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38 courses found.
RELIGIOUS STUDIES (L23)  (Dept. Info)Arts & Sciences  (Policies)SP2018

L23 Re St 208FHistory, Text, and Identity: An Introduction to Jewish Civilization3.0 Units

L23 Re St 3030Love Songs and Laptops: Rediscovering Medieval Music in the Digital Age3.0 Units
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01-T-R---11:30A-1:00PMusic Cls Bldg / 103 BokulichMay 7 2018 1:00PM - 3:00PM1560
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L23 Re St 3050Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom3.0 Units
Description:This course focuses on the political and spiritual lives of Martin and Malcolm. We will examine their personal biographies, speeches, writings, representations, FBI Files, and legacies as a way to better understand how the intersections of religion, race, and politics came to bare upon the freedom struggles of people of color in the US and abroad. The course also takes seriously the evolutions in both Martin and Malcolm's political approaches and intellectual development, focusing especially on the last years of their respective lives. We will also examine the critical literature that takes on the leadership styles and political philosophies of these communal leaders, as well as the very real opposition and surveillance they faced from state forces like the police and FBI. Students will gain an understanding of what social conditions, religious structures and institutions, and personal experiences led to first the emergence and then the assassinations of these two figures. We will discuss the subtleties of their political analyses, pinpointing the key differences and similarities of their philosophies, approaches, and legacies, and we will apply these debates of the mid-twentieth century to contemporary events and social movements in terms of how their legacies are articulated and what we can learn from them in struggles for justice and recognition in twenty-first century America and beyond.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, SC, SDArchHUMArtHUMBUBAENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L57 305  L90 305  L98 305AFrequency:Every 1 or 2 Years / History

L23 Re St 3065Voice, Language and Power: Late Medieval Religious Writing3.0 Units
Description:In the later Middle Ages, there is a flowering throughout Christian Europe of religious writings that offer a new voice in which personal religious experience can be pursued and expressed. Their voices are mainly intended to be communal ones, to be contained within the Church and regulated by it. But in each case the fact that it is a voice may offer a mode of resistance, or of difference. Such writing is often aimed at lay people, sometimes exclusively at women; and sometimes the intended auditors become the authors, and propose a version of religious experience that claims a new and more intimate kind of power for its readers. This course looks at a wide range of such writing in vernacular languages read in translation (English, French and German), including the work of Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Eleanor Hull, the anonymous writer of The Cloud of Unknowing and the perhaps pseudonymous William Langland, author of Piers Plowman. Whether such writing seeks to be orthodox or conducive to heresy, it presents a challenge to the power of clergy - a challenge that is written in the vernacular language of lay people, rather than clerical Latin, and in doing so offers distinctively new voices for religious experience. The course will also look at ways in which such work might have been influenced, if only oppositionally or at times indirectly, by contact with Muslim and Jewish writing (including Jewish exegesis of the Psalms).
Attributes:A&S IQHUMArchHUMArtHUMBUETHENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CP Fees:
Course Type:HomeSame As:L14 3065  L16 306C  U66 3065Frequency:Every 1 or 2 Years / History

L23 Re St 3350Out of the Shtetl: Jewish Life in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries?3.0 Units
Description:"Out of the Shtetl" is a course about tradition and transformation; small towns and urban centers; ethnicity and citizenship; nations, states, and empires. At its core, it asks the question, what did it mean for the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe to emerge from small market towns and villages to confront modern ethnicities, nations, and empires? What lasting impact did the shtetl experience have on Jewish life in a rapidly changing environment? The focus is on the Jewish historical experience in the countries that make up Central and Eastern Europe (mainly the Bohemian lands, Hungary, Poland, and Russia) from the late eighteenth century to the fall of the Soviet Union. Among the topics that we will cover are: Jews and the nobility in Poland-Lithuania; the multi-cultural, imperial state; Hasidism and its opponents; absolutism and reform in imperial settings; the emergence of modern European nationalisms and their impact on Jewish identity; antisemitism and popular violence; nationalist and radical movements among Jews; war, revolution, and genocide; and the transition from Soviet dominion to democratic states. Modern, Europe. PREREQUISITE: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, LCDArchHUMArtHUMBUHUM, ISENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L22 3350  L22 5350  L74 3350  L75 3350  L75 5330  L79 3356  L83 3350  L97 3356  U16 3350Frequency:Every 2-3 Years / History

