| Description: | This course is a history of Western civilization from 3500 BC to AD 1600. Western Civilization may be characterized as one long debate on the holy. In no other civilization did this debate about the limits of the sacred and the profane, this constant effort at trying to grasp the divine through word and deed, last continuously for over five thousand years. To argue over the holy is to argue over the very nature of how to live a life, from the most mundane daily activity to the most sublime act of the imagination. It is to argue over how politics, economics, art, philosophy, literature, and religion are realized in a society. Apart from many types of polytheism, we study the three great world monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We study the ancient cultures of north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, the empires of Alexander the Great and imperial Rome, the Christianization of the Roman empire and the rise of Islam, the early medieval world in the North Sea and the East (Byzantine) Empire in Constantinople, the formation of Latin Christendom and the papal monarchy, the crusades and the reaction of the Islamicate, concepts of individuality, the persecution of Jews and heretics, chivalry and peasant servitude, the Mongol Empire, the Black Death and the devastation of the fourteenth century, the renaissance in Italy and the Protestant reformation, the hunt for witches and the scientific revolution, the medieval origins of the African diaspora and the European conquest of the Americas. What defined being human, and so a man, a woman, or a child over five millennia? A fundamental question of this course is what is "Western Civilization" and when do the characteristics defined as "western" come together as coherent phenomenon? What, then, is historical truth? We will read, for example, Gilgamesh, the Iliad, Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, the Bible, Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, the Qur'an, Beowulf, Peter Abelard, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, and Michel de Montaigne. This course (through lectures, reading primary sources, discussion sections, and essay writing) gives the student a learned background in almost five thousand years of history. DISCUSSION SECTION IS REQUIRED. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 1:00P-1:50P | TBA | Pegg | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 30 | 0 | 0 | | |
| A | ----F-- | 1:00P-1:50P | TBA | Pegg | No final | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
| B | ----F-- | 12:00P-12:50P | TBA | Pegg | No final | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | Nearly everyone has had some experience with something they would call "religion," from at least a passing familiarity through the media to a lifetime of active participation in religious communities. But what do we actually mean when we use the word? What is a religion? What does it mean to call something a religion, or "religious"? And what does it mean to study religion, given the slipperiness of the concept itself?
This course offers an introduction to the academic study of religion through a consideration of these questions: 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? We will also consider what is at stake in our investigation and inquiry into religion-for the inquirers, for the subjects of inquiry, and for society more broadly-and what kind of lens the study of religion offers us on ourselves, our neighbors, and society, in turn. To these ends, we will discuss major theoretical approaches to the study of religion and significant work on religions and religious phenomena, toward a better understanding of what "religion" might be and how it might be studied today. No prior knowledge or experience of religion, religions, or anything religious is expected or required. This course is required for Religious Studies majors and minors. 5 seats in each section are reserved for first year students. |
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| | 01 | M-W-F-- | 10:00A-10:50A | TBA | TBA | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 25 | 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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| 02 | M-W-F-- | 12:00P-12:50P | TBA | TBA | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 25 | 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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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 1:00P-2:20P | TBA | Bornstein | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | The St. Louis region is home to a diverse array of global religious communities. This course directly introduces students to some of that diversity by revolving around fieldtrips to living institutions and meetings with religious leaders across traditions. In any given semester, our visits may include organizations that identify as Catholic, Pentecostal, evangelical, Jewish (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist), Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Vedantist, Scientological, progressive Baptist, or secular humanist, among others. We will also visit the International Institute of St. Louis and study the politics of immigration and refugee resettlement that have helped shape the city and its religious as well as political multiplicity. Through our visits and conversation, the variety within each religious community will also become apparent, as we encounter adherents across the political spectrum, embodying different ethnicities, and committed to different degrees of "orthodoxy" or traditional belief and practice. Students should emerge from the course with a fresh sense of the cultural and religious vitality of the St. Louis metropolitan area, illustrative of the United States as a whole. *All required site visits will take place during the regular class time. |
