Religion

RELI UN1120 Love Your Enemies?. 4.00 points.

We all have enemies, individual and collective, private and public, ephemeral or persistent. This seems increasingly true. But do we choose our enemies or do our enemies choose us? Do we invent the enemy? Is the enemy a “social construction,” a fiction or is the enemy a “fact”? Do we need to believe in the enemy or is it better to know the enemy? And once there are enemies, is it really possible to love them? All enemies? Is that a religious commandment? Does religion have a special relationship to enemies? And what about frenemies? This course will explore different kinds of enemies such as they appear in sacred texts (the Bible, the Qur’ān), novels, films and popular culture. And yes, we will try to learn whether we can love our enemies

RELI UN1610 RELIGION AND POPULAR CULTURE. 3.00 points.

When we hear “pop culture,” we often think of it in comparison to a “high culture.” In reality, popular culture is something that everyone has easy access to, and represents a common language of the people. Religion permeates American popular culture in surprising ways, and is part of national vocabulary. In addition, religious communities turn to popular culture as a way to preserve their own identities and uniqueness in the face of homogenization and assimilation. The course will attempt to cover a diversity of voices and perspectives. It is important to understand how context plays a role in the interpretation and practice of faith, as well as to witness the tension between the theology and the manifestation of belief. We are not interested in determining if a particular understanding is right or wrong. Rather, we want to understand the role religion plays in society and for the individual. You will be expected to be critical and engaged. My hope is that you will also be creative and daring, and push us all into a better understanding of the material

RELI BC2003 Religion and Political Thought. 3.00 points.

Are “belief” and “reason” two different things? What is the proper role of religion in modern society? How do we determine what is just and unjust in the absence of a Higher Law? Does religion continue to influence political decision-making in liberal democracies, and if so, how? These questions continue to animate debates about the relationship between religion and politics today. This class examines articulations of and responses to this question in the political thought of the Enlightenment, a period that has traditionally been described as the moment when “the West” parted ways with religion and religious belief as the foundation for its understanding of truth, justice, and social order. In this class, we will examine classic and overlooked works of Enlightenment philosophy. We will interrogate whether the Enlightenment really signaled a departure from religion. We will also examine whether the Enlightenment was the preserve — much less the invention — of white Europeans and American settlers. We will do so with an eye toward the politics of the present, examining how Enlightenment thought’s engagement with religion produced discourses of race, gender, economy, and nationhood that continue to shape the terms of political discourse today

RELI UN2305 ISLAM. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

An introduction to the Islamic religion in its premodern and modern manifestations. The first half of the course concentrates on “classical” Islam, beginning with the life of the Prophet, and extending to ritual, jurisprudence, theology, and mysticism. The second half examines how Muslims have articulated Islam in light of colonization and the rise of a secular modernity. The course ends with a discussion of American and European Muslim attempts at carving out distinct spheres of identity in the larger global Muslim community

RELI UN2301 ISLAM-DISCUSSION. 0.00 points.

RELI UN2306 INTRO TO JUDAISM. 4.00 points.

A historical overview of Jewish belief and practice as these have crystallized and changed over the centuries. Special attention to ritual and worship, the forms of religious literature, central concepts, religious leadership and institutions, Israel among the nations

RELI UN2308 BUDDHISM: EAST ASIAN. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Lecture and discussion. An introductory survey that studies East Asian Buddhism as an integral , living religious tradition. Emphasis on the reading of original treatises and historiographies in translation, while historical events are discussed in terms of their relevance to contemporary problems confronted by Buddhism. There is a mandatory weekly discussion session

RELI UN2388 BUDDHISM: EAST ASIAN-DISC. 0.00 points.

RELI UN2309 HINDUISM. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Considers efforts since 1900 to synthesize a coherent understanding of what Hinduism entails, sometimes under the heading of sanatana dharma. Using a rubric provided by the Bhagavad Gita, explores philosophical/theological (jnana), ritual (karma), and devotional (bhakti) aspects of Hindu life and thought

RELI UN2779 INTRODUCTION TO NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS. 3.00 points.

There are over 800 distinct Native American nations currently within the borders of the United States. This course offers a broad introduction to the diversity of American Indian religious systems and their larger functions in communities and in history. We will explore general themes in the study of Native American religious traditions as well as look at some specific examples of practices, ideas, and beliefs. Of particular importance are the history and effects of colonialism and missionization on Native peoples, their continuing struggles for religious freedom and cultural and linguistic survival, and the ways in which American Indians engage with religion and spirituality, both past and present, to respond to social, cultural, political, and geographical change

RELI UN2780 INTRODUCTION TO NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS- Discussion. 0.00 points.

