Courses | Department of Religious Studies

The Department of Religious Studies offers a wide and varying number of courses open to undergraduates. Not all of these courses are taught annually. For the most current course requirements, please refer to the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Studies Department's Majors, Minors, and Certficates page to view all available Major Sheets. Alternatively, search for courses in the Undergraduate Course Catalog.

Regularly-Taught Courses

RELGST 0083 Mythology in the Ancient World

This course examines in cultural context the traditional stories--myth, legend, and folktale--of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Theories drawn from various disciplines are critically evaluated. Attention to connections with ritual practice and to expression in daily life, art, architecture, etc.

RELGST 0090 Myth in the Ancient Near East

The myths of the ancient Near East are among the earliest written interpretations of the world and human existence. They are also among the most enduring, although they have only been unearthed in the last 200 years. In this course, we read myths from ancient Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and Israel. We study the myths as literary works, representative of the ideas and issues of the original cultural context in which they were shaped. These myths offer insight into the religious mentality of the ancient Near East, as well as societal and political issues. We examine themes such as the presentation of the life of the gods, the relationship between the human and divine worlds, the issues of mortality and immortality, existence, fertility, kingship, and ethics. The primary goal of this course is to better understand these myths as they existed and developed in their ancient settings. Of course, because the myths are expressions of human thought, we may find that in studying them we also come to better understand ourselves.

RELGST 0105 Religions of the West

Cross-listed with HIST 0125
This course is a historical introduction to the religious traditions that developed in ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Our major emphasis is on the history of the religious traditions that emerged in late antiquity which continue to as the major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We focus on key concepts, historical developments, and contemporary issues. Throughout the course, we also examine interactions among these religious traditions and will make use of documentary film and sacred art to illustrate. In the final segment of the course we examine the issue of secularization and the rise of the category of the non-believer, or "none." The course also serves as an introduction to the academic study of religion and provides a foundation for further coursework in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. No prior knowledge of any of the religions studied is expected or assumed.

RELGST 0283 US and the Holocaust

With increasing interest in the Holocaust in Europe, this course focuses on the American side of the Atlantic - on issues of anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiment in this country and on America's response to the holocaust. We will also look at some post-Holocaust issues as well.

RELGST 0405 Witches to Walden Pond—Religion in Early America

Cross-listed with HIST 0675
Why did the prosecution of witches become a priority for the Puritan rulers of New England? What religious ideals convinced Henry David Thoreau to lead a life 'off the grid' in Walden Pond? How did non-Protestant immigrants make their way in the new nation? And how did religious rhetoric undergird the debates over slavery that led to the civil war? These are some of the questions that we will explore in this course, which traces the religious history of the United States from the era of colonization to through the Civil War.

RELGST 0415 Religion in Modern America

Cross-listed with HIST 0676
The course examines the impact of religion as a moral, intellectual, and institutional force in America from 1865 to the present. Despite claims that the nation was becoming less religious, at least seven new religions were founded in the U.S. After the civil war, while millions of migrants from southern and eastern Europe brought large numbers of Catholics and Jews to challenge the dominance of protestants. We seek to understand how religions have both shaped and reflected economic, social, and cultural conditions in the united states. The course combines lecture with student discussion of religious conflicts and critical moments of cultural change, using primary sources and secondary interpreters. We also engage documentary films, slides, and local museums and historical sites. Major emphases include religious responses to intellectual, scientific, and economic change, including biblical criticism, evolutionary theory, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, Marxism, fascism, racism, and feminism. We conclude with questions about the present day: is the united states an exception for its high levels of religious behavior or is secularism on the rise?

RELGST 0454 Rise of Islam

Cross-listed with HIST 0753
This course seeks to impart an understanding of the Islamic tradition by exploring the religion's formative period. It integrates two intertwined themes: (1) early Islamic empires as geopolitical formations; and (2) the development of ideas - from ritual to philosophy to law. The first centuries of Islam are fascinating for many of the same reasons they are complex and even controversial: Surviving primary sources are fragmented, partisan, and often retrospective; a tremendous range of voices competed to define the new religion; and nearly all subsequent Muslim thinkers would harken back to this period to legitimize their own positions. The central goal is to develop an understanding of the diversity of voices in this early period and consider why certain conceptualizations of religion displaced others; and then follow those voices beyond the Arabian Peninsula to examine manifestations in the North African and Central Asian borderlands.

RELGST 0455 Introduction to Islamic Civilization

Cross-listed with HIST 0756
This course aims to introduce students to Islamic and Middle Eastern History from the time of the Prophet (ca. 600 C.E.) to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. We will proceed chronologically, focusing mainly on political events. However, a special emphasis will be given to the formation of the Islamic tradition, its evolution across different regions and cultures in time, and its interaction with other traditions. In the modern era, we will particularly explore the Islamic societies' political, cultural, and military encounter with the rising power of the West in the Middle East. In addition to the several historical processes and developments such as modernization, nation-building, Islamic fundamentalism and globalization, which have shaped the history of the Middle East in the last two centuries, our class discussions will also touch on the main theoretical perspectives that have stamped the studies of Islam and the Middle East. Here, concepts such as orientalism, defensive development, and modernity will constitute our main focus.

RELGST 0500 What is Religion?

Whether we are religious or not, religion affects us. It shapes the ways we understand our identities, our bodies, and our relationship with nature; it reinforces or undermines the hierarchies that organize our society; it is referenced by the music we listen to and the shows we watch; it saturates the rhetoric of the politicians who govern us. Public conversations on religion are often dominated by people with a particular religious or theological agenda. This course will introduce you to a different way of talking about what religion is-a way that treats it as a kind of human social activity. It provides a survey of a wide variety of theories about what religion is that you can use to understand the place of religion in our world. It also provides an introduction to methods that you can use to gather information about religion both as a part of human history and as a lived part of contemporary human culture. By learning these theories and methods, you will be better equipped to talk about the role of religion in our world in a way that is well-informed and balances critical thinking with cultural sensitivity.

RELGST 0505 Religion in Asia

Cross-listed with HIST 0755
This course serves as an introduction to the major religious traditions of South and East Asia. During the course of the semester, we encounter Hinduism and Jainism; the native Confucian, Daoist (Taoist), and popular traditions of China; and the Shinto, folk and new religions of Japan. Buddhism, which originated in India but later spread to East Asia, is examined in its relation to the history of both Chinese and Japanese religions. We approach these traditions through lectures and discussion based on Chinese classical and popular literature, secondary scholarship, and films, which inform us about cultural and historical context, beliefs, practices, and personal experience. In the process we expect to learn something about the ways in which non-Western religious traditions see themselves and their world on their own terms, and to see how/if they can complement our own worldviews.

RELGST 0525 Religion and Culture in East Asia

Cross-listed with HIST 0475
Words have consequences. How a society defines "religion" and "culture" have much to say about how they balance individual freedom and collective responsibility. This course focuses on how religion has been and is practiced in East Asia in modern and contemporary times. We begin with an overview of the major religions in the region (e.g., Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Shinto, folk traditions), and examine various themes to help us learn how religion influences the lives of individuals and the wider societies in which they live. Themes dealt with include the relationship between religion and politics and law; nationalism, terrorism, and secularization; gender, sexuality, and the family; healing, the environment, and ethical behavior; and the life cycle and ritual calendar year. By looking at how these issues unfold in modern China and Japan and at their global significance enable us to better understand how religion shapes our world.