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| | 01 | --W---- | 2:30P-5:20P | TBA | Griffith | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 3:00P-4:50P | TBA | Chen | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | Desc: | Course time 3pm-4:20pm on Mondays/Wednesdays |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Yucesoy | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 100 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 10:00A-11:20A | TBA | Ali | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 25 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | Although political action is often considered a problem of making oneself heard, religious practices of silence, self-effacement, and withdrawal from certain worldly struggles have guided many significant political and social movements, particularly forms of non-violent resistance. This course considers the role of religious thought and practice in such movements in the twentieth century. The history of these movements presents an apparent paradox: how can political action emerge from the supposedly "private" realm of religion in the modern era, particularly its most individualistic formations in contemplative and mystical practices? Does the historical role of these practices in the political sphere complicate their portrayal in some scholarship as private, individual, and depoliticizing? With these questions animating our investigations, we will consider the work of authors and activists including Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Simone Weil, and William Barber, as well as the history of movements associated with their work. Toward the end of the semester, we will turn to contemporary movements against economic inequality, intimate violence, racially motivated violence, and discrimination toward transgender persons to discuss the use of religious strategies or religiously-derived strategies in current political and social activism. |
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| | 01 | ---R--- | 3:00P-5:50P | TBA | Bialek | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 12 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Adcock | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | The built structure remains a principal visible record of the evolution of a civilization and its culture. Through this interdisciplinary course on culture, design, religion and society, students will be introduced to and gain a deeper insight into the rich diversity of South Asia through the study of the architecture of its significant sacred places. We will take a journey through the Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Temples; the Islamic Mosque; the Sikh Gurudwara; the Zoroastrian Fire Temple; the Jewish Synagogue; and the Christian Church, tracing the evolution of these places of worship from the Indus Valley Civilization to Pre-Colonial times. Through visuals, readings, and discussions, students will learn about the different architectural styles and motifs used in sacred buildings and how they came about. We will explore the inter-relationships between the design elements through the lens of political, social, religious, regional and technological influences and understand the ways in which evolving design principles reflect these influences overtime. This course will be of interest to students of languages and cultures, architecture, archeology, art history, history, preservation, religion, and South Asian culture, among others. Please note: At the end of the semester, students will go on a field trip to experience the diverse sacred architecture in the St. Louis region. No prior knowledge of architecture or the history of this region is required. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 1:00P-2:20P | Eads / 116 | Jain | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 20 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 2:30P-3:50P | TBA | Adcock | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 30 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Isseroff | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 25 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | How does religion shape national identity? How and why do some religious traditions become intertwined with the identities of national communities, often at the expense of others? In this course we explore how Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity have interacted with modern nationalism to shape the nation-states of the Middle East and South Asia in profound ways. Throughout the course, we examine a range of case studies to compare and contrast, for example, the complex interaction between religion and nationalism in the creation of Pakistan and Israel in 1947 and 1948 as Muslim and Jewish national homes, the rise of the Hindu Right in India, religion and race in Iran, or the significance of Christianity and Islam for Palestinians and Iraqis. As we do so, we investigate how national movements have selectively and creatively engaged religious traditions over time in order to redefine communal boundaries, narrate new histories, exclude minorities, and reread sacred texts to draw the borders of their national homelands, which have often overlapped at great cost. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Warren | No final | 25 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | This course is an introduction to the Lotus Sutra, the most popular and influential scripture in the history of East Asian Buddhism. After a close reading of the entire text and a discussion of its major ideas, it's contextualized within the history of Buddhism and, more broadly, of East Asia, by examining its contributions to thought, ritual, literature and art in China, Korea and Japan, from its first translations into literary Chinese - the canonical language of East Asian Buddhism - to modern times. Topics covered include: the ontological status of the Lotus and, more broadly, of Mahayana scriptures; commentarial traditions on the meaning of the Lotus and its place within Mahayana Buddhism; practices associated to the worship of the Lotus - e.g., copying, reciting, burying; the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas appearing in the