REQUIRED DISCUSSION SECTION FOR RELI UN2779

RELI UN3027 Muslims of New York. 3.00 points.

Looking at both historical and lived realities of Muslims in NYC, moving from the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan to Harlem as Mecca. The course would engage both with cultural production, such as music, plays, and street art, and living communities around the Barnard campus

RELI BC3096 More than Real: Dreams, Imagination, and Virtual Reality in South Asian Religions. 4.00 points.

This course is thematic, though a loose history of dreaming, imaginative praxis, and virtual reality environments across South Asia will emerge through the networked conversations across texts. The advantage of a thematic course allows us to cover various genres such as: ritual manuals; epic; poetry; philosophical argument; biographical accounts; prophecies; conversion stories; and medical textbooks to name a handful. At the end of the course, we will see how the texts encountered in the first part have been repurposed to speak to social justice movements around caste - both within South Asia and the diaspora population in the U.S. The thematic of dreaming and imagination also provides flexibility in method: because students will have the opportunity to study conversations between different historical actors across religious traditions about dreams, they will also have the opportunity to revise problematic accounts of religious pluralism and communalism in South Asia. Students will read primary texts from Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Sikh traditions to name a handful. Students can look forward to reading about worlds within rocks; falling asleep and waking up as another person only to die in the dream world, wake up and then realize your dream-life family is somehow real and looking for you; how to finally interpret those pesky dreams about teeth falling out; dismembered bodies generating the universe; daydreaming about a cloud that thinks mountain peaks look like nipples; how to build a mind-temple that Shiva prefers to the physical one with fancy rock; and much more!

RELI UN3199 THEORY. 4.00 points.

An exploration of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of religion as well as other areas of humanistic inquiry. The methods considered include: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, genealogy, and deconstruction. (Previous title: Juniors Colloquium)

RELI UN3210 MILLENNIUM: APOCALYPSE AND UTOPIA. 3.00 points.

Study of apocalyptic thinking and practice in the western religious tradition, with a focus on American apocalyptic religious movements and their relation to contemporary cultural productions, as well as notions of history and politics

RELI BC3301 Hebrew Bible. 3 points.

Introduction to the literature of ancient Israel against the background of the ancient Near East.

RELI UN3323 Religion and Medicine in South Asia: Psychiatry ＆ the Politics of Madness. 4.00 points.

In this course, students will come to see the imbrication of religion, power, and mental illness across South Asia by examining experiences of suffering and its management; the history of psychiatry in the British colonial era and its afterlives; and the relationship of religion to concepts of mental and emotional disorder. Students will identify models for medical structures of care, healing, and treatments in the context of religion, ritual, and quotidian life. Topics include diagnostic processes and the creation of categories, stigma and models of clinical care, hysteria, spirit possession, pharmaceuticals, and the relationship of trauma to political structures. This course has three sections: 1) the first portion undertakes a brief historical survey of medical disciplines and institutions in South Asia (such as the development of Ayurveda, Yunānī Ṭibb, and the rise of the bīmāristān); 2) the second portion of the course focuses on the rise of the asylum (sometimes called the pāgal khāna) in tandem with psychiatry and its twinned consequence: the pathologization of asceticism by British colonial technologies of discipline; 3) the final portion examines the relationship between British colonialism and psychoanalysis with the introduction of this western discipline to the subcontinent. This course will take critical stock of historical structures throughout South Asia claiming to provide care (such as family, caste, healthcare, mental asylums, colonialism, educational systems, pensions, and much more). As a result, students come to consider concepts of social suffering, biopolitics, biosociality, political subjectivity, and postcolonial disorder. Primary source material will include the following: śāstra, ethnography, clinical studies, poetry, scripture, ritual texts across Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions

RELI UN3604 Religion in the City. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I).
Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year.

Uses the city to address and investigate a number of central concepts in the study of religion, including ritual, community, worldview, conflict, tradition, and discourse.  We will explore together what we can learn about religions by focusing on place, location, and context.

RELI UN3771 Indigenous Enlightenment. 4.00 points.

What is the source of truth and authority? What is the origin of the world and how does that determine the social order? Who ought to rule, why, and how? What are the standards for measuring justice and injustice? What is our relationship to the environment around us and how should its resources be distributed among people? How do we relate to those who are different from us, and what does it mean to be a community in the first place? Historically, the answers to these questions that have been described as “religious” and “political” have been the restricted to a specific tradition of Western European Christianity and its secular afterlives. However, these are questions that every society asks, in order to be a society in the first place. This course analyzes how indigenous peoples in the Americas asked and answered these questions through the first three centuries of Western European imperial rule. At the same time, this course pushes students to question what gets categorized as uniquely “indigenous” thought, how, and why.

