Religious Studies (2022 - 2024)
Required Courses for the Major
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion
RELST-UA 1 Identical to ANTH-UA 11. Offered in the fall. 4 points.
Fundamental theoretical and methodological issues pertaining to the academic study of religion. Theories of the origin, character, and function of religion as a human phenomenon. Understanding and interpretation of religious phenomena through psychological, sociological, anthropological, historical, and hermeneutical perspectives.
Advanced Seminar
RELST-UA 15 Prerequisites: junior or senior standing, Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (RELST-UA 1), and at least two other religious studies courses, or permission of the instructor. Offered in the spring. 4 points.
Varying topics with cross-cultural applicability (for example: ritual, the body, sacrifice, religion and the state). Students examine topics within context of their own area of specialization, as well as within other traditions.
Major Elective Courses
Texts and Ideas: Utopias and Dystopias
CORE-UA 400 Counts toward the major in religious studies. Offered every other year. Becker. 4 points.
A survey of utopian literature and ideas from antiquity to the 21st century. The development of utopia as a genre is mapped out along with emergence of the more recent related genre of dystopia. Readings include Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, 19th century utopian fiction, and contemporary science fiction, as well as selections from the Bible, Augustine, Luther, Rousseau, Diderot, and Marx.
Texts and Ideas: God
CORE-UA 420 Counts toward the major in religious studies. Offered every other year. De Vries. 4 points.
Discusses historical and contemporary efforts to understand and justify “God” and what “He” might mean for us, regardless of our own belief or disbelief. Can the (admittedly insufficient) philosophical proofs for “His” existence that have been attempted throughout the ages convince or convert anyone? Is it even possible to speak of and reason about “God”? Examines these and other issues.
Cultures and Contexts: Global Christianities
CORE-UA 500 Counts toward the major in religious studies. Offered every year. Oliphant. 4 points.
Examines the ongoing global formation and reformation of Christianity, from its origins in a pluralistic ancient Mediterranean world and spread throughout Europe and the Middle East to its historical and ever-transforming role in Africa, Asia, and the New World. Explores the problems and possibilities Christian texts, concepts, institutions, and narratives have posed for a diversity of populations over distinct historical periods.
Cultures and Contexts: Islamic Societies
CORE-UA 502 Counts toward the major in religious studies. Offered every year. 4 points.
The emphasis in the pre-modern period is first on the Qur’an and then on law, political theory, theology, and mysticism. For the more recent period, the stress is on the search for religious identity. Throughout, students are exposed to Islamic societies in the words of their own writings.
What Is Islam?
RELST-UA 85 Identical to MEIS-UA 691, HIST-UA 85. Offered every year. 4 points.
Introduction to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of Islam; the beliefs and practices of the Islamic community; differences between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam; Sufism; the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic life of the Islamic commonwealth; and modern Islamic revival.
Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Early Christianity
RELST-UA 86 Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
Reexamines the light shed by ancient writings (and other evidence) not only on the role(s) of women in ancient Christian groups but also on the ideologies of gender promoted or assumed by those groups. The focus, while predominantly on women, also extends to the way in which gender identities were constructed and adhered to by males and females.
Of Miracles, Events, and Special Effects
RELST-UA 97 Offered every other year. De Vries. 4 points.
Do miracles happen? What do miracles, everyday events, and special effects have in common? Brings together theological, philosophical, and media studies to pose questions and offer intellectual resources—an imaginative archive as well as repository—for answering some basic questions regarding human agency and freedom.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
RELST-UA 102 Identical to HBRJD-UA 160, MEDI-UA 25, MEIS-UA 800. Offered periodically. 4 points.
Explores differences and similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and assesses their roles and interactions in the formation and functions of human society, culture, and politics. Examines the ancient origins and contemporary relevance of these monotheistic traditions. Considers the existence of Judaisms, Christianities, and Islams, rather than a trio of theological monoliths.
Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism
RELST-UA 104 Identical to HBRJD-UA 430, MEDI-UA 430. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Jewish Philosophy in the Medieval World
RELST-UA 106 Identical to HBRJD-UA 425. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Populism, Religion, and Crisis in Europe
RELST-UA 111 Identical to ANTH-UA 111 Oliphant. 4 points.
