Prerequisites: permission of the departmental adviser to Graduate Studies.
This course will try to study the development of various aspects of theorization of the secular and the transformations of religion under modernity. It will be mainly based on close textual reading of important theoretical arguments representing important stages in the development of these arguments from the time of the Enlightenment to present day academic debates.
The first section will focus on the emergence of theories of a secular state in European philosophy starting with texts from Spinoza, Hobbes, and Hume. We shall also range over some ancillary texts that illustrate the nature of secularist arguments against religious beliefs and practices. The second section will concentrate on the development of the sociological tradition with focus on the works of Fustel de Coulanges, Max Weber and Ernst Troletsch. A short third section will focus on the establishment of religious studies as an academic discipline by looking at the works of a pioneer of this discipline: Wilfred Cantwell Smith. The fourth section will take up for reading and critical examination four different academic discussions in recent years: stemming from the work of Indian debates on secularism, from academic debates about the anthropology of religion, and especially studies of Islam started by the work of Talal Asad and responses it attracted. Finally, we shall take up critical works which revisit arguments from Weber by Charles Taylor and Hans Joas. The final weeks of the course will be devoted to conclusions drawn from these intersecting readings across historical time and space.
This course introduces the fundamental concepts and problems of international human rights law. What are the origins of modern human rights law? What is the substance of this law, who is obligated by it, and how is it enforced? The course will cover the major international human rights treaties and mechanisms and consider some of todays most significant human rights issues and controversies. While the topics are necessarily law-related, the course will assume no prior exposure to legal studies.
This is a course is oriented to graduate students who are thinking about issues in teaching in the near and distant future and want to explore forms of pedagogy. The course will ask what it means to teach “as a feminist” and will explore how to create a classroom receptive to feminist and queer methodologies and theories regardless of course theme/content. Topics include: participatory pedagogy, the role of political engagement, the gender dynamics of the classroom, modes of critical thought and disagreement. Discussions will be oriented around student interest. The course will meet 4-5 times per SEMESTER (dates TBD) and the final assignment is to develop and workshop a syllabus for a new gender/sexuality course in your field. Because this course is required for graduate students choosing to fulfill Option 2 for the Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies at IRWGS, priority will be given to graduate students completing the certificate.
The dissertation colloquium is a non-credit course open to MESAAS doctoral students who have completed the M.Phil. degree. It provides a forum in which the entire community of dissertation writers meets, bridging the departments different fields and regions of research. It complements workshops outside the department focused on one area or theme. Through an encounter with the diversity of research underway in MESAAS, participants learn to engage with work anchored in different regions and disciplines and discover or develop what is common in the departments post-disciplinary methods of inquiry. Since the community is relatively small, it is expected that all post-M.Phil. students in residence will join the colloquium. Post M.Phil. students from other departments may request permission to join the colloquium, but places for non-MESAAS students will be limited. The colloquium convenes every semester, meeting once every two weeks. Each meeting is devoted to the discussion of one or two pre-circulated pieces of work (a draft prospectus or dissertation chapter). Every participant contributes at least one piece of work each year.
Full time research for doctoral students.
Test Course for Vergil Launch Demonstration