RELI BC3996 Religion Salon: New Directions. 1.00 point.

The Religion Salon is a one-point course in the Religion department, designed to offer students an introduction to new areas of the academic study of religion and/or new approaches to the field. The Religion Salon will be offered as a supplement to an existing course offered in the same semester and will be open to (but not required of) the students in that existing course as well as to students who wish to take the Salon as a stand-alone one-point course. The Religion Salon will feature guest scholars whose research and teaching extend into new areas and/or engage in new approaches to the academic study of religion

RELI BC3997 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR. 4.00 points.

Working research seminar devoted to helping students produce a substantive piece of writing that will represent the culmination of their work at the College and in the major

RELI BC3998 SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR. 4.00 points.

Working research seminar devoted to helping students produce a substantive piece of writing that will represent the culmination of their work at the College and in the major

RELI GU4050 Christianity and Culture. 4.00 points.

This course provides an introduction to Christianity through the lens of culture and culture theory. Which aspects of Christian faith and practice can we understand as universal or shared, and which are conditioned by the specificities of time and place? Does Christianity itself have a culture, or shape particular understandings of the self and society? Readings are drawn from a range of sources, including primary texts, anthropology, history, philosophy, theology, and fiction. The majority of our focus will be on the modern period, with particular attention to Catholicism and Pentecostalism in the global South (including Africa and Melanesia). Topics covered will include the comparative study of virtues and values (salvation, grace, sincerity), as well as Christianity’s many and varied relationships to the realms of politics, economics, and society. Students should come away from this course with a solid grounding in major features of Christianity, especially its Catholic and Protestant forms. The course will also provide students with an introduction to culture theory. Critical writing and reading skills will also be a focus, along with class participation. The course will also encourage students to think of ways in which the issues and authors surveyed might provide models for their own interests and research. This course is geared toward graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Some background in religious studies and/or anthropology or literary criticism is helpful but not required

RELI GU4105 RELIGION LAB. 4.00 points.

In their research, scholars of religion employ a variety of methods to analyze texts ranging from historical documents to objects of visual culture. This course acquaints students with both the methods and the materials utilized in the field of religious studies. Through guided exercises, they acquire research skills for utilizing sources and become familiarized with dominant modes of scholarly discourse. The class is organized around a series of research scavenger hunts that are due at the start of each week's class and assigned during the discussion section (to be scheduled on the first day of class). Additional class meeting on Thursdays

RELI GU4120 GENDER IN ANC CHRISTIANITY. 4.00 points.

This seminar considers the difference gender makes in interpreting ancient Christian texts, ideas, and practices. Topics will include gender hierarchy and homoeroticism, prophecy and authority, outsiders’ views of Christianity, bodily pieties such as martyrdom and asceticism, and gender politics in the establishment of church offices. Emphasis will be placed on close readings of primary sources and selected scholarly framings of these sources

RELI GU4307 BUDDHISM ＆ DAOISM IN CHINA. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: one course on Buddhism or Chinese religious traditions is recommended, but not required, as background.
In recent decades, the study of the so-called “Buddho-Daoism” has become a burgeoning field that breaks down the traditional boundary lines drawn between the two Chinese religious traditions. In this course we will read secondary scholarship in English that probes the complex relationships between Buddhism and Daoism in the past two millennia. Students are required not only to be aware of the tensions and complementarity between them, but to be alert to the nature of claims to either religious purity or mixing and the ways those claims were put forward under specific religio-historical circumstances. The course is organized thematically rather than chronologically. We will address topics on terminology, doctrine, cosmology, eschatology, soteriology, exorcism, scriptural productions, ritual performance, miracle tales and visual representations that arose in the interactions of the two religions, with particular attention paid to critiquing terms such as “influence,” “encounter,” “dialogue,” “hybridity,” “syncretism,” and “repertoire.” The course is designed for both advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of East Asian religion, literature, history, art history, sociology and anthropology. One course on Buddhism or Chinese religious traditions is recommended, but not required, as background

RELI GU4335 Shi'ism. 4 points.

This course offer a survy of Shi'ism with a particular focus on the "Twelvers" or "Imamis." It begins by examining the interplay between theology and the core historical narratives of Shi'i identity and culminates with an assessment of the jarring impact of modernity on religious institutions/beliefs.

RELI GU4376 A Political Introduction to the Christian Scriptures. 4.00 points.

In this course we will examine the New Testament canon and the twenty-seven texts that comprise it in light of their respective literary genres, their Jewish antecedents and Greco-Roman influences, which will include their historical, social, cultural, political and economic contexts, and the ways these factors impinged upon their various dimensions of meaning. Various modes of biblical interpretation, both ancient and contemporary, will be explored. A major emphasis will be on the ways select texts are utilized, misconstrued and weaponized in the public sphere in this contemporary moment

RELI GU4616 TECHNOLOGY,RELIGION,FUTURE. 4.00 points.

