Animals and Religion
Religion features animals everywhere, from the lion lying with the lamb in biblical prophecy, to the beasts that populate many myths, to beliefs in the transmigration between human and animal souls, to legislations and rituals for animal slaughter, to religious responses to animal suffering, to a range of positions on meat-eating and vegetarianism, and the list keeps going. “Animals and Religion” introduces you to the many different ways that the world’s religious traditions approach nunhuman beings — the creatures we call “animals.” We will address animals in the big “world religions” such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and the “Abrahamic” traditions, as well as in local and indigenous traditions and in secular spiritualities, from antiquity to today. We will conduct our inquiry under the shadow of species extinction, factory farming, and other forms of species-based oppression. The course will explore how religious traditions are obstacles as well as rich resources in contemporary thinking about the question of the animal and in the choices we make regarding fellow creatures.
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Beth A Berkowitz
CULPA: 2 h-index: 6 Info - 4 points
Animals and Religion- Discussion
Animals & Religion- Discu
Discussion section for RELI UN1452: Animals and Religion
- W 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- T 5:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- 0 points
Religion and Political Thought
Are “belief” and “reason” two different things? What is the proper role of religion in modern society? How do we determine what is just and unjust in the absence of a Higher Law? Does religion continue to influence political decision-making in liberal democracies, and if so, how? These questions continue to animate debates about the relationship between religion and politics today. This class examines articulations of and responses to this question in the political thought of the Enlightenment, a period that has traditionally been described as the moment when “the West” parted ways with religion and religious belief as the foundation for its understanding of truth, justice, and social order. In this class, we will examine classic and overlooked works of Enlightenment philosophy. We will interrogate whether the Enlightenment really signaled a departure from religion. We will also examine whether the Enlightenment was the preserve — much less the invention — of white Europeans and American settlers. We will do so with an eye toward the politics of the present, examining how Enlightenment thought’s engagement with religion produced discourses of race, gender, economy, and nationhood that continue to shape the terms of political discourse today.
- MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
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Instructor:
Timothy Vasko
CULPA: 3
Info
- 3 points
HINDUISM
Considers efforts since 1900 to synthesize a coherent understanding of what Hinduism entails, sometimes under the heading of sanatana dharma. Using a rubric provided by the Bhagavad Gita, explores philosophical/theological (jnana), ritual (karma), and devotional (bhakti) aspects of Hindu life and thought.
- MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Meghan E Hartman
Info - 4 points
THEORY
An exploration of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of religion as well as other areas of humanistic inquiry. The methods considered include: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, genealogy, and deconstruction. (Previous title: Juniors Colloquium)
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Beth A Berkowitz
CULPA: 2 h-index: 6 Info - 4 points
RELIGION IN THE MODERN US
RELIGION IN MODERN US
This course examines the history of religion in the United States from the Civil War to the present through thematic units focused on the legal structures of religious freedom; race, religion, and nationality; healing, aesthetics, and embodiment; and, finally, religion and politics. Over the course of the semester, students will explore various religious communities as well as the ways social, political, and economic factors have shaped those traditions – and how religious communities have in turn shaped US society, politics, and culture. Students will also be introduced to key themes and debates in the field of American religious studies.
- MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Gale L Kenny
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
Religion in Modern US- Discussion
RELI IN MOD US- DISC
This course examines the history of religion in the United States from the Civil War to the present through thematic units focused on the legal structures of religious freedom; race, religion, and nationality; healing, aesthetics, and embodiment; and, finally, religion and politics. Over the course of the semester, students will explore various religious communities as well as the ways social, political, and economic factors have shaped those traditions – and how religious communities have in turn shaped US society, politics, and culture. Students will also be introduced to key themes and debates in the field of American religious studies.
- R 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
- R 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jordan Desanto
Info - 0 points
Quran- Discussion
This is the discussion section for RELI UN3314: QURAN
- R 6:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
- 0 points
QURAN
This course conceives of the Qur’ān as a living text in constant flux through interactions with other religious traditions. It focuses on developing an understanding of the Qur’ān’s form, style, and content through a close reading of comparable religious texts. Major topics covered include the Qur’ānic theory of prophecy, its treatment of the Biblical tradition (both that of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), and its perspective on pre-Islamic pagan religion. The central goals of the course include the ability to (a) analyze primary religious sources in a critical and objective manner and (b) construct coherent arguments based on concrete evidence. In a class of this nature, class members will naturally hold or develop a wide variety of opinions about the topics covered. The goal is not to adopt a single opinion concerning the interpretation of a particular text, but rather to support personal conclusions in a clear logical manner.
- MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Najam I Haider
CULPA: 8
Info
- 4 points
Religion and Medicine in South Asia: Psy
RELI & MED IN SOUTH ASIA
In this course, students will come to see the imbrication of religion, power, and mental illness across South Asia by examining experiences of suffering and its management; the history of psychiatry in the British colonial era and its afterlives; and the relationship of religion to concepts of mental and emotional disorder. Students will identify models for medical structures of care, healing, and treatments in the context of religion, ritual, and quotidian life. Topics include diagnostic processes and the creation of categories, stigma and models of clinical care, hysteria, spirit possession, pharmaceuticals, and the relationship of trauma to political structures. This course has three sections: 1) the first portion undertakes a brief historical survey of medical disciplines and institutions in South Asia (such as the development of Ayurveda, Yunānī Ṭibb, and the rise of the bīmāristān); 2) the second portion of the course focuses on the rise of the asylum (sometimes called the pāgal khāna) in tandem with psychiatry and its twinned consequence: the pathologization of asceticism by British colonial technologies of discipline; 3) the final portion examines the relationship between British colonialism and psychoanalysis with the introduction of this western discipline to the subcontinent.