RELGST 0710 Sociology of Religion

Cross-listed with SOC 0339 and JS 0710
This course will compare and contrast major classical and modern sociological theories of religion, including discussion of the renewed focus on religion in mainstream, general theory. Attention will be narrowed to a focus on the relation between religions, states and individuals in comparative and historical perspective.

RELGST 0715 Philosophy of Religion

Cross-listed with PHIL 0473
This course examines topics central to philosophy of religion, including arguments for and against the existence of God, the nature of religious experiences, the relation between faith & reason, the personal and cultural usefulness of religion & religious practices, and religious responses to evil (theodicy). Members of the class will develop a working knowledge of the issues by reading and discussing traditional and contemporary scholarly texts.

RELGST 0760 Religion and Rationality

Cross-listed with PHIL 1760
Does--and should--religion have a role in the secular sphere? How does culture shape religion? Is faith compatible with reason? This course critically examines how both religious and nonreligious thinkers have navigated the question of the relation between faith and reason throughout the history of Western thought. Special attention will be paid to evaluating how the relationship between religion and philosophy developed within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. A further emphasis will be given to how the relationship between religion and philosophy shapes the our approach to myth, race, gender, and science.

RELGST 0770 Science and Religion

Cross-listed with HPS 0620 and PHIL 1840
Are science and religion at odds or harmonizable? Do they coincide or represent completely separate discourses? This course examines the relationship between science, rationality, faith, and religion. Special attention will be given to ancient creation narratives and their interpretation, historical dialogues regarding faith and reason in the Western monotheist faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), the scientific revolution, and various approaches to evolutionary theory. We will also consider practical, contemporary issues such as neuroscience and religious practice, ecology and faith, and scientific views toward gender and race.

RELGST 0780 Quantum Karma: Science in Hindu and Buddhist Traditions

Cross-listed with HPS 619
We have likely all encountered arguments in which sweeping claims are made about the relationship between religion and science. These claims often generalize on the basis of a limited knowledge of a few locally visible religious traditions. This course offers students an opportunity to explore the way science has interacted with some of the traditions often neglected by these debates. In particular, we will explore how the close relationship between European imperialism and scientific institutions created new parameters for conversations about Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This led intellectuals in these traditions to develop systems of thought that integrate scientific and religious ideas. These ideas played an important role in processes of decolonization, the development of religious nationalism, and the transnational spread of Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

RELGST 1100 Israel in the Biblical Age

Cross-listed with HIST 1765 and JS 1100
This course explores the history and development of the people of Israel in ancient times. What do we know about the Israelites and how do we know it? Using biblical texts and archaeological remains, students will learn about everyday life in ancient Israel, the role of class and gender, life-cycle events, religious festivals, political institutions, systems of belief, and famous personages in history and lore. The trajectory of the course will begin with the Near Eastern origins of the people, continue through the rise of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies, and end with the Second Temple commonwealth of Judea in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

RELGST 1102 The History of God

Cross-listed with ANTH 1703, HIST 1731, and JS 1102
God has a history. In the earliest days of that history, God was worshipped as one of a plethora of deities controlling various spheres of cosmic activity or the human world. Students in this course will learn about this ancient pantheon - how gods functioned in society and how their presence was experienced by those devoted to them. They will then trace the evolution of the God of Israel from a mountaintop deity of the southern Levant in the late second millennium BCE to a supreme deity worshiped by a small group of absolute monotheists based in Jerusalem in the mid-first millennium BCE. Students will become more sophisticated readers of biblical texts in the process. The sources of the Hebrew Bible reflect not a homogeneous monotheism, but rather a diverse set of belief systems tending toward henotheism or even polytheism. By appropriating and reinterpreting the religious myths of their neighbors, the Israelites arrived at a character of the divine that has proven problematic to many contemporary theologians, particularly on issues of LGBT rights, women's rights, and the environment.

RELGST 1120 Origins of Christianity

Cross-listed with CLASS 1430 and HIST 1775
This course presents a historical-critical investigation of Christian origins. Special attention is paid to varieties of 1st century Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism within the Greco-Roman world. Primary readings include selected Biblical passages and apocrypha, 1st century historians and philosophers (Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Philo), the New Testament corpus (including Paul and the Pastorals), and selected readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition there will be assignments from various modern New Testament critics, historians, and theologians.

RELGST 1130 Varieties of Early Christianity

Cross-listed with CLASS 1432 and HIST 1776
This course will examine the many different and often competing forms of Christianity that existed during the first five centuries of our common era. We will include an historical survey of Mediterranean culture and society in the historical Roman Empire to help us understand the ways in which Christianity developed in relation to the philosophical, sociological, theological, and political environment of this period. We will also focus on the contribution of the early varieties of Christianity to modern Western views of the relationship between the individual body and society. The literature of this period represents a broad variety of beliefs and practices ranging from philosophical views of god and matter (and the nature of each), to notions of life-long celibacy.

RELGST 1135 Orthodox Christianity

This course is designed as an overview of the history, teachings and rituals of Orthodox Christianity in its multinational context. Geographically, this context refers primarily to southeastern Europe (aka the Balkans), Russia and the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean. The course examines specific historical experiences of Orthodox Christians, starting with Byzantine empire, through major historical shift in the life of the Christians under Ottoman rule and, finally, to the diverse experiences of various autocephalous churches under communism. Through lectures, readings, discussions, films, and a field trip to a local Orthodox church, students will gain an insight into and broaden their awareness of the multifaceted world of Orthodox Christianity, its spiritual practices, rich artistic, musical and ritual expressions.

RELGST 1142 Construction of Evil

Why is there evil in the world and who or what is responsible for it? How can we reconcile a belief in a good God with the existence of evil? Even without the theological underpinning, in secular terms, evil poses a problem about the worlds intelligibility. This course undertakes a historical analysis of the various ways in which ancient and medieval minds pondered these questions and their solutions to the problem. We begin our survey with the monism of Hebrew Scriptures then move to the changes brought on by Persian culture and the Hellenization of the Mediterranean basin after the conquests of Alexander with the introduction of Dualism. Dualism is a theory or system of thought that recognizes two independent and mutually irreducible principles, which are sometimes complementary and sometimes in conflict. The course focuses on the polarities of "good" and "evil" (and the methods by which "evil" is defined), specifically highlighting the evolution of the emergence of the Devil in Judaism and Christianity and the social construction of good and evil in the Western tradition. At the same time, we consider the rationalization of "our" good against the evil of "others," or the issue of religious intolerance.

RELGST 1143 Death in the Name of God Martyrs and Martyrdom

The roman empire understood Christianity to be an illegal and superstitious movement, and a threat to the traditions of their ancestors. Subsequently, many Christians were charged with the crime of "atheism," and put to death, as atheism was equivalent to treason. Who were these people who voluntarily embraced their own deaths as a vindication of their faith, and how did Rome justify their extinction? How were they understood by their pagan and Jewish neighbors? This course explores the cultural, political and religious context of Christian martyrs, beginning in second temple Judaism. We then analyze their stories (martyrologies), imperial transcripts and legislation, and examine the later (Christian) imperial legislation against "heretics." this background helps motivate discussions of contemporary "martyrs," such as "suicide bombers," the political ramifications of such behavior, who gets to decide if someone is a martyr, and reactions to the public spectacle of dying as the ultimate religious act.