L23 Re St 346Topics in East Asian Religions: The Zhuangzi, A Daoist Classic3.0 Units
Description:The Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a collection of cryptic sayings and short anecdotes attributed to the mysterious Master Zhuang Zhou (trad. 369-286 BCE), has deeply influenced cultural life in East Asia. Considered to be one of the most important texts in Chinese history, it triggered a wide range of discourses on the nature of the universe and good living while informing diverse practices such as calligraphy, landscape painting, poetry, drama, Daoist ritual, Zen Buddhism, sitting meditation, and politics. In this course, we engage in both the Daoist classic's multifaceted content and its diverse reception over the last two millennia. In the first half, we read the Zhuangzi as a primary source focusing on its short philosophical vignettes on the possibility and limits of knowledge and language, its humorous anecdotes that celebrate deformed and useless bodies, its youthful invectives against Confucians, as well as its powerful calls to live a creative and independent life as a recluse. In the second half, we will encounter concrete responses to the Zhuangzi in the form of commentaries, paintings, plays, performances, and comic books that exemplify the scripture's far-ranging cultural impact. This course provides both a focused and multifaceted avenue to the cultural history of East Asia and a personal experience of the life-changing appeal and topicality of the text.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, LCDArchHUMArtHUMENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Fees:
Course Type:HomeSame As:L03 3462  L03 5346Frequency:Unpredictable / History
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01M-W----1:00P-2:30PWrighton / 250 ZuernSee Instructor30260
Actions:BooksSyllabus
Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use.

L23 Re St 3622Topics in Islam: Islam in the Indian Ocean3.0 Units
Description:For centuries, Indians, Chinese, Jews, Malays, Arabs, Portuguese, Africans, Americans, English and a fascinating medley of other peoples have been circulating freely in the Indian Ocean as merchants, pirates, explorers, missionaries and pilgrims. From the Horn of Africa to Indonesia, the Indian Ocean has long witnessed a frantic exchange that cut across ethnic and language affiliations. We begin by exploring the early history of the Indian Ocean up till the 18th century. We then trace the spread of Islam in the region which has been dubbed the 'Muslim Lake.' Next, we focus on the consequences of increased European presence in the Indian Ocean from the late 18th century onwards. What effects did European imperial expansion have on Indian Ocean trade, migration patterns and the religious haj pilgrimage? Vivid travel narratives provided by Joseph Conrad and Amitav Ghosh challenge historical periodization that neatly divides world history into pre-colonial and colonial eras. During the 19th century, both Europeans and Asians, traders, migrants and haj pilgrims alike, travelled extensively across the Indian Ocean as before, albeit at a faster rate and in much greater numbers. This period coincided with the intensification of Indian and Arab migration to Southeast Asia. How did the advent of colonialism accompanied by immense technological development in the 19th century actually affect the political and economic relations in the Indian Ocean? We round off the semester with sections of Robert Kaplan's seminal book on contemporary politics in the Indian Ocean. How relevant is Islam during the 21st century?
Attributes:A&S IQHUMArchHUMArtHUMBUISENHUCollCD
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L75 3622  L48 3312  L75 5622  L97 3622  U94 3622Frequency:Unpredictable / History
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01-T-R---4:00P-5:30PLopata Hall / 202 NakissaMay 9 2018 6:00PM - 8:00PM3060
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L23 Re St 3660The Sephardic Experience: 1492 to the Present3.0 Units
Description:This course explores the history and culture of the Sephardic diaspora from the expulsion of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry at the end of the fifteenth century to the present. We will start with a brief introduction into the history of Iberian Jews prior to 1492, asking how this experience created a distinct subethnic Jewish group: the Sephardim. We will then follow their migratory path to North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and the Americas. The questions we will explore include: in what sense did Jews of Iberian heritage form a transnational community? How did they use their religious, cultural, and linguistic ties to advance their commercial interests? How did they transmit and transform aspects of Spanish culture and create a vibrant Ladino literature? How did the Sephardim interact with Ashkenazi, Greek, North African, and other Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities? How did Jewish emigres from Spain and Portugal become intermediaries between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire? What was the role of Sephardim in Europe's transatlantic expansion? How did conversos (converts to Christianity) return to Judaism and continue to grapple with their ambiguous religious identity? How did Ottoman and North African Jews respond to European cultural trends and colonialism and create their own unique forms of modern culture? How did the Holocaust impact Sephardic Jewry? The course will end with a discussion of the Sephardic experience in America and Israel today.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, LCDArchHUMArtHUMBUISENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CP Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L75 366  L22 3856  L75 566Frequency:Every Third Semester / History

L23 Re St 368Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion3.0 Units
Description:What is religion, and how can we study it? Do we need an answer to the first question to pursue the second? Why, and toward what ends, might we undertake such study? This course considers these questions through the investigation of significant attempts to study religion over the past century, paying particular attention to the methods, motivations, and aims of these works. Is the study of religion an effort to disprove or debunk it, or perhaps to support it? What would each mean? Is it an effort to describe the indescribable, or perhaps to translate complex beliefs and practices into a language in which they can be discussed by others? Why would such a translation be helpful, and to whom? Is the study of religion an investigation of a social phenomenon, an organization of communities, a specific formation of individuals, or perhaps a psychosis or illusion, evidence of the workings of power on our lives and the difficulty of bearing it? What is at stake in defining religion in these ways, and then in undertaking its study? In this course, we will discuss major theoretical approaches to the study of religion in relation to these questions and others, toward a better understanding of what religion might be and how it might be studied today. NOTE: This course is required for Religious Studies majors and minors. It is recommended that this course be taken after completion of L23 102 Thinking About Religion.
Attributes:A&S IQHUMArchHUMArtHUMBUETHENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:C Fees:
Course Type:HomeSame As:L57 368Frequency:Annually / History
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01-T-R---1:00P-2:30PSeigle / 111 KravchenkoSee Instructor1590
Actions:BooksSyllabus
Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use.

