbis of post-biblical Judaism, the Hebrew Bible was a sacred resource to be mined, interpreted, developed, and reapplied. This course explores the rich corpus produced in classical Judaism of the post-biblical period. We will explore Rabbinic worldviews through the close reading of legal and aggadic or non-legal texts from the Midrashim (the Rabbis’ explanations, reformulations, and elaborations of Scripture), the Mishnah, and the Talmud and examine diverse subjects ranging from human sexuality to the nature of creation, from ritual purity to the problem of unjust suffering. Topics covered will vary from year to year depending upon the texts chosen for reading. There are no prerequisites required for this course.
Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Niditch.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
381 Islam: Authors and Texts
(Offered as ASLC-381 and RELI-381) Close readings from different school traditions in Islam. Topics may include: belief and unbelief; salvation, language and revelation; prophecy, intellect and imagination; ritual and prayer; human responsibility.
Authors will vary from year to year. In Fall 2022, we will focus on the Mu‘tazila, a religious movement in Islam that became a dominant school in the ninth and tenth centuries. Our goal will be to understand, across a great cultural and chronological chasm, how the Mu‘tazila negotiated the meanings, principles, and implications of Islamic belief and practice; and how their ideas were adopted, perpetuated, and institutionalized within both the Sunnī and Shī‘ī traditions of Islam.
Fall semester. Professor Jaffer.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2014, Fall 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent Reading Course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
498, 499D Senior Departmental Honors
Required of candidates for Honors in Religion. Preparation and oral defense of a scholarly essay on a topic approved by the Department. Detailed outline of thesis and adequate bibliography for project required before Thanksgiving; preliminary version of substantial portion of thesis by end of the semester.
Open to seniors with consent of the instructors. Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024