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Spring 2010 Graduate Courses RELS 5000.001. Topics in Religious Studies. (crosslisted with ANTH 4622). Readings in the Anthropology of Religion: Judaism. This course explores different ways that Judaism is practiced and ways of being Jewish in the contemporary world. We will consider a variation of lives from Orthodox to Reform to secular ways of living among Jews in different places in the world. Some case studies will include the trials of Ethiopian Jews returning to Israel, a gay synagogue in the United States, the role of Jewish women of different traditions, the beliefs of those Jews who have ‘returned to the answer’ becoming newly Orthodox. In addition to investigating ethnographic accounts of lives of Jewish men and women, we will consider the weekly torah portion from a number of different perspectives coinciding with the people we are studying. MW 11:00-12:15 (Joyce Dalsheim) RELS 5000.002. Topics in Religious Studies. (crosslisted with ANTH 4622). Readings in the Anthropology of Religion: Shamanism. This course examines the cultural phenomenon that we call shamanism, including ritual, ideology, and history of these traditional religions in Siberia and elsewhere. Students will examine: the emergence of shamanism as a classification; the different approaches to shamanism within anthropology and religious studies; and the application, misapplication, and modification of the term outside its original ethnographic context in Siberia. Students will read primary source material from the 18th and 19th century, current anthropological theory, and material about the popularization and proliferation of shamanism and neo-shamanism in contemporary cultures. MW 2:00-3:15 (Katherine Metzo). RELS 5000.003. Topics in Religion and Modern Culture. ‘Treatment of a special topic in religion and modern culture.’ The topic for my seminar this semester is ‘Mysticism, Pornography, Subjectivity.’ This course will consist of a close reading of primary Christian mystical texts and post-Enlightenment literary pornographic texts through the theoretical writings of Roland Barthes. This comparative reading will focus on the stylistic, formal, thematic and affective features of the texts. With these features in mind, we will ask what these texts seek to do to their readers, what literary devices accomplish that task and what, if anything, distinguishes them. Finally, we will try to identify and describe the “religious” dimension of the texts. W 3:30-6:15 (Kent L. Brintnall) RELS 5000.004. Topics in Religion and Modern Culture. ‘Treatment of a special topic in religion and modern culture.’ The topic for my seminar this semester is ‘Islam in the African Diaspora.’ This course addresses the practice of Islam and variations of Islam among African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Canadians in the twentieth century. Critical analysis will be done around the writings of Wraith Dean Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Nobel Drew Ali. The course also has a gendered component looking at the leadership and activity of women in Islam, the Nation of Islam, and Moorish Science. TR 3:30-4:45 (Julia Robinson-Harmon) RELS 5010.001. Major Figure in Religious Studies. ‘The life and works of a major figure who has contributed to religious studies.’ The focus for this semester’s seminar will be an in-depth study of Augustine of Hippo, one of the most significant figures in the history of Christianity and the western intellectual tradition. Readings will include his Confessions and City of God, and we will focus on topics such as just war theory; original sin; marriage and sexuality; free will and determinism; heresy/orthodoxy; and historiography. T 3:30-6:15 (Jeremy Schott) RELS 6000.001. Readings in Rabbinic Hebrew II. This course provides an introduction to postbiblical Hebrew for those graduate students who are already reasonably conversant with the linguistic structures of biblical Hebrew. We will study the basic features of postbiblical Hebrew grammar, vocabulary, and syntax while simultaneously reading and translating a number of selections drawn from talmudic and midrashic literature. F 11:00-1:45 (John C. Reeves) RELS 6000.002. Elementary
Sanskrit. TBA (J. Daniel
White, on demand) RELS 6000.003. Readings in
Greek/Latin. TBA (Jeremy
Schott, on demand) RELS 6000.004. Readings in
Chinese. TBA (David Mozina,
on demand) RELS 6111.001. Qumran and its Literature. ‘A study of the manuscripts recovered from the caves of Qumran. Attention will be given to their connections to Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and later developments in Islam.’ The manuscripts recovered from Qumran provide a valuable window through which we may view the intellectual dynamism of Second Temple Judaism. Some scholars are now recognizing that the Qumran material attests a more complex religio-historical scene than had heretofore been assumed by earlier generations of researchers. The present course will be devoted to the intensive study of a series of important Hebrew literary and religious texts, with primary emphasis will be given to a comparative analysis of these texts and their contents alongside related materials gleaned from apocryphal, pseudepigraphical, rabbinic, Christian, gnostic, Karaite, and Muslim traditions. Prerequisite: the successful completion of at least one year of study of introductory biblical Hebrew (or its equivalent) or the permission of the instructor. W 3:30-6:15 (John C. Reeves) RELS 6622.001. Seminar in Religion and Modern Culture. ‘A seminar on issues related to the historical-critical study of the interaction between religion and modern culture.’ The topic for this semester’s seminar is Masters of Suspicion: Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. The late Paul Ricoeur referred to Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche as theorists of suspicion. These three thinkers, according to this view, argue in different ways that what we see is not always what we are getting. We are usually unaware of the forces and mechanisms that motivate our actions, judgments, bodily practices, and commitments. In this course, we will examine their theories and criticisms, paying close attention to their respective critiques of religion. R 3:30-6:15 (Joseph Winters) RELS 6800.001, 002, 003. Directed Readings/Research. (TBA, John C. Reeves) RELS 6999.001, 002. Thesis. (TBA, John C. Reeves) RELS 7999.001. Master’s Degree Residence. (TBA, John C. Reeves)
Language courses: The university offers undergraduate language courses relevant to graduate study in religion and religions. For the fall 2009 offerings, consult the schedule listings under CHNS, FREN, GERM, GREK, JAPN, LACS, and LATN for courses in Chinese, Arabic, biblical Hebrew, French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Latin. Introductory and/or advanced instruction in Arabic, Aramaic, Chinese, Coptic, Greek, biblical and/or post-biblical Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, and Syriac language sources is often available as a Topics or Directed Studies course, subject to the instructor’s consent and student demand.
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