RELGST 1144 Classical Mythology and Literature

This course examines how authors of classical antiquity used the traditional figures and stories of their culture's mythology as material for works of literature.

RELGST 1145 Greco-Roman Religions

Cross-listed with CLASS 1402
This course will introduce students to religious texts and traditions in a formative era of Western civilization and culture. Our focus will be on the variety of religious expression in Greco-Roman culture, which flourished in the geo graphical area of the Mediterranean basin during the first five centuries of the common era. We consider debates about nature of the gods and access to them (through oracles, rituals, and magic), the emergence of the idea of the holy person, and a variety of religious traditions as expressed in prayer, ritual, and art, and religion and politics.

RELGST 1148 Religions of Ancient Egypt

Cross-listed with HAA 1103
This course introduces students to ancient Egyptian religious thought and practice with its massive temples, multitude of gods and goddesses and fascinating funeral rites. We explore the mythic cycle of Creation and the Osiris cycle of betrayal, revenge, death and rebirth, as well as the place of myriad local and minor deities within Egyptian mythology. We also consider the dynamics of the "monotheistic" revolution of Akhenaton. In the historical and cultural context of ancient Egypt, students encounter the interaction of sacred and secular, and the relationship between state cults and private worship by nobles and commoners alike. A special feature of the course includes group projects to design educational materials for the 'Egyptian Exhibit' for the Carnegie Museum. To that end, the course includes a session at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

RELGST 1151 Death in the Mediterranean World

Cross-listed with CLASS 1090 and HIST 1714
In many cultures, people sometimes ask fundamental questions about their existence, including, "what happens after we die?" This course will focus on the evolution of beliefs and rituals related to death and the afterlife in and around the ancient Mediterranean basin, including Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman cultures. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will combine methodologies from anthropology, classics, history, and religious studies. Topics to be covered include myths of the afterlife, books of the dead, magic and death rituals, funeral practices and paraphernalia (disposal of the dead), cults of the dead, divinization, heaven and hell, judgment, and the impact of christianization on the ancient understanding of death.

RELGST 1160 Jerusalem—History and Imagination

Cross-listed with HIST 1779, HAA 1105, and JS 1160
The holy city of Jerusalem is at the heart of the western religious imagination and of contemporary political conflict in the middle east. Traditionally it has been a center of religious pilgrimage, home to Israelite kings and Islamic caliphs. Today it is a cutting-edge urban center marked by stunning demographic diversity, a rapidly expanding economy, and an intractable political crisis. In this course, we will examine the history of the city-from its earliest days to today-with an eye toward its religious significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Special attention will be given to Jerusalem's changing urban fabric: its architecture, neighborhoods, natural resources, economy, and religious institutions.

RELGST 1170 Archaeology of Israel-Palestine

Is archaeology in a place like Israel-Palestine an objective science? In this course, we explore how past and present are linked as nation-states and religious communities utilize the archaeological record to mold identities and to forward certain narratives. Our focus will be on the major archaeological sites of Israel-Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem and its environs. We will explore the political and religious issues that have emerged from or surround their excavation. Archaeology in the Holy Land has long been driven by a desire to shed light on - or even authenticate - the Bible, while the "exotic Orient" was explored in the 19th and early 20th centuries through western expeditions and excavations that served to further colonial interests. These religious and political motivations persist even if their manifestations have shifted with time. Through site tours, museum visits, student-led discussions, talks with local experts, and even a day participating in an archaeological excavation, students will gain direct experience with the places that have aroused controversy because of their problematic relationship to biblical and other ancient texts and/or because of their location in politically contested space.

RELGST 1171 Health and Illness in Israeli Society

Cross-listed with JS 1171
This course introduces students to the health field from a socio-cultural perspective and provides an overview of the Israeli social determinants of health, the experience of illness, the doctor-patient relationships, and the health care system in Israel. The course aims to introduce the critical thinking of medical sociology/anthropology, which examine health and illness as a social, cultural, and political phenomena. These perspectives start with the understanding that we cannot grasp problem associate with health and illness based on the biological phenomena and medical knowledge alone. Therefore, during the course, students will learn about different social forces, including the role of the state, politics, social power relations and culture in shaping the medical field. In the course, we will focus on several main issues and concepts within Israeli society related to health and illness: health and reproduction; the intersection of health and the Jewish religion; mental health in Israel; the intersection of health with ethnicity and gender, bioethics in Israel, and more.

RELGST 1220 Jews and Judaism in the Medieval World

Cross-listed with HIST 1760 and JS 1220
This course surveys the Jewish historical experience from the 7th through the 18th centuries. Political, social, economic, cultural, and religious dimensions of a variety of Jewish communities are explored within the contexts of the larger societies in which the Jewish minority lived. Through study of primary texts in translation and secondary sources, we explore the different dimensions of medieval and early modern Judaism: rabbinic literature, Jewish philosophy, mysticism, biblical commentary, folklore and popular religion. We also discuss periodization: how should the "medieval" period of Jewish history be defined?

RELGST 1240 Jews and the City

Cross-listed with HIST 1780 and JS 1240
Comedian Lenny Bruce riffed in 1963 that "If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York you're Jewish." In this course, we will discover why Lenny Bruce -- and so many other observers of Jewish life -- came to understand urbanity as a core component of the Jewish experience. We will begin our study of the Jewish encounter with urban life in the 19th century, as millions of Eastern European Jews migrated from the small villages of their birth to cities across the globe. This course will trace this Eastern European Jewish diaspora to urban destinations around the world, before training its lens on the Jewish encounter with American cities. We will pay close attention to how patterns of Jewish urbanization changed regionally and over time; how urbanization affected Jews' home-life, leisure time, religious practices and occupational choices; how differences in gender and class affected Jews' experiences in urban spaces; and how Jews interacted with other ethnic groups in diverse, urban environments. Delving into the history, built environment, and archival sources pertaining to the Jewish experience in Pittsburgh will provide us with a dynamic case study for this crucial relationship between Jews and the city.

RELGST 1241 Gender in Jewish History

Cross-listed with HIST 1711 and JS 1241
How did a Jewish teenager named Henriette Herz become the belle of berlin high society in the late 18th century? Why did 19th century Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau think it so important to transform Jewish men into 'muscle Jews?' why did ray frank, a Jewish woman from San Francisco who did not think that women should be rabbis, feel compelled to lead the first high holiday service ever held in Spokane, Washington? And how have trans* Jews challenged the conventions of contemporary Jewish life? These are some of the questions that we ask in gender in Jewish history, a course that places gender and its effects at the center of Jewish modernity. We take an international approach to this history, traveling through Europe, the Americas, and the middle east to show how Jews negotiated gender identity and gender roles in numerous contexts and under varying political and social circumstances. In exploring such themes as religious practice, politics, education, anti-Semitism, work, and family, we see how gender indelibly marked every aspect of Jewish life over the past two hundred years.