Populist rhetoric, rising xenophobia, anti-migrant hysteria, Islamophobia, and high unemployment have called many of the myths of “Europe” into question. Explores the historical and contemporary politics of religion, populism, and crisis in countries throughout the European Union.
Jewish Ethics
RELST-UA 117 Identical to HBRJD-UA 117. Rubenstein. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Biblical Archaeology
RELST-UA 120 Identical to HBRJD-UA 120. Fleming. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Jesus and Judaism
RELST-UA 158 Identical to HBRJD-UA 158. Offered periodically. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Foundations of the Christian-Jewish Argument
RELST-UA 192 Identical to HBRJD-UA 160, MEDI-UA 160. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Religion, Magic, and the Jewish Tradition
RELST-UA 212 Identical to HBRJD-UA 212. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Early History of God
RELST-UA 220 Identical to HBRJD-UA 116. Fleming. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Early Christian Mystics
RELST-UA 241 Seminar. 4 points.
Explores how early Christian mystical thinkers laid the foundation for a long and diverse tradition of Christian engagement with the divine. Topics: dependence on pagan thought, including the works of Plato; ascetic practices of chastity and fasting; monastic solitude; mystical interpretations of the biblical text; and the politics, literary culture, and psychology of mysticism more broadly.
Introduction to the New Testament
RELST-UA 302 Identical to CLASS-UA 293, HBRJD-UA 22. Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
Examines issues and themes in the history of the Jesus movement and early Christianity through a survey of the main texts of the canonical New Testament, as well as other important early Christian documents. Provides historical context, describes modern scholarly methodologies, and places the empirical material within the larger framework of ancient history and the theoretical study of religion.
Seminar
RELST-UA 313 4 points.
Emphasis varies by semester and is designed to allow flexibility in course offerings from visiting scholars and specialists in particular fields. Visit the religious studies department website for detailed course descriptions of the current semester's topic(s).
Religions of India
RELST-UA 337 Offered every year. 4 points.
Investigates religious developments in India within their historical context. Introduces Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, and Judaism. Rather than survey religious traditions as closed systems divorced from time or place, students study the central theories and historiographical challenges pertaining to religion in India.
Belief and Social Life in China
RELST-UA 351 Identical to ANTH-UA 351, EAST-UA 351. Offered periodically. Zito. 4 points.
The Chinese word for “religion” means “teaching.” Explores what Chinese people “taught” themselves about the person, society, and the natural world, and how social life was constructed and maintained. Examines in historical perspective the classic texts of the Taoist and Confucian canon and their synthesis as well as Buddhism, especially Ch’an (Zen). Discusses the practices of filiality in Buddhism, Confucian orthodoxy, and folk religion.
Greek and Roman Mythology
RELST-UA 404 Formerly Classical Mythology. Identical to CLASS-UA 404. Meineck. 4 points.
See description under classics.
Living a Good Life: Greek and Jewish Perspectives
RELST-UA 422 Identical to HBRJD-UA 422 and PHIL-UA 422. Offered every one to two years. Gottlieb. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Creating a Good Society: Christian and Jewish Perspectives
RELST-UA 428 Identical to HBRJD-UA 428 and PHIL-UA 428. Recommended prerequisite: Living the Good Life: Greek and Jewish Perspectives (RELST-UA 422). Offered every one to two years. Gottlieb. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic Studies.
Jewish Responses to Modernity: Religion and Nationalism
RELST-UA 470 Identical to HBRJD-UA 719. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
American Religion
RELST-UA 480 Offered periodically. 4 points.
What has been the role of religion in America? Examines themes relevant to the study of religion through key moments in American history: the relationship between spiritual revivals, political upheavals, and social change from the American Revolution through the culture wars of the twentieth century. Also considers the present-day stakes for thinking critically about religion as it has shaped and continues to shape American politics, society, and culture.
American Evangelicalism
RELST-UA 482 Offered periodically. 4 points.
Considers colonial America and religion in the new nation, evangelical reform in the 19th century, the clash between fundamentalists and modernists, holiness and Pentecostal movements, African American evangelicalism and the civil rights movement, the Christian right, youth movements, and neo-evangelicalism. Addresses variations in theology and religious practice and how evangelicals have approached modern Western culture (gender, race and ethnicity, performance, nation, sexuality, and economics).
Religion and U.S. Political Radicalism
RELST-UA 484 Offered periodically. 4 points.