L23 Re St 374Of Dishes, Taste, and Class: History of Food in the Middle East3.0 Units
Description:When the 13th century author Ibn al-Adim from the city of Aleppo, Syria, titled his book on food Reaching the Beloved through the Description of Delicious Foods and Perfumes, he was perhaps not concerned so much with simply how to satisfy hunger. Thinking through the title alone opens a window for us on all sorts of cultural, social, economic, and political questions about food and drink. Our history as humans with food is long and complicated. It extends from seeking basic nutrition to sustain our livelihood to contracting diseases. Food also plays a fundamental role in how humans organize themselves in societies, differentiate socially, culturally, and economically, establish values and norms for religious, cultural, and communal practices, and define identities of race, gender, and class. Food has been one of the most visible signs of social status in any given society and a vital part of many movements of political and social reform and transformation. Food has been a major question in trans-regional, international, and recently global cooperation and conflict as well. This course will cover the history of food and drink in the Middle East to help us understand our complex relation with food and look at our lives from perspectives we intuitively feel or by implication know, but rarely critically and explicitly reflect on. This course does not intend to spoil, so to speak, this undeniably one of the most pleasurable human needs and activities, but rather to make you aware of how food shapes who we are as individuals and societies. We will study the history of food and drink in the Middle East across the centuries until the present time, but be selective in choosing themes, geographic regions, and historical periods to focus on. Course work is geared toward increasing your ability to think about food and drink analytically as a socio-economic and cultural capital, noticeable marker of identity, and indicator of a political position. In a sense we will try to tease out in class why we are what we eat! Please consult the instructor if you have not taken any course in the humanities.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, LCD, SDArchHUMArtHUMBUBA, ISENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:CPA Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L75 374  L22 3748Frequency:Annually / History
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01M-W----2:30P-4:00PRidgley / 107 YucesoyMay 7 2018 3:30PM - 5:30PM15120
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L23 Re St 418Sexuality and Gender in East Asian Religions3.0 Units
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01-T-R---2:30P-4:00PBusch / 202 GrantSee Instructor1550
Actions:BooksSyllabus
Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use.

L23 Re St 4965Advanced Seminar: Magic, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Medieval World, 350-15503.0 Units
Description:This seminar will study the history of magic, heresy, and witchcraft in the medieval world. It will begin in the fourth century after the conversion of Constantine the Great and end with the great witchcraft trials of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The seminar will read magical treatises, ecclesiastical polemics against vulgar belief, inquisitorial trials, chronicles, and histories, in our attempt to define what was considered the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the supernatural, good and evil, the boundaries of heaven and earth. How do modern historians use medieval documents to evoke the lives of men, women, and children who believed in magic or were accused of heresy? Can this only be done through a form of historical anthropology? What methods do historians use in trying to understand past ideas and practices? What is historical truth then? What is the relationship of supposedly heterodox belief and behavior with religious orthodoxy? How do we define religion? A theme throughout this seminar will be the definition of evil and the powers of the devil. Students will write a short historiographic essay and a long research essay. Pre-modern, Europe. PREREQUISITE: Prior coursework in history or permission of the instructor. Students registering for this course must also register for L22 49IR/30 for 1 unit.
Attributes:A&S IQHUM, LCDArchHUMArtHUMBUHUM, ISENH
Instruction Type:Classroom instruction Grade Options:C Fees:
Course Type:IdentSame As:L22 4965  L22 5965Frequency:Every 1 or 2 Years / History
SecDays       TimeBuilding / RoomInstructorFinal ExamSeatsEnrollWaits
01M------2:30P-5:30PEads / 205 PeggNo Final15120
Desc:Students registering for this course must also register for L22 49IR/30 for 1 unit.
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Home/Ident

A course may be either a “Home” course or an “Ident” course.

A “Home” course is a course that is created, maintained and “owned” by one academic department (aka the “Home” department). The “Home” department is primarily responsible for the decision making and logistical support for the course and instructor.

An “Ident” course is the exact same course as the “Home” (i.e. same instructor, same class time, etc), but is simply being offered to students through another department for purposes of registering under a different department and course number.

Students should, whenever possible, register for their courses under the department number toward which they intend to count the course. For example, an AFAS major should register for the course "Africa: Peoples and Cultures" under its Ident number, L90 306B, whereas an Anthropology major should register for the same course under its Home number, L48 306B.

Grade Options
C=Credit (letter grade)
P=Pass/Fail
A=Audit
U=Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
S=Special Audit
Q=ME Q (Medical School)

Please note: not all grade options assigned to a course are available to all students, based on prime school and/or division. Please contact the student support services area in your school or program with questions.