| Description: | Understanding Jewish civilization in a broad sense to include aspects of history, religion, and literature, this course offers a selective survey of Jewish communities and their cultural productions from antiquity to the present. We will start with the ancient Israelites and the Hebrew Bible, and then move on to the major groups of Second Temple Judaism; the classical rabbis and their literature; and the Jewish communities of the premodern worlds of Islam and Christendom. More than a third of the semester will be dedicated to the Jewish experience in modern Europe, the US, and Israel. We will get to know some of the major literary works that Jews produced and studied and learn to understand them as both expressions of Jewish identity and responses to specific historical circumstances. The course, furthermore, aims to challenge widespread stereotypes of Jewish history, such as its "lachrymose conception" (Salo W. Baron) as a mere series of suffering and persecution. By contrast, we will investigate when and how Jews were actors in their own right and actively engaged with other cultures, religions, and social groups. Prior study or knowledge of Judaism is not a prerequisite for taking this course. |
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| Description: | The United States has often been imagined as both a deeply Christian nation and a thoroughly secular republic. These competing visions of the nation have created conflict throughout American history and have made the relationship between religion and politics quite contentious. This course surveys the complex entanglements of religion and public life from the colonial era through the contemporary landscape. Topics covered include: religious liberty and toleration, secularization, the rise of African-American churches, the Civil War, national identity and the Protestant establishment, the religious politics of women's rights, religion and the market, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the religious left and right, debates over church-state separation, constructions of religious pluralism, and religion after 9/11. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 10:00A-11:30A | Ridgley / 107 | Rehfeld | May 8 2018 6:00PM - 8:00PM | 20 | 16 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 11:30A-1:00P | Crow / 205 | Kornfeld | No Final | 25 | 15 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 10:00A-11:30A | Eads / 103 | Anderson | See Instructor | 24 | 17 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| Description: | This course examines how people thought about, experienced, and managed disease in the medieval and early modern periods. We will consider developments in learned medicine alongside the activities of a diverse range of practitioners-e.g. surgeons, empirics, quacks, midwives, saints, and local healers-involved in the business of curing a wide range of ailments. We'll also devote attention to the experiences of patients and the social and cultural significance of disease. Major topics include: the rise and fall of humoral medicine; religious explanations of illness; diseases such as leprosy, syphilis, and plague; the rise of anatomy; herbs and pharmaceuticals; the experience of childbirth; and the emergence of identifiably "modern" institutions such as hospitals, the medical profession, and public health. The focus will be on Western Europe but we'll also consider developments in the Islamic world and the Americas. Pre-modern, Europe. PREREQUISITE: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. |
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| 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. |
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| 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). |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 4:00P-5:30P | Eads / 103 | Lawton | See Instructor | 25 | 7 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 10:00A-11:30A | Eads / 102 | Barmash | See Instructor | 27 | 12 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| Description: | This course begins with the first millennium in western Europe and ends with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. We will study, amongst other topics, the relationship of popes to kings, cities to villages, Jews to Christians, vernacular literature to Latin, knights to peasants, the sacred to the profane, as well as different forms of religious life, farming, heresy, the shift from a penitential culture to a confessional one, the crusades and Islam, troubadour poetry, the Mongol Empire, universities, leprosy, the inquisition, Gothic art, the devil, chivalry, manuscript illumination, shoes, definitions of feudalism, environment, trade, scholastic philosophy, female spirituality, witchcraft, sex, the Black Death, food, the Hundred Years War, the renaissance in Italy, African slaves in the Iberian peninsula, and the conquest of New Spain. Pre-modern, Europe. PREREQUISITE: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 10:00A-11:30A | Wilson / 212 | Kvanvig | Default - none | 15 | 1 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | An anthropological study of the position of women in the contemporary Muslim world, with examples drawn primarily from the Middle East but also from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Students will examine ethnographic, historical, and literary works, including those written by Muslim women. Topics having a major impact on the construction of gender include Islamic belief and ritual, modest dress (veiling), notions of marriage and the family, modernization, nationalism and the nation-state, politics and protest, legal reform, formal education, work, and westernization. The course includes a visit to a St. Louis mosque, discussions with Muslim women, and films. |
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| 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. |