This seminar will examine the history of the impact of technology and media on religion and vice versa before bringing into focus the main event: religion today and in the future. Well read the classics as well as review current writing, video and other media, bringing thinkers such as Eliade, McLuhan, Mumford and Weber into dialogue with the current writing of Kurzweil, Lanier and Taylor, and look at, among other things: ethics in a Virtual World; the relationship between Burning Man, a potential new religion, and technology; the relevance of God and The Rapture in Kurzweils Singularity; and what will become of karma when carbon-based persons merge with silicon-based entities and other advanced technologies

RELI GU4637 TALMUDIC NARRATIVE. 4.00 points.

  This course examines the rich world of Talmudic narrative and the way it mediates between conflicting perspectives on a range of topics: life and death; love and sexuality; beauty and superficiality; politics and legal theory; religion and society; community and non-conformity; decision-making and the nature of certainty.  While we examine each text closely, we will consider different scholars’ answers – and our own answers – to the questions, how are we to view Talmudic narrative generally, both as literature and as cultural artifact?

RELI GU4807 DIVINE HUMAN ANIMAL. 4.00 points.

This course focuses on thinking with animals (Levi-Strauss) through the lens of the religious imagination. The concentration will be primarily on Western religious cultures, especially Judaism and the question of Jewishness

RELI GR6101 THEORY ＆ METHOD-STUDY OF RELIG. 3.00 points.

“Theories and Methods” courses in any field are commonly unwieldy beasts. They cannot but be a compromise-formation between contemporary questions and texts, ideas, and definitions (alongside a whole lot of problems) that we have inherited as “canonical” in a field. In the best case, such a course is a passageway into deeper engagement with a field, its histories, its complexities, and its possibilities from which we might wrest and build viable futures. Disciplinary fields are structures where power and knowledge are produced and reproduced. The study of religion is no exception. The questions of “how is ‘religion’ constructed as a category here?” and “what work does the designation of something or someone as ‘religious’ do?” will, therefore, accompany us throughout our work over the course of this semester. We will also examine how different methodological commitments shape what objects of study and which questions come to the fore for the study of religion. This course will explore how the study of religion is not reducible to the study of traditions and communities that are readily recognized as “religious.” However, the vexed histories of the construction of “religion” as a category of knowledge production does also not negate that there are large, varied, and flourishing communities of practice beyond the university for whom whether or not “religion” exists is not at all a question. Holding these layers of complexity in play, this course seeks to introduce students exemplarily to key texts and concepts that have shaped the study of religion as we encounter it today as an academic discipline

RELI GR6213 Topics in Modern South Asia: Penn-Columbia Seminar. 4.00 points.

RELI GR9330 THEOR-TRANSMISSN/COMMUN FORMN. 4.00 points.

Intended as the foundation course for graduate students in Religion who are focusing on the Transmission zone of inquiry. Graduate students in the other departments are also welcome.

Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
This is a course designed for first- and second-year graduate students who are interested in the issue of community formation, lineage, genealogy, transmission, and translation, whether textual or cultural. Course texts will be a combination of theoretical interventions and case studies drawn from major religious traditions. The learning goals of the course are the following: (1) to introduce seminal interpretive and/or methodological issues in the contemporary study of transmission; (2) to read several theoretical “classics” in the field, to provide a foundation for further reading; (3) to sample, where possible, new writing in the field; and (4) to encourage students to think of ways in which the several issues and authors surveyed might provide models for their own ongoing research work

RELI GR9336 CHINESE BUDDHIST LITERATURE. 3.00 points.

ENRE BC3145 Jews in Christian Narrative. 4.00 points.

Since the beginning of the movement that would become Christianity, Jews have occupied a unique – and uniquely fraught – position in the Christian imagination. Why did so few of the very Jews to whom Jesus preached accept him as their messiah? Why, as the Church grew in wealth and influence, did Jews continue to live in Christian communities, and what was their proper place in Christian society? In our course, we will read early and medieval Christian narratives about Jews that are, in many ways, an attempt to answer these questions – dark imaginative visions of Jews as child-killers, cannibals, and devil worshippers. We will use narrative, psychological, and literary theory as tools to analyze these tales and to make sense of their complicated and continuing legacy

ENRE BC3810 LITERARY APPROACHES TO BIBLE. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 14 students.
Interpretive strategies for reading the Bible as a work with literary dimensions. Considerations of poetic and rhetorical structures, narrative techniques, and feminist exegesis will be included. Topics for investigation include the influence of the Bible on literature