sutra; Lotus-inspired poetry, and visual and material culture; Lotus-centered Buddhist traditions. Readings (all in English) are drawn from Buddhist scriptures and commentaries, tale literature, hagiographic narratives, poetry, archeological materials, and other literary genres. Given the importance that the Lotus has played in East Asia, this course functions broadly as an introduction to East Asian Buddhism. Previous coursework on Buddhism or East Asia is recommended but not required, and no prior knowledge of any East Asian languages is required. Fulfills premodern elective for EALC major. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 2:30P-3:50P | TBA | Poletto | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 19 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Cassen | Dec 16 2024 1:00PM - 3:00PM | 18 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 4:00P-5:20P | TBA | Jay | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 20 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | This course introduces students to Christian thought in the modern period and its relation to notions of social justice and political action. It takes these issues chronologically, beginning with the Protestant Reformation and challenges to Catholic monarchies, through Puritanism and revolution, evangelicalism and anti-slavery, nineteenth-century liberalism and social reform, twentieth century issues of the Cold War and civil rights, to twentieth century concerns with race and environmentalism. Throughout the course, we will read texts that relate theological claims (about, for example, the nature of God, Christ, and redemption) to social and political matters. The course will end with attention to Christian belief and contemporary political crises. |
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| | 01 | --W---- | 3:00P-5:50P | TBA | Valeri | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 25 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 4:00P-5:20P | TBA | Brown | Dec 13 2024 6:00PM - 8:00PM | 35 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | In this course, we examine discourses of gender and sexuality across historical period and geographical region. We analyze encounters with Western imperialism, investigating how gender informs social, political, religious, and family life in Islamic cultures. Our course materials include histories, ethnographies, graphic novels, and films, and we examine how these sources approach the study of Islam, gender, and sexuality through the lens of various topics: from women in the earliest years of Islam in 7th century Arabia to revolutionary Iran and American Muslim women in the 21st century. Throughout the course, we examine how notions of gender and sexuality have changed over time and played various roles in the political and social life of Muslim nations, societies, and communities. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically assess scholarly and non-scholarly (media) discussions of gender in Islam. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 2:30P-3:50P | TBA | Ali | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 19 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 1:00P-2:20P | TBA | Thomas | No final | 25 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 4:00P-5:20P | TBA | Hendin | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 30 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 10:00A-11:20A | TBA | Barmash | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 35 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | This course examines slavery and its abolition in the Middle East and North Africa from 600 C.E. to the 20th Century. It addresses slavery as a discourse and a question of political economy. We begin with an overview of slavery in late antiquity to contextualize the evolution of this practice after the rise of Islam in the region. We then examine how it was practiced, imagined, and studied under major empires, such as the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and the Safavids. In addition to examining the Qur'anic discourse and early Islamic practices of slavery, to monitor change over time we address various forms of household, field, and military slavery as well as the remarkable phenomenon of "slave dynasties" following a chronological order. We discuss, through primary sources, theoretical, religious, and moral debates and positions on slavery, including religious scriptures, prophetic traditions, religious law, and a plethora of narratives from a range of genres. We highlight a distinct theme each week to focus on until we conclude our discussion with the abolition of slavery in the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics of discussion include various forms of male and female slavery, Qur'anic and prophetic discourse on slavery, legal and moral views on slavery, slavery as represented in religious literature, political, military, and economic structures of slavery, issues of race and gender as well as slave writings to reflect on the experiences of slavery from within. The goal is to enable students to understand the histories of slavery in the Middle East and eventually compare it to that of other regions and cultures, such as European and Atlantic slavery. No second language required. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 2:30P-3:50P | TBA | Yucesoy | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | Magic was part of everyday life for most people in pre-modern societies. Casting spells, fashioning voodoo dolls, wearing amulets, ingesting potions, and reading the stars are just some of the activities performed by individuals at every level of society. This course examines Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Jewish, and ancient Christian magical practices. We will study astrological manuals that teach how to read the stars, curse tablets that bring harm on enemies, and spells that make people fall in love, heal the sick, lock up success in business, and more. We will also look at what is said, both in antiquity and in contemporary scholarship, about magic and the people who practiced it, and examine the complicated relationship between magic, medicine, and religion. |
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| | 01 | M-W---- | 3:00P-3:50P | TBA | Jenott | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 100 | 0 | 0 | | |
| A | ----F-- | 3:00P-3:50P | TBA | [TBA] | See instructor | 20 | 0 | 0 | | |
| D | ----F-- | 3:00P-3:50P | Eads / 211 | [TBA] | See instructor | 20 | 0 | 0 | | |
| E | ----F-- | 3:00P-3:50P | TBA | [TBA] | See instructor | 20 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Hendin | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 30 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | This seminar will explore various facets of the coexistence (convivencia) of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in medieval Spain. Its horizon stretches from the Muslim conquest of Iberia (al-Andalus) up to the turn of the 16th century when Spanish Jews and Muslims were equally faced with the choice between exile and conversion to Christianity.
