A study of women in the religious traditions of South and East Asia, including historical developments, topical issues, and contemporary women's movements.

This course explores attitudes towards sexuality, gender, and women’s bodies in Islamic thought and history. We will read foundational religious texts, classic works of law and ethics, poetry, and historical documents, as well as contemporary reflections by Muslim feminist thinkers. Topics to be discussed include sexual ethics within and outside of marriage, consent to marriage and divorce, contraception and abortion, menstruation, modest dress, gender-based segregation, same-sex sexual attraction, and gender non-conformity.

This course equips students to understand the religious roots of modern formations of gender, sexuality, and kinship, focusing in particular on Judaism, Christianity, and New Religious Movements. Topics we will cover include: the transformation of traditional religious structures into the modern “religion of romantic love,” the reshaping of religious practices within the modern nuclear family and its gendered division of labour, the persistent religious entanglements within not only normative but also queer and transgressive gender performances and kinship structures, the political asymmetries within which different religious modernities emerge, and the role of literature in preserving religious enchantment in modernity.

The study of pilgrimage has become increasingly prominent in anthropology and religious studies in recent decades. Why should this be? This course provides some answers while engaging in a cross cultural survey and analysis of pilgrimage practices. We also explore whether research into pilgrimage has wider theoretical significance.

We examine rituals of transition from one social status to another (such as childbirth, coming of age, marriage) from theoretical, historical and ethnographic perspectives. We pay particular attention to the importance of rites of passage in the construction of gendered identities.

People acting in the name of religion(s) have incited violence and worked for peace. How can we understand this tension both today and in the past? Through examination of the power of authoritative tradition, collective solidarity, charisma, and acts of resistance, this course addresses religious justifications of violence and non-violence across varied historical and geographical contexts.

How did we get to where we are now? How did humans come to be so alienated from nature? This course will examine how religion, particularly that of the Latin West, has shaped the understanding of, and interaction with, nature on a global level. It examines the complex shift from understanding nature as sacred and revelatory, to its conceptualisation as a commodity and resource. Students will explore the ethical and cultural consequences of this shift for the human-nature relationship, and contemporary attempts to recover sacred notions of nature in the context of the environmental crisis.

This course introduces students to various religious approaches to death, the dead, and afterlife. Through considering different ways in which death has been thought about and dealt with, we will also explore different understandings of life and answers to what it means to be human.

Judaism and Christianity in the period from 70 C.E. to 200 C.E. The course focuses on the relationship between the two religious groups, stressing the importance of the setting within the Roman Empire.

This course provides a critical examination of the Hebrew Bible (sometimes called the Old Testament) with an emphasis on women characters. It examines the historical and literary contexts of Hebrew Bible texts and engages diverse methods of contemporary biblical scholarship with particular attention to issues of gender. All readings will be in English. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.

Careful examination of the earliest “lives of Jesus” (‘gospels’) shows that they offer very different portraits of Jesus of Nazareth. The course will compare ancient biographical accounts of famous ancient figures such as Alexander the Great, the Caesars, and wandering philosophers with early depictions of Jesus, both the gospels that eventually were included in the New Testament, and extra-canonical or “apocryphal” gospels such as the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, or Mary.

To what extent does Jesus who lived and taught in first-century Galilee and Judea align with the picture of Jesus in early Christian writings? We examine the methods for discerning the historical Jesus and the portraits that result from rigorous application of those methods

An examination of Paul’s life and thought as seen in the early Christian literature written by him (the seven undisputed letters), about him (the Acts of the Apostles, the Acts of Paul) and in his name (falsely authored compositions in early Christianity).

From politics to popular culture, the Bible has shaped people and nations for good and for ill. This course introduces the Jewish and Christian Bibles and considers case studies of how biblical texts have been interpreted. The Bible has been used to bolster slavery and white supremacy and to inspire political liberation movements. It has been used to justify annihilation of Indigenous people by Christian colonists yet given hope to Jews that next year in Jerusalem might be better. How can the same “book” be used for such different purposes? This course focuses on the cultural and political consequences of biblical interpretation. An underlying premise is that the Bible is not static but is rather a nomadic text as it is continuously interpreted in ways that sometimes contribute to human flourishing, but also can result in violence, human diminishment, or death.

Judaism and Christianity are both considered “religions of the book” but how are they related to each other? This course considers the origins of that relationship by reading a range of Jewish texts from the 6th century BCE to the 1st century CE, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, in order to illuminate the diverse cultural matrix from which early Christianity and Judaism took shape. A major theme of the course is the formation of scriptures and scriptural interpretation as a factor in shaping distinctive Jewish cultures. Attention is also given to “lived religion” and practices that form individuals and communities.