RELGST 1243 Jews and the Body

Jews are not only the "People of the Book," but also a people whose books are deeply concerned with the body. This course examines the body as a religious site to explore key questions about humanity, holiness, gender, sexuality, identity, otherness, community, tradition, and health. We will approach religion as a human phenomenon, studying Jewish bodily practices-rituals, commandments, and cultural behaviors-through critical historical and sociological lenses. These practices reflect Judaism's diversity across time and space. We will consider both historical and contemporary Jewish experiences of the body, covering such topics as food, sexuality, reproduction, queerness, health, and death. Questions we will discuss in this course include: How do Jewish practices shape ideas of the body, and conceptions of the body shape Jewish practice? How do Jewish bodily practices engage with scientific developments? How do Jewish cultures imagine bodies that are hungry, pleasured, gendered, transgendered, sexual, transgressive, differently-abled, well, sick, and mortal? All of these issues and more come into play when we shift our attention from the image of Jews as a textual community to the ways that Jews have understood and managed their embodied selves.

RELGST 1250 Jews and Judaism in the Modern World

Cross-listed with HIST 1767 and JS 1250
Were we examine the specific challenges that the modern period posed to existing Jewish life and the nature of the responses made by Judaism to those challenges.

RELGST 1252 Holocaust History and Memory

Cross-listed with HIST 1769 and JS 1252
The holocaust - that is, the genocide of six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II - was a critical event of the early twentieth-century that continues to resonate today. Our historical survey will look at the holocaust primarily through the experiences of its Jewish victims, though we will discuss some of the other groups, such as the roma, disabled people, and gay men, who were also targeted and systematically murdered by the Nazis. Additionally, we will think about the perpetrators of the holocaust and the ideologies that led to the genocide, such as racism, nationalism, and antisemitism. Finally, we will move beyond the history of the holocaust to think about the ways that this event has been remembered and reconstructed by survivors, nations, institutions, museums, the arts, popular culture and the media. Looking at how institutions here in Pittsburgh commemorate the holocaust will offer us local, concrete examples of how people continue to grapple with this history.

RELGST 1256 Modern Israel and Palestine

Cross-listed with JS 1256 and HIST 1766
We trace the history of modern Israel from the idea of the return in the second half of the 19th century through the state of Israel today.

RELGST 1280 Modern and Contemporary Jewish Thought

This course will introduce students to the varieties of Jewish thought, which developed out the of the 19th and 20th centuries and to the present day. After exploring the historical context of the philosophical legacy of Jewish thought, we will consider how Jewish intellectuals sought to reimagine their Jewish faith and Jewish identity in response to various concerns in the 19th and 20th centuries. Specifically, we will analyze Jewish responses to modernity and secularism, Jewish engagement with Western culture and Christianity, political theory (e.g, Marxism) and matters of social justice, Jewish feminism, and the prospect of ethics and religious faith after the Holocaust.

RELGST 1282 Contemporary Jewish Life

Cross-listed with JS 1282
There are many concerns and issues that Jews think about and deal with in contemporary America. Some of these issues have been of long standing, but some have come into focus as a result of dramatic changes and developments in today's society. These issues can invoke real confusion, angst and/or disagreement among Jews, as well as among non-Jews so it is important to raise some of these issues and allow for wide-ranging class discussion. Our class will look at topics such as Zionism in world and American history, the founding of Israel and the relationship of American Jews to that state, antisemitism in history and on campus today, the impact of the Holocaust on Jewry both in the past and now, Jewish feminism, Intermarriage, the shape and structure of the American Jewish community, assimilation and challenges for Judaism in the digital age, and more. To enhance our conversation, we will hear from a variety of Jewish professionals and informed speakers offering their analysis and perspective on important topics. An important component of the class will be the opportunity for students to shadow professionals in charge of a variety of Jewish agencies in the community. This special opportunity will not only give students an understanding of a Jewish agency and its mission in the community, but it will also afford students the opportunity to learn about a subject and make personal contacts that might be important in shaping and furthering a career choice.

RELGST 1300 Religion, the Book, and Beyond

The goal of this course is for students to think about religious ideas and practices as embodied in material texts. We will be looking at the ways that religious ideas are embedded in different kinds of books-scrolls, manuscripts, printed books, ebooks, and smartphone apps. We will also be looking that the ways that religious practices are often performed or acted using texts-reading scripture ritually or silently, studying texts, chanting, or even displaying books without reading them. And these two foci will let us think about the interactive relationships between religious people and their texts and how this relationship shapes the way we understand religion. It can also serve as an introduction to studying the history of the book, using religious books as the focus. So another way to think about what we are doing is considering the relationship between "religion" and the "book." Throughout the course we will try to think about books in two related senses: in terms of books as literary works (texts) and as material objects.

RELGST 1320 Medieval History 1

Survey course in the social, political, economic and religious history of Europe from the Diocletian reforms to the year one thousand. Special attention to interpreting the primary documents and to integrating various areas of activity (e.g. economic and religious). Focus on France, England, Germany, and Italy.

RELGST 1370 Global Christianity

Cross-listed with HIST 1732
This course takes Christianity as a prism through which to consider the origins and growth of global religions. Christianity has tried to achieve a global status since its inception in the ancient Mediterranean world in the first century CE. Stemming from Paul's fateful decision to evangelize the Gentiles, Christianity has long sought to achieve a global network of believers, who now comprise about 20% of the world's population. We will study Christian globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and focus on two Christian traditions, Catholicism and Pentecostalism, as examples of religions that have deliberately and successfully globalized. We will ask if the contemporary values of and pluralism relativism are good for religions and religious people. And, where religion is no longer a powerful cultural force, what are the prospects for a purely humanitarian approach to common problems in a globalizing world?

RELGST 1372 Catholicism in the New World

Cross-listed with HIST 1051
The course will examine the history of the Roman Catholic church since 1492 in the Americas using various moments of internal crisis or external conflict as focal points for study. Topics will include: missionary and military contact with New World indigenous populations after 1492; the minority situation of Catholics in the new United States; the Irish famine and its global consequences; conflicts between Catholic ethnic groups; the impact of Catholic support for fascist regimes in the 1930s and 1940s; counter cultural forms of Catholicism (conscientious objectors, civil rights activists, pacifists); Vatican ii and its impact; liberation theology, Marxism and structural reform in Latin America; shifting theological positions on social and moral issues; the current sexual abuse crisis; the pope Francis effect. While the emphasis will rest upon the social, economic, and political dimensions of Catholic history, the course will also address the aesthetic and cultural legacy of Catholicism including sacred architecture, music, and the arts, in elite and popular forms.

RELGST 1380 Religion Right Now: Media and Religious News in Contemporary America

It is apparent that Americans devote enormous media attention to the coverage of celebrities, movies and sports, but deal much less skillfully with news coverage of religion. Yet, a glance at any daily news source, print or digital, reveals the pervasiveness of news that involves religious beliefs, conflicts, and practices, and that requires basic knowledge of religious traditions. The purpose of this course is to develop student skills at reading and interpreting current news stories about religious topics in print and visual media (newspapers, journals, blogs, polls, and television) in order to increase understanding of important religious issues in the contemporary United States, including American coverage of international religious events and leaders. Instruction will include lecture, discussion, film, and small group exercises to report on current events.