Until about 1100, Muslims dominated most of the Iberian Peninsula; from then onward, Christians ruled much and eventually all of what would become modern Spain and Portugal. Through a process known as reconquista (reconquest), Catholic kingdoms acquired large Muslim enclaves. As borders moved, Jewish communities found themselves under varying Muslim or Christian dominion. Interactions between the three religious communities occurred throughout, some characterized by shared creativity and mutual respect, others by rivalry and strife. The course focuses on these cultural encounters, placing them in various historical contexts. It will explore the ambiguities of religious conversion, and the interplay of persecution and toleration. Last not least, the course will address the question of how the memory of medieval Spain's diversity reverberates-and is utilized-in modern popular and academic discourse.
All sources will be read in English translation; however, students are encouraged to make use of their linguistic and cultural expertise acquired in previous classes.
This course serves as the capstone seminar for Jewish, Islamic & Near Eastern Studies majors, Arabic majors, and Hebrew majors. Graduate students, minors, and other interested undergrads are likewise welcome.
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 2:30P-3:50P | TBA | Jacobs | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | Nuns -- women vowed to a shared life of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a cloistered community -- were central figures in medieval and early modern religion and society. This course explores life in the convent, with the distinctive culture that developed among communities of women, and the complex relations between the world of the cloister and the world outside the cloister. We look at how female celibacy served social and political, as well as religious, interests. We read works by nuns: both willing and unwilling; and works about nuns: nuns behaving well, and nuns behaving scandalously badly; nuns embracing their heavenly spouse, and nuns putting on plays; nuns possessed by the devil, and nuns managing their possessions; nuns as enraptured visionaries, and nuns grappling with the mundane realities of life in a cloistered community. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 4:00P-5:20P | TBA | Bornstein | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| Description: | Have you ever wondered why some topics are argued using religion as a guide, while others may approach the topic from what is perceived as a strictly scientific point of view? This course explores how and why gender and sexuality tend to be at the center of debates that pit Medicine and Science against Religion. Using feminist and queer scholarship, this course explores five hundred years of rhetorical strategies related to defining, or regulating, gender and sexuality. We will consider how much debates have changed from sixteenth-century Europe to 21st century United States by asking when, why and how either Medicine & Science or Religion influenced social thought and laws. Finally, we will consider how, and if, contemporary debates on vaccines are either part of the long history of debating bodily autonomy (as is the case with the other topics addressed in class), or if the conflict between religion, medicine and science in the modern era is new and distinctly different from past rhetorical strategies. Prerequisite: Introduction to Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Majors and minors in WGSS receive first priority. Other students will be admitted as course enrollment allows. |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 1:00P-2:20P | TBA | Cislo | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 0 | 0 | 0 | Desc: | 19 seats available. Majors and minors in WGSS receive first priority. Other students will be admitted as course enrollment allows. |
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| | 01 | -T----- | 3:00P-5:50P | TBA | Schmidt | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 15 | 0 | 0 | | |
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| | 01 | -T-R--- | 11:30A-12:50P | TBA | Jacobs | Paper/Project/TakeHome | 20 | 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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