From the mid-19th century to the present. Introduces various models for defining and interpreting radicalism in religion and politics. Topics include labor activism, the women’s movement, anti-radical repression, genealogies of socialism and communism, civil rights activism, religious fundamentalism, ethnic and immigrant expressions of radicalism, and the role of religion in Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement.
Confessional Culture from Augustine to Oprah
RELST-UA 561 Offered every other year. Pellegrini. 4 points.
Different uses and forms “the confession” has taken in Western culture and its evolution from a specifically religious practice into a genre of self-fashioning in a putatively secular modernity. Includes the written word, TV, film, and the Internet. Explores the differences and similarities between these confessional modes, their cultural locations, their historical moments, and their ideological effects.
The History of Religions of Africa
RELST-UA 566 Identical to HIST-UA 566, SCA-UA 790. 4 points.
See description under history.
Early Christian Theology
RELST-UA 570 Topics vary. Offered every other year. Becker. 4 points.
Students examine such classics of early Christian thought as Augustine’s City of God, or focus on one of various significant theological issues, such as incarnational theology or the problem of wealth and poverty.
The Land of Israel through the Ages
RELST-UA 609 Identical to HBRJD-UA 141, HIST-UA 540, MEIS-UA 609. Schiffman. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Jews in the Islamic World in the Modern Period
RELST-UA 610 Identical to HBRJD-UA 114, MEIS-UA 616. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Jews and Christians in the Ancient World
RELST-UA 611 Identical to CLASS-UA 611, HBRJD-UA 128. Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
The early history of Judaism and Christianity. Explores self-definition and typology in the formulation of religious categories and the use of these categories in examining religious and other social phenomena. Questions the relationship of ideology and literary evidence to social reality.
Religion, State, and Politics
RELST-UA 613 Offered periodically. 4 points.
A comparative and theoretical approach to the debate on secularism. Emergence, development, and close empirical analysis of the secularization paradigm. Different examples of state-religion relationships in historical and religious-cultural context. Considers the scope and limits of secularization theory and current debates on religion.
Gods and Profits: Religion and Capitalism
RELST-UA 636 Identical to ANTH-UA 636. Offered every other year. De Vries, Oliphant. 4 points.
Explores the enchanted production and reproduction of capitalism and the effects of capitalism on ever-transforming religious practices. Through a combination of classical and contemporary approaches in political economy, religious studies, and anthropology, we address what makes capitalism a unique mode of exchange and explore examples of the spirits that haunt the market’s invisible hand, as well as those that resist its powerful reach.
Religion, Art, and the City
RELST-UA 637 Identical to ANTH-UA 637. Offered every other year. Oliphant. 4 points.
Explores New York City through lenses that have long been essential to its rich diversity and historical complexity: its religion, its art, and moments when the two have intersected. Topics: what is meant by “art” and “religion”? What are the intersections of the two? How do museums lead us to view both religion and art in particular ways? How do religious and artistic practices creative alternative spaces in the city?
After Religion? Rethinking Our Secular Age
RELST-UA 638 Identical to ANTH-UA 352. Offered every other year. Oliphant. 4 points.
Explores different forms of the secular found around the world and over time and questions the power of the universal tale of modernization that sits at the foundation of the “secularization thesis.” Explores what it means to live in a “secular age”—a framework which, although often invisible or implicit, establishes and limits much of what we experience, expect, and encounter in our daily lives.
Religious Bodies
RELST-UA 642 Identical to ANTH-UA 29. Offered periodically. Zito. 4 points.
The body as medium both for ritual and religious experience; the body as locus for virtue and sin; the split between mind and body. Examines the body in various situations—gendered, sexualized, covered, naked, suffering, disabled, altered, missing—and interrogates notions of representations and ideals, from the religious ban on representing the human body to divine anthropomorphism.
Religion and Media
RELST-UA 645 Recommended prerequisite: prior course work in religious studies, anthropology, or media studies. Offered periodically. Zito. 4 points.
How human hearing, vision, and the performing body have been used historically to express and maintain religious life through music, voice, images, words, and rituals. Attention to more recent electronic media such as radio, film, television, video, and the Internet. Approaches religion from anthropological and historical perspectives.
Religion, Sexuality, and Public Life
RELST-UA 646 Offered periodically. Pellegrini. 4 points.