Refugee crises in modern times have raised questions concerning what degree of hospitality is owed the stranger or foreigner whose motivation is a new, safe, and secure home rather than being treated as a guest passing through on a time-limited visa. Jacques Derrida’s ideas of both conditional hospitality (e.g., tourists) and unconditional hospitality (e.g., strangers) need to be explored from the perspective of philosophical and ethical traditions including Jewish, Christian, and Muslim ethics.

Cain's killing of his brother Abel is one of the best known but least understood stories in the Bible. For thousands of years, interpreters have puzzled over the gaps and ambiguities of the story in order to piece together the how, what, where and why of this violent incident. This course explores the legacies of Cain and Abel across various religious traditions and in art, literature, and popular culture. It considers the surprising roles that this biblical story has played in modern ideas about religion, politics, and race. All readings will be in English. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.

A course to look at the rise of a “new atheism” in the late 20th- and early 21st-century. This popular movement has gained traction in late modernity, renewing older arguments about the negative consequences of religion in public life. We shall examine this movement, tracking its rise, fall, and future, as we ponder the implications of New Atheism for the academic study of religion.

What did ancient Jews and Christian see and know when they “saw” God or heavenly realms? Or when they toured hell or the infernal regions? This course examines the ancient imagination by treating the major elements of the apocalyptic literary corpus and accompanying visionary experiences in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Contemporary theories on the function and origin of apocalyptic literature inform our readings.

The course will examine the importance of Indigenous cultural knowledge and values as presented in various Indigenous Creation Narratives. Creation Narratives or Cosmological narratives have long been studied as mere mythology. Yet, it is in these very narratives that complex, layered, and nuanced epistemologies emerge. Often, these narratives not only lay the epistemological frameworks of cultural value systems, but they also contain what many refer to as original instructions and purpose for the “Original People”.

Human beings have a natural and necessary interest in the prospects of their happiness, their moral improvement, and a progressively more just world. When, to what extent, and on what basis our hope for these things could be reasonable have been central questions in philosophy of religion since the Enlightenment. But genocides and cultural devastation (e.g., the Holocaust or the fates of some Indigenous communities) have compelled more recent philosophers to ask not only about rational hope, but also radical hope. This course explores reasonable and radical hope, first by unpacking the well-established philosophical question of our what we may reasonably expect from ourselves and our world, and then turning to the issue of humans’ capacity to persist when their community and its culture face extinction, i.e., when they may no longer expect anything.

Humans ask no more important question than: "what is the meaning of life?" Given its significance, the question should be asked as thoughtfully as possible. This requires us to understand not only the various religious and philosophical answers (to choose wisely you must know your options), but also the question’s terms ("what do 'meaning' and 'life' mean?") and historical conditions (is the question pressing perennially or only in secular societies where life has lost its meaning?). In this course students learn how to ask the question of life’s meaning well in the hopes that thereby they live better, more meaningful lives.

This course explores the transformation of religion, space and practices in diasporic settings. How is space adapted to the sensibilities of diasporic subjects, and how are the ritual practices that take place in those spaces transformed? The course examines historical and contemporary examples of the impact of diasporas, exile, and immigration on spatial practices in synagogues, churches, mosques, and temples, and ritual transformations in diaspora.

Social networks are critical in the maintenance and spread of religions. This course offers an introduction to network concepts and, focusing on ancient Mediterranean religions, examines how religious ideas diffuse; networks and the creation of social capital; intersections of religious and trade or business networks; and the collapse of networks.

A course looking at the theories about and responses to the monstrous in global religious traditions and practices.

Focusing on present-day Israel/Palestine, this interdisciplinary course is intended for students interested in exploring a wide range of theoretical questions and examining their applicability to the study of sites, texts, rituals, and politics in the region. We will address the history of the land's consecration from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives. Students will analyze specific sites associated with religious congregations and ritual practices, and study them within their local and regional contexts. Looking at the complex relationships between religious-political movements and institutions within Jewish and Muslim societies, we will delve into various attempts to secularize (and theologize) Jewish and Palestinian communities and their discontents. Rather than providing the typical emphasis on conflict, the course is a journey into the history and present of the land and its diverse communities.

A brief survey of the Jewish biblical and rabbinic traditions; the extension of these teachings and methods of interpretation into the modern period; common and divergent Jewish positions on pressing moral issues today.

An inquiry into the theme of exile and return in Judaism, often called the leading idea of Jewish religious consciousness. Starting from Egyptian slavery and the Babylonian exile, and culminating in the ideas of modern Zionism, the course will examine a cross-section of Jewish thinkers--ancient, medieval, and modern.

The development and range of modern Jewish religious thought from Spinoza, Mendelssohn and Krochmal, to Cohen, Rosenzweig and Buber. Responses to the challenges of modernity and fundamental alternatives in modern Judaism.

A historical study of the Kabbala and the mystical tradition in Judaism, with emphasis on the ideas of Jewish mystical thinkers and movements.