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| Description: | The worlds of Freud and Mahler, Kafka and Kundera, Lukács and Koestler, were embedded in the politics of empire (the Habsburg Monarchy); ethnic, religious, and social struggles; modern state formation; and the emergence of creative and dynamic urban centers, which continue to captivate the imagination today. This course seeks to put all of these elements into play-empire, nation, urban space, religion, and ethnicity-in order to illustrate what it has meant to be modern, creative, European, nationalist, or cosmopolitan since the 19th century. The course engages current debates on nationalism and national identity; the viability of empires as supra-national constructs; urbanism and modern culture; the place of Jews in the social and cultural fabric of Central Europe; migration; and authoritarian and violent responses to modernity. Modern, Europe. PREREQUISITE: Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. |
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| 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. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 1:00P-2:30P | Wrighton / 250 | Zuern | See Instructor | 30 | 26 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| Description: | How can politics enact fundamental changes? What make those changes a "revolution"? How do we judge the legitimacy of such changes? When these questions arise over the course of ordinary political arguments, the example of the French Revolution often looms large, casting a shadow tinted with blood and Terror. Much less present in the collective political imagination is the Haitian Revolution. These two events are complex and complicated, and are filled with fascinating, chilling, inspired characters, enflamed rhetoric and challenging questions. This course will examine both the unfolding of events and the rise and fall of protagonists within these two Revolutions and will explore the ways that issues such as religion, state finance, loyalty, race, slavery became politicized. Modern, Transregional. PREREQUISITE: Sophpmore standing or permission of the instructor. |
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| 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? |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 1:00P-2:30P | Seigle / 111 | Kravchenko | See Instructor | 15 | 9 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| 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. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 2:30P-4:00P | Ridgley / 107 | Yucesoy | May 7 2018 3:30PM - 5:30PM | 15 | 12 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 8:30A-10:00A | Eads / 102 | Barmash | May 3 2018 8:00AM - 10:00AM | 12 | 6 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 8:30A-10:00A | Busch / 126 | Kravchenko | See Instructor | 8 | 0 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| Description: | Although Jesus of Nazareth is regarded by millions as savior and sage, he left us no writings of his own, so that the task of telling his story fell to followers and critics of later generations. This course examines how Jesus and his message, 'the good news,' are depicted in strikingly different ways in Christian literature and beyond. After closely examining the various portraits of Jesus set forth in the four biblical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), and understanding the unique perspectives of each story teller, we will then consider the even wider variety of views found in Gospels not included in the Bible, such as the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Peter, and Judas. We will also look at how Jesus is represented in the literature of other religious movements, including the Qu'ran, the Book of Mormon, and medieval Jewish legends. Emphasis will be on understanding the diversity of perspectives on Jesus and how he serves as a powerful vehicle for conveying the values of those who tell his story. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 4:00P-5:30P | Seigle / 204 | Jenott | May 4 2018 6:00PM - 8:00PM | 20 | 13 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | TBA | | TBA | Kravchenko | No Final | 2 | 2 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | In this course we will explore the role of women in the religious traditions of China, Japan and Korea, with a focus on Buddhism, Daoism, Shamanism, Shinto and the so-called "New Religions." We will begin by considering the images of women (whether mythical or historical) in traditional religious scriptures and historical or literary texts. We will then focus on what we know of the actual experience and practice of various types of religious women - nuns and abbesses, shamans and mediums, hermits and recluses, and ordinary laywomen - both historically and in more recent times. Class materials will include literary and religious texts, historical and ethnological studies, biographies and memoirs, and occasional videos and films. Prerequisites: This class will be conducted as a seminar, with minimal lectures, substantial reading and writing, and lots of class discussion. For this reason, students who are not either upper-level undergraduates or graduate students, or who have little or no background in East Asian religion or culture, will need to obtain the instructor's permission before enrolling. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 2:30P-4:00P | Busch / 202 | Grant | See Instructor | 15 | 5 | 0 | | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| 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. |
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| | 01 | M------ | 2:30P-5:30P | Eads / 205 | Pegg | No Final | 15 | 12 | 0 | Desc: | Students registering for this course must also register for L22 49IR/30 for 1 unit. |
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| | 01 | TBA | | See Dept / | Adcock | No Final | 0 | 0 | 0 | | |
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