The U.S. was founded on the promise of religious freedom, yet laws and policies regulating sexual life draw on specifically religious notions of “good” versus “bad” sex, what bodies are “for,” and what kinds of human relationships are valuable. Considers this apparent contradiction and the implications, for both sexual and religious freedom, of treating sexual life as a special case.
Monsters and Their Humans
RELST-UA 649 Identical to ANTH-UA 649. Offered every other year. Zito. 4 points.
Humanity has a long list of monstrously imagined transformations of ourselves, including vampires, zombies, werewolves, trolls, and bad faeries. Places our investigations of these alter-egos in the contexts of 1. historical imaginings of the divine, 2. ethnography, and 3. our intimate problems of managing sex, gender, race, and class.
Topics
RELST-UA 650 4 points.
Topics vary and have included Christianity and culture, religion and violence, and postcolonialism.
Martyrdom, Ancient and Modern
RELST-UA 660 Identical to CLASS-UA 646. Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
Begins with a close study of the development of the martyrological discourse in classical, early Christian, early Jewish, and Muslim literature and culture. Traces how the concept of martyrdom is deployed in modern culture: “martyrdom operations” (“suicide bombers”), political martyrdom, and modern notions of holy war.
Perspectives on Islam
RELST-UA 665 Identical to MEIS-UA 665. Katz. 4 points.
See description under Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
History of Judaism: The Classical Period
RELST-UA 680 Identical to HBRJD-UA 100, MEIS-UA 680. Rubenstein, Schiffman. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Judaism: From Medieval to Modern Times
RELST-UA 683 Identical to HBRJD-UA 111, HIST-UA 98, MEIS-UA 680. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Ancient Egyptian Mythology and Religion
RELST-UA 719 Formerly Introduction to Egyptian Religion. Identical to HBRJD-UA 150. Roth. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic Studies.
The Civilizations and Religions of the Ancient Near East
RELST-UA 790 Identical to MEIS-UA 790. 4 points.
See description under Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
RELST-UA 807 Identical to HBRJD-UA 131. Schiffman. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Modern Perspectives on the Bible
RELST-UA 809 Identical to HBRJD-UA 126, MEIS-UA 809. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Gender and Judaism
RELST-UA 815 Identical to HBRJD-UA 718, SCA-UA 732. 4 points.
See description under Hebrew and Judaic studies.
Anthropology of Religion
RELST-UA 829 Identical to ANTH-UA 30. 4 points.
See description under anthropology.
Introduction to Buddhism
RELST-UA 832 Identical to EAST-UA 832. Offered every year. McGrath. 4 points.
An introduction to this complex religion, emphasizing its history, teachings, and practices. Discusses its doctrinal development in India, then emphasizes certain local practices such as Buddhism and the family in China; Buddhism, language, and hierarchy in Japan; the politics of Buddhist Tibet; Buddhist art; and Buddhism in the United States.
Tibetan Buddhism
RELST-UA 835 Identical to EAST-UA 833. Offered every year. McGrath. 4 points.
Begins with the principles of the tradition, then moves from the 7th-century arrival of Buddhism in Tibet to the present-day encounter with Western devotees of exiled Tibetan lamas. Topics include doctrinal innovation, ritual, myth, art, sacred geography, revelation, and the role of Buddhism in Tibet’s relationship with its neighbors.
Engaging Early Christian Theology
RELST-UA 840 Identical to CLASS-UA 856, MEDI-UA 840. Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
Offers an introduction to the major issues in Christian theology in Christianity’s formative period (from New Testament times into the Middle Ages). Topics addressed include incarnational theology, the sacraments, the problem of evil, biblical interpretation, and Christianity’s imagined relationship to Judaism.
Virgins, Martyrs, Monks, and Saints: Early Christianity
RELST-UA 846 Identical to CLASS-UA 846. Offered periodically. Becker. 4 points.
What was it about Christianity that made it so popular in the ancient world? Focuses on early Christian literature, such as saints’ lives, works of monastic spirituality, and mystical texts. Topics include the Christian reception of Greco-Roman antiquity, the origins of antisemitism, gender and sexuality in the early church, and the emergence of Christian theology.
Internship and Independent Study
Internship
RELST-UA 980, 981 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. 1 to 4 points per term.
Independent Study
RELST-UA 997, 998 Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. 1 to 4 points per term.