This course will take
critical
stock of historical structures throughout South Asia
claiming
to provide care (such as family, caste, healthcare, mental asylums, colonialism, educational systems, pensions, and much more). As a result, students come to consider concepts of social suffering, biopolitics, biosociality, political subjectivity, and postcolonial disorder.
Primary source material will include the following: śāstra, ethnography, clinical studies, poetry, scripture, ritual texts across Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions.
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Meghan E Hartman
Info - 4 points
Religion and Human Rights
What is the relationship between religion and human rights? How have different religious traditions conceived of “the human” as a being worthy of inherent dignity and respect, particularly in moments of political, military, economic, and ecological crisis? How and why have modern regimes of human rights privileged some of these ideas and marginalized others? What can these complicated relationships between religion and human rights explain some of the key crises in human rights law and politics today, and what avenues can be charted for moving forward? In this class, we will attempt to answer these questions by first developing a theoretical understanding of some of the key debates about the origins, trajectories, and legacies of modern human rights’ religious entanglements. We will then move on to examine various examples of ideas about and institutions for protecting “humanity” from different regions and histories. Specifically, we will examine how different societies, organizations, and religious traditions have addressed questions of war and violence; freedom of belief and expression; gender and sexual orientation; economic inequality; ecology; and the appropriate ways to punish and remember wrongdoing. In doing so, we will develop a repertoire of theoretical and empirical tools that can help us address both specific crises of human rights in various contexts, as well as the general crisis of faith and and observance of human rights as a universal norm and aspiration for peoples everywhere.
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Timothy Vasko
CULPA: 3
Info
- 4 points
Religion Salon: New Directions
The Religion Salon is a one-point course in the Religion department, designed to offer students an introduction to new areas of the academic study of religion and/or new approaches to the field. The Religion Salon will be offered as a supplement to an existing course offered in the same semester and will be open to (but not required of) the students in that existing course as well as to students who wish to take the Salon as a stand-alone one-point course. The Religion Salon will feature guest scholars whose research and teaching extend into new areas and/or engage in new approaches to the academic study of religion.
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Meghan E Hartman
Info - 1 points
SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR
Working research seminar devoted to helping students produce a substantive piece of writing that will represent the culmination of their work at the College and in the major.
- W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Najam I Haider
CULPA: 8
Info
- 4 points
Religion and the Afro-Native Experience
Religion and Afro-Native
African Americans and Native Americans have a shared history of racial oppression in America. However, the prevailing lenses through which scholars understand settler colonialism, religion, and black and indigenous histories focus overwhelmingly on the dynamics between Europeans and these respective groups. How might our understanding of these subjects change when viewed from a different point of departure, if we center the history of entanglements between black and native lives? How does religion structure the overlapping experiences of Afro-Native peoples in North America?
From political movements in Minneapolis, Oakland, and New York City to enslavement from the Cotton Belt to the Rio Grande, this class will explore how Africans, Native Americans, and their descendants adapted to shifting contexts of race and religion in America. The course will proceed thematically by examining experiences of war, dislocation, survival, and diaspora.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tiffany Hale
CULPA: 4
Info
- 4 points
RELIGION AND THE INDIAN WARS
The frontier is central to the United States’ conception of its history and place in the world. It is an abstract concept that reflects the American mythology of progress and is rooted in religious ideas about land, labor, and ownership. Throughout the nineteenth century, these ideas became more than just abstractions. They were tested, hardened, and revised by U.S. officials and the soldiers they commanded on American battlefields. This violence took the form of the Civil War as well as the series of U.S. military encounters with Native Americans known as the Indian Wars. These separate yet overlapping campaigns have had profound and lasting consequences for the North American landscape and its peoples.
This course explores the relationship between religious ideology and violence in the last half of nineteenth century. Organized chronologically and geographically, we will engage with both primary sources and classic works in the historiography of the Indian Wars to examine how religion shaped U.S. policy and race relations from the start of the Civil War through approximately 1910.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tiffany Hale
CULPA: 4
Info
- 4 points
GLOBAL INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS HISTORIES
GLOBAL INDIGENOUS RELIG H
Nomads, natives, peasants, hill people, aboriginals, hunter-gatherers, First Nations—these
are just a handful of the terms in use to define indigenous peoples globally. The names these groups
use to describe themselves, as well as the varying religious practices, attitudes, and beliefs among
these populations are far more numerous and complex. For much of recorded history however,
colonial centers of power have defined indigenous peoples racially and often in terms of lacking
religion; as pagan, barbarian, non-modern, and without history or civilization.
Despite this conundrum of identity and classification, indigenous religious traditions often
have well-documented and observable pasts. This course considers the challenges associated with
studying indigenous religious history, as well as the changing social, political, and legal dimensions
of religious practice among native groups over time and in relationship to the state. Organized
thematically and geographically, we will engage with classic works of ethnohistory, environmental
history, indigenous studies, anthropology, and religious studies as well as primary sources that
include legal documentation, military records, personal testimony, and oral narrative.
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Tiffany Hale
CULPA: 4
Info
- 4 points