RELGST 1402 Health and Religion

What is health, an absence of illness or something more? What is healing, a physical process or something that is not limited to the physical? In order to answer these seemingly basic questions, a host of assumptions about the body, its ideal state, and the kinds of changes to which it can or should be subjected are often implicit. Religious attitudes toward the body and the natural world have a tremendous impact on these assumptions. In this course, you will gain a better understanding of this impact by exploring the relationships between religion and health and seeing these relationships as part of a much larger web of human concerns such as nationalism, resistance to colonization, and gender politics. In order to facilitate cross-cultural comparison and understanding, this course is not organized around geography or history, but rather around the structure human body. After two introductory weeks, each three-week unit will consider a particular aspect of human health through cases drawn from a wide variety of religious contexts. This process is aimed at decentering Western narratives about health, healing, and the body while fostering a more global perspective.

RELGST 1403 Gender, Sexuality and Religion

When it comes to gender and sexuality, South Asia is subject to a variety of stereotypes. Some say it has always been home to rigid gender hierarchies and heteronormativity, while others claim that such restrictive norms were all but absent before the arrival of Islam or British colonialists. This course aims to help students understand the complex realities that these stereotypes miss. Our focus will be on marginalized genders and sexualities and their relationships to Hindu and Islamic traditions, although students will study other traditions in a group research project. Literary and historical sources from both traditions demonstrate a range of views on gender and sexuality before colonialism. Colonial law enforced much narrower range of gender and sexual expressions, but women and queer folks in South Asia and diaspora still find ways to flourish within existing cultural and religious frameworks.

RELGST 1405 Religion and Sexuality

Cross-listed with HIST 1672 and SOC 1405
From Puritan attempts to control women's sexuality to contemporary debates over reproductive rights and gay marriage, religion and sexuality have played a formative role in the political and social history of the United States. Though American political ideologies have often tried to situate both sexuality and religion as private matters that have no bearing on public life, the topics we discuss in this course reveal that quite the opposite is true. We take a chronological approach to our subjects, locating the intersections between religion and sexuality throughout the course of American history. In the process, we'll discover how competing ideas regarding religion and sexuality have transformed, and continue to transform, American politics, culture, and society.

RELGST 1417 Philosophy of Race & Religion

Cross-listed with PHIL 1317
The history of European religious thought (particularly Christianity) and the development of the idea of race are interwoven. While many devoutly religious people throughout history have, no doubt, been part of movements to oppose the horrific acts that occurred under colonization, end slavery, oppose Nazi anti-Semitism, or promote Civil Rights, for example, the very concept of separate races and the promotion of the ideal of white supremacy were in many ways innovations of European Christian theology. Indeed, religious arguments for white supremacy undergird many of the justifications for colonization and genocide, for slavery, and for Jim Crow laws and apartheid. As a result, despite important developments toward equality, racism remains ubiquitous and part of the underlying logic of the religious, political, and cultural milieu of American society, even if its effects often remain unnamed or are less explicit. This course is a philosophical exploration of the intersections of race, racism, and religious thought. It begins with an analysis of the philosophical and religious positions that solidified and promoted the idea of race, traces the entanglement of Western philosophy and Christian theology with racist political ideologies, and presents critical responses to race from African-American philosophers and liberation theologies. It ends by evaluating the continued effects of racism in American culture and religious thought and considers how we might both understand and respond to the epistemological, phenomenological, and existential effects of white supremacy in Western thought.

RELGST 1418 From Vodou to Santeria: Religions of the West African Diaspora

This course is an introduction to the study of West African Diaspora religions in the Americas. We define "diaspora" as the spread and dispersal of people of African descent, both forced and voluntary, through the slave trade, imperial and colonial displacements, and postcolonial migrations. In what form do African religious expressions exist in the African Diaspora communities? This course exposes students to the indigenous African foundations of the religious beliefs and religious practices of African communities living in the Diaspora. Students will receive historical, ethnographical, and anthropological approaches to grasp the essence of these non-doctrinaire and non-textual religions focused on a rich memory of African deities, rituals, morality and practices that have been passed from generation to generation. Because most of the Africans forced to migrate to the New World as slaves came from West Africa, this course will provide students with insights into the beliefs and practices of the "Yoruba Religions" also known as the "Afro-Atlantic religions" such as Santeria in Cuba; Vodou in Haiti; Shango in Trinidad and Grenada; Candomblan Brazil among others. Topics to be covered in this course will include sources of African religious beliefs, African theological notions about God and the Universe, African conceptions about the nature of the human being, witchcraft and the problem of Evil in African religious thought and practice, illness, health, death, and ancestor worship. Furthermore, we will also pay close attention to less known Afro-American cults and religions containing Amerindian mythology and shamanism that emphasize divination, healing, and spirit mediumship such as: the Maria Lionza cult in Venezuela, The Palo Monte in Cuba, and the Garifuna Dugu in Central America. A special feature of the course will include the analysis of "spirit possession" as a common denominator to African-derived religions as well as a relevant keystone in transmission dynamics. Finally, we will examine how these religions have survived cultural and ideological assault and have continued to provide spiritual resources for societies rooted in African cosmologies.

RELGST 1420 Religion and Race

This course examines the intersections of religion, race, and racism. Recently, scholars of religion have demonstrated that religious identities are often racialized as well. In this course, we will discover that religion and race are both modern categories rooted in post-enlightenment ideas about what it means to be human. We will see how the establishment of these religious and racial categories led to new hierarchies and inequalities. We will discuss how post-enlightenment thinkers linked religion and race, and how their ideas played a role in european imperialism. We will also investigate how the discipline of religious studies has developed its analytical tools with a racialized understanding of religion. The course will examine case studies in which religion has been racialized, and consider the political ramifications of these examples. In particular, we will think about the impact of white supremacy on black religion in the united states, the complicated relationship between antisemitism and islamophobia, and contemporary islamophobia in the us. Finally, we will explore the possibilities of anti-racism through faith-based scholarship and activism.

RELGST 1425 Popular Religion in America

Cross-listed with HIST 1676
Students will examine forms of religion that are called everyday, folk, local, or popular traditions, in contrast to "official" denominational categories that so often dominate the study of religion. With our focus on the western hemisphere, we will learn about new local practices that have emerged since 1492 among African, Caribbean, and native American peoples and to analyze how they represented responses to colonization, industrial capitalism, or globalization. Examples of popular traditions that we will study include: witchcraft; santeria, voodoo, saint's cults, miracles, pilgrimages, speaking in tongues, faith-healing and snake-handling. The course method is interdisciplinary, drawing upon anthropology, documentary film, history, religious studies, psychology, and sociology.

RELGST 1428 Religion and Sports

This course will provide an overview of research into the relationship of sports, spirituality, and religion. The approach will be cross-cultural with an eye to ancient and non-Western cultures. Informed by anthropological discourse on ritual theory and cultural performance, we will compare sports fandom to religious devotion, sporting venues to holy spaces, and athletes to revered religious figures. We will examine large sporting events such as the Olympics or the Super Bowl as ceremonial activities, rich with symbolism, rather than simply business or entertainment ventures. Seeking to understand the sense of connectedness and deeper meaning that sports can provide, we will also learn to appreciate how athletes can draw on religious belief or ritualized behavior to enhance their performance. After getting acquainted with academic discourse on the main terms of our inquiry-religion, sports, ritual theory, and cultural performance - we will move through an assortment of case studies. They will include sports and ritual among the ancient Greeks, Romans, Mesoamericans, and Native Americans. For the modern era we will consider sporting rituals in North America and Asia. We will also learn about beliefs in divine agency in modern sports, as well as instances where sports and religion have come into conflict.

RELGST 1440 Islam in Asia

Although Islamic traditions are generally associated with the Middle East, the vast majority of the world's Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region. Countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia are home to vibrant and diverse Islamic traditions. This course introduces students to Asian Muslim communities and their histories, tracing the development of Asian Islamic traditions from their early roots in the medieval period through the age of colonialism and until the current day. Students will learn about mystical Islamic practices (Sufism), Islamicate art and architecture, and the regional diversity of lived Islam. We will also examine contemporary conflicts around Islamic identity in Asia, particularly in China and Myanmar, and debates about the place of Islam in modern governments and public life. In the process, students will explore primary historical sources and contemporary studies to examine the role of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and culture in the study of diverse Muslim communities in Asia.

RELGST 1441 Islam and Race in the American Ummah

This course examines the relationship between Islam and racial identities in the United States. The course is divided into three units. For the first third we conduct a historical overview of the history of Muslims in the United States, beginning with enslaved Muslims. We then focus on histories of migration, both in terms of immigration to the United States, and migration within the United States, including the Great Migration. In the second third of the course, we examine case studies of specific Muslim American communities. Muslims are the most racially diverse religious group in the United States today. We examine racism, racial hierarchy, and contested conceptions of race, both external and internal to Muslim American communities. In the last third of the course, we focus on pertinent themes to the stories of Muslims in America, including gender and state surveillance. Each section of the course builds upon the last. The course's focus is on Muslims in the United States, but we also examine representations of Islam and Muslims, both historically and contemporarily, and the ways that specific tropes have been utilized by the state, from Thomas Jefferson's hypothetical Muslim citizen to the War on Terror. In addition to ethnic and racial diversity we examine intra-Muslim theological diversity. A last reoccurring theme throughout the course is the role of laws in the United States in defining racial identity, and the consequences that these laws have had for Muslims. The reading responses, due on Thursday, will help students synthesize the readings and tie them to the main themes of the course. Every Thursday in class we will examine a primary source. These primary sources range from the autobiography of Omar ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim, to excerpts from the Nation of Islam's newspaper Muhammad Speaks, to news articles written during the Iran hostage crisis. No specific prerequisites are required for this course.

RELGST 1445 Muslim Politics in Real Time

Media representations and news stories about the 'muslim world' often project a troubling ahistorical and sensationalist narrative about a region torn by violence, fanaticism and corruption. This information literacy-driven course will teach you how to place current events in the muslim world or involving people of muslim background in their historical context. It will also teach you to discern what constitutes a valid news source and how to find sources you can trust. We'll develop the skills necessary to make sense out of a news landscape that presents conflicting accounts of the same story and that fails to cover some stories altogether. You'll leave this course with a command over how to find news, how to read news, and then how to make sense of it through rigorous historical and social scientific analysis. To that end, you'll learn how to locate and evaluate scholarly sources with the same rigor as you do news sources. You'll be provided with a number of key aspects and developments in the history of the 'muslim world', so that even if you have no prior knowledge of islamic history you will be familiar with the key terms and themes. You will be introduced to the long history of problematic media portrayals of muslims and the muslim world and efforts to both critique and change these representations. We will work intensively with a librarian to master a set of basic information literacy skills at the start of the semester that we will grow and refine as the class progresses. The remainder of the class syllabus will be determined by the current news cycle, which will generate topics to be considered for further historical analysis.

RELGST 1449 Islam and Conflict in Global Context

Cross-listed with HIST 1749
This course will investigate political, social, and ideological conflict involving international political actors (both state and non-state) acting in the name of political Islam. Lecture topics within this course will take a global approach and will aim to explore the ways in which international conflict and violence is bound by the tenets and institutions of Islam. Meanwhile, the course also examines the ways that Islam is opportunistically invoked by non-Muslims to explain global conflict.

RELGST 1450 Islam, Law and Politics

Cross-listed with HIST 1794 and POLI SCI 1471
The emergence of modern Islamic political movements worldwide has had not only a profound impact on contemporary global geo-politics but has also triggered heated debates around the question of the compatibility of Islam with liberal democracy. This class investigates the "vexed" relation between Islam and politics, profoundly influenced by the experience of colonialism, and standing in complex relationship to concepts such as the modern nation-state, democracy, liberalism, or secularism. The class will combine empirically grounded studies the multiple facets of past and contemporary Muslim politics in Muslim-majority and minority contexts with a more theoretical investigation of modern Islamic political thought; here it will examine its intellectual origins, its arguments, the challenge it poses to its liberal counterparts, but also its conundrums and contradictions.

RELGST 1452 Hymns and HipHop—Sounds of Islam

Cross-listed with MUSIC 1366
From its inception, the Islamic tradition has placed a heavy emphasis on the word and on listening to the word, and has developed a rich and ambiguous relationship to sound. This course draws on theological, historical, anthropological and theoretical perspectives to investigate the this relationship. We discuss various scholarly approaches to the senses, the relationship between listening and power, and the changing conceptions of what it has meant to listen in Islamic culture. In particular, we discuss how new media technologies and popular culture have transformed sound in Muslim communities, and how the ongoing "war on terror" has refashioned Islamic soundscapes.

RELGST 1455 Islam in Europe

Since 9/11 Europe has become increasingly anxious about its multi-racial and multi-religious populations, the result of successive waves of non-European immigrants who have, since the end of WWII, made Europe their home. At the heart of these concerns is the question whether followers of the Muslim faith can successfully be integrated into a European society that identifies culturally as Judeo-Christian and defines its social order as secular.

The different public debates triggered by this anxiety center on the question of the legitimate limits of cultural difference within liberal democratic societies, thereby also reflecting a growing unpopularity of multicultural ideals. Political discourses stress the need for a robust defense of liberal values that migrant communities (especially Muslim communities) must accept. In order to achieve that, various governmental techniques have been deployed, which are now considered as an essential part of European counter-terrorist strategies, along with security policies and stricter migration controls. Interestingly, many of these government techniques involve gender and sexual politics, which are at the heart of policies and discourses around integration and multiculturalism.

The course will look critically at these various developments through an interdisciplinary approach that combines anthropological studies with readings from political and social theory, feminist and queer studies in order to think about the issues at stake around Islam, religious pluralism and secular governance in Europe. As additional course material, the class will draw on a variety of audio-visual material, such as fiction films, documentaries, or youtube clips.

RELGST 1456 Islam in Asia

RELGST 1458 Women and Islam in Asia

This course is a comprehensive engagement with Islamic perspectives on women with a specific focus on the debates about woman's role and status in Muslim societies. Students will learn how historical, religious, socio-economic and political factors influence the lives and experiences of Muslim women. A variety of source materials (the foundational texts of Islam, historical and ethnographic accounts, women's and gender studies scholarship) will serve as the framework for lectures. Students will be introduced to women's religious lives and a variety of women's issues as they are reported and represented in the works written by women themselves and scholars chronicling women's religious experiences. We will begin with an overview of the history and context of the emergence of Islam from a gendered perspective. We will explore differing interpretations of the core Islamic texts concerning women, and the relationship between men and women: who speaks about and for women in Islam? In the second part of the course we will discuss women's religious experiences in Asia, which will serve as a focus for our case study. Students will examine the interrelationship between women and religion with special emphasis on the ways in which the practices of religion in women's daily lives impact contemporary Asia. All readings will be in English. No prior course work is required.

RELGST 1475 Religious Diversity

Cross-listed with HIST 1733, SOC 1415, and JS 1475
What is the best way to accommodate religious and cultural diversity within a nation-state and in civil society? How should individual rights to practice religion be balanced with communal needs? Should freedom from religion be protected as much or more than freedom of religion? These are pressing contemporary issues in many countries, including the United States, but issues of religious diversity and questions of whether and how to tolerate religious minorities have a long history. In this course, we will examine the toleration of minority religions in particular historical settings, and the issues and problems (both doctrinal and social/political) that societies grappled with as they confronted diverse religious landscapes. We will also use these historical precedents as a lens to examine contemporary examples of religious pluralism, diversity, and conflict. Case studies will mainly be drawn from pre-modern Europe and modern Europe and North America, but we will also look at Mughal and modern India and discuss religion in pre-modern China.

RELGST 1500 Religion in India

Cross-listed with HIST 1757
Few countries can boast such an extensive and diverse religious heritage as can India. It is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, home to a large Muslim community, as well as to small, but ancient, communities of Syrian Christians, Parsis, and Jews. The course gives a brief historical overview of these religious traditions, introduces students to basic concepts related to each of them, and illustrates their rich practices through primary and secondary readings, films, art, and music.

RELGST 1511 Yoga: Of Loincloths and Lululemon

Is yoga culturally appropriative? This question and others like it have produced heated debate on college campuses and beyond. It is the aim of this course to add nuance to these popular debates by exploring the politically fraught history of yoga. Under the British Empire, Hindu religious reform and physical culture intertwined, leading to the development and spread of modern postural yoga as a form of anti-imperial resistance. In the early twentieth century, Indian proponents of yoga worked as cultural ambassadors and entrepreneurs, spreading their practices to the West. In postcolonial India, yoga often shows up in clinical settings as an inexpensive and culturally familiar alternative to biomedicine, but has also served as a venue for some religious militants to assert their masculinity through physical fitness. Meanwhile, by the late twentieth century, yoga became a booming industry in the West and was marketed, especially to middle-class women, as an "exotic" lifestyle commodity at times.

RELGST 1519 Religion, Nature and the Environment

When is religion good for the environment? When is it not? In this course, students will become acquainted with how religious traditions throughout the world have addressed specific ecological problems. They will explore ways in which religious institutions are an important organizational hub in struggles for environmental justice. They will compare the structural features shared by environmentalism and religiosity, both of which are interested in making meaning of the world by appealing to an ultimate authority, such as God or Nature; and in forming identities and building communities by promoting guidelines, norms, and ritualized behaviors. The very construction of Nature as a concept, and its reverence in the context of the sustainability movement, can be informed by theoretical discourse from the field of Religious Studies. After a survey of approaches to the natural world in major religious traditions, students will focus on themes such as garden spiritualties, gendered Nature reverence, and eco-justice. They will also acquire the skills to assess the scripturally inspired indifference-or even antagonism-to environmental science, and the long shadow it has cast on the global economy.

RELGST 1520 Buddhism Along the Silk Road

Cross-listed with HAA 1692 and HIST 1478
This class serves as an introduction to Buddhism from its origins through the seventh century CE as it moved along the Silk Road, the ancient EurAsian trading network that is considered one of the earliest and most important super highways of trade and culture. Concomitantly, it serves as an introduction to the silk road as the scenario for contact and exchange. The emphasis is on religious praxis, the actors and places that transformed Buddhism and were transformed by it. We will examine archaeological remains and art and discuss how they complement or sometimes contradict textually-based historical narratives. Through the examination of four case studies we will discuss questions related to religious interaction as embodied in material culture and analyze it in context.

RELGST 1521 Asian Religion Perspectives on Bioethics

The preservation and enhancement of health and well-being has confronted us with ethical questions since the dawn of culture. The last fifty years, however, have seen an unprecedented development of medical sciences and biotechnology. The discipline of bioethics emerged as a response to both new ethical dilemmas, and others with a much longer history as well. While Christian theological works on issues like euthanasia and organ transplants had served as the basis for the young discipline of bioethics, Asian religions have only much more recently started to participate in the conversation. This course is an invitation to participate in history in the making as this course class introduces bioethics vis-à-vis four of the major Asian religious traditions. It presupposes no previous knowledge of bioethics and thus briefly introduces the basics before presenting the Asian counterpart. This is a comparative course whose main goal is to analyze and contextualize different religious perspectives on bioethical issues. The first part of the course discusses the development of bioethics, its principles and its historical relationship with religions in general in the "West," China and India. The second part focuses on Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist ethical perspectives on the body, health and disease, and life and death. The third part discusses specific bioethical issues: euthanasia, abortion, organ donation and transplantation, and cognitive enhancement, from the perspective of Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian and Daoist traditions. The choice of these dominant topics obeys to the availability of sources that allows us to do a comparative analysis that would not be possible with other more recent issues. We approach these issues through lectures and discussion of academic texts, news, documentaries and films, which inform us about cultural and historical context, beliefs, practices, and personal experience. In the process we expect to learn how non-western religious traditions are responding to the challenges of controversial technologies and practices, and contributing to a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be human and enduring existential riddles like suffering and flourishing.

RELGST 1550 East Asian Buddhism

Cross-listed with HIST 1475
The transmission of Buddhism to East Asia was a momentous development in the history of world cultures and religions. Not only did it precipitate major changes in the cultures of China, Korea and Japan, it also was attended by transformations within Buddhism itself. Beginning with an introduction to the basic concepts of Buddhism, this course examines the major doctrinal, meditative, devotional, and institutional traditions and themes within Chinese and Japanese Buddhism in historical perspective. Particular attention is paid to the problems of transmission of thought and practices from one culture to another and to the ways in which Buddhism changed to meet those challenges and make itself relevant to the members of East Asian societies. We strive to develop an awareness of how Chinese and Japanese Buddhism interacted with and helped to shape East Asian history as well as to cultivate sensitivity to and appreciation of East Asian Buddhism as a contribution to our understanding of the human experience.

RELGST 1552 Buddhist Meditative Traditions

Cross-listed with HIST 1740
Buddhist meditation is perhaps the best known of all Buddhist practices particularly in Western countries. In both Asia and the West, it has been popularized in recent times as a technique that can be used for such secular purposes as reducing stress and managing eating disorders. But what is Buddhist meditation? How it is practiced in its traditional contexts? What are the doctrinal foundations of meditation practices? What are the traditional purposes of practicing Buddhist meditation? What are the various types of meditation explained in Buddhist texts? How this practice evolved over time in different geographical regions in Asia? What are the roles of Buddhist or state institutions in shaping meditation practices? Focusing on these questions, this course examines the breath of Buddhist meditation practices and their historical evolution and transmission in Asian Buddhist countries. The course covers the role of meditation in early Indian Buddhism, the development of different types of meditation in Theravadan Buddhist countries, the emergence of the Chan school of meditation in China and its transmission to Japan (Zen), the appropriation of tantra to Buddhist practices in Tibetan Buddhism, and the modernization of Buddhist meditational practices during the colonial period. The course is taught using classical Buddhist texts and meditational manuals in translation, secondary studies, testimonials and films. In the process, we expect to enhance our familiarity with religious practices and our understanding of the human experience.

RELGST 1558 Buddhism and Psychology

This course is divided into four thematic parts. The first part introduces basic knowledge on Buddhism. It then shows how the encounter between Buddhism and psychology has occurred in the wider context of Buddhist modernism, which has involved attempts by Buddhist reformers, psychologists, and neuroscientists to demythologize Buddhism to show how it can be understood as complementing modern empirical science. Part two offers concrete examples of Buddhist modernism by illustrating how Buddhist contemplative practices and doctrines such as sati have been reinterpreted and reformulated in modern psychology. Part three examines how a Japanese Zen practitioner's presentation of Zen compares with psychotherapeutic perspectives on it. Finally, in part four, a Buddhist-inspired psychotherapy widely used in Japan is examined to show how the reformulation of Buddhism to achieve psychotherapeutic goals has occurred in modern times in East Asia, albeit in a way that is distinctive from Buddhist-inspired psychotherapeutic practices in the west.

RELGST 1560 Religion and Healing in China

Cross-listed with HIST 1476
This course examines the major traditions and themes that constitute religion in China. The origins and development of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, popular and family religion, and religion and the state are presented within an overall historical framework. As China becomes more and more central to the world's modern commodity culture, some have predicted a decline in traditional religious values and practices. In fact, the reverse is true: from Taiwan and Hong Kong through mainland China, increasing prosperity is resulting in an increased "investment" in religion. In addition to the study of religious ideas, practices, and institutions in premodern China, the course ends by looking at contemporary beliefs and practices and issues of politics, class, and gender. Our purpose is to gain some exposure to Chinese religious thought and practice, to identify dominant themes underlying Chinese values and behavior, and to explore the syncretic nature of religion in China as each tradition finds expression in and comes to influence other aspects of Chinese religion and culture. In this way, we hope to come to understand the critical role played by the various traditions in the unfolding of Chinese history and in the formation of the Chinese view of the world.

RELGST 1570 Religion in Japan

Cross-listed with HIST 1477 and JPNSE 1570
This course serves as a historical, doctrinal and practical introduction to the major religious traditions of Japan both classical and modern-day.

RELGST 1572 Popular Religion in a Changing Japan

Cross-listed with HIST 1741
This seminar, through a thematic treatment of popular and civil religion, informed by religious and cultural history, looks at the process through which religion participates in shaping and reshaping worldviews, behaviors, and practices in modern Japan.

RELGST 1575 Law and Medicine in Asian Religions

This course introduces the intersections between law, religion, and medicine in East Asia. It will start with a theoretical orientation on the interaction between law and religion. In order to engage in these discussions in a global context, we will examine the manifestation of legal orientalism in China, Buddhist jurisdiction in Sri Lanka and Burma, religious governance in Tibet, as well as clerical immunity and sanctuary in medieval Europe. Next, students will learn to analyze cases illustrating the roles law has played in regulating religious and medical practices in East Asia. The cases we will examine span a long historical period ranging from the medieval to modern and the contemporary. For medicine and medical practices, the topics we will cover range from acupuncture, the use of wild animal in traditional medicine, the commercialization and regulation of caterpillar fungus, and the social, economic, and religious implications of the circulation of generic drug. To understand how law has shaped religious practices in East Asia, we will examine the infrastructure of legal practices and their applications in dealing with religious offenders. In particular, we will discuss underground jurisdiction, the history of forensic practices, criminal procedures, capital punishment, as well as prosecution of religious practitioners in the imperial and contemporary times. By the end of this course, students are expected to become competent in critically analyzing complex issues on law, medicine, and religion in East Asia for a more balanced understanding of these issues in the global context for personal and professional growth.

RELGST 1600 Asian-American Religion

Asian Americans have had a substantial impact on the cultural landscape of the United States despite facing distinctive forms of marginalization. Religious institutions have served important roles for Asian American communities, providing a respite from outside prejudices, an opportunity to build community, and a platform for social and political action. Nevertheless, Asian American religious spaces can be marked by a number of tensions, including intergenerational conflict and changing gender hierarchies. Drawing primarily on ethnographic literature, this course examines these issues in contemporary South, East, and Southeast Asian American religious communities. As a culminating project, students will explore local Asian American religious communities through an ethnographic project of their own.

RELGST 1610 Myth, Symbol Ritual

Cross-listed with ANTH 1776
Are myths only a thing of the past, or are there contemporary 'myths' that we live by? To what extent are football games and shopping trips "rituals"? How do plants and animals, the cosmos and the human body, or things we associate with bad luck or good health, function as symbols? This course offers a look at how myths, symbols and rituals, in their traditional and contemporary garb, constantly renew themselves as a way for different cultures to give significance to human life. By understanding these three basic forms of human expression we can gain understanding of a wide range of social and religious phenomena. We start with comparative exploration of myths on the origin of the world, humanity, and the gods, and with such rituals as rites of passage, festivals, and pilgrimages, as well as the theories of these expressions and their significance. The course then moves to observations of and reflections on the role of myth, symbol, and ritual in contemporary life, and their relation to such forms of human expression as literature, art, film and our own dreams.

RELGST 1622 Body Size Around the Globe

Cross-listed with JS 1622 and GSWS 1625
This course will introduce students to the complex interplay between body size, culture, religion, and social perception. We will discuss basic concepts within the critical research of body size, such as fat stigma, BMI, the 'obesity epidemic' and more, while tracing the intersections between gender ideologies, cultural contexts, medical perspectives, and religious beliefs. Our conversations will examine the following questions: How do cultures around the globe construct a 'correct' and healthy body size? How do people of various gender, racial, and sexual identities experience living in bigger bodies, and how does this change depending on national, religious, regional, and cultural contexts? Can weight loss and diets relieve stigma? How do current understandings of fat stigma and fat acceptance activist groups change the discourse? Throughout the course, students will be exposed to a variety of questions and theoretical perspectives from religious studies, fat studies, and the sociology and anthropology of body size.

RELGST 1644 Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Middle Ages

Cross-listed with HIST 1768 and JS 1644
Was the world of Europe and the Middle East before the Enlightenment a period of unending religious conflict and intolerance? Were Jews the victims of severe persecution and violence everywhere during this period? Did Christians and Muslims engage in unceasing religious wars? The answer to all three of these questions is no. While the Middle Ages were a period of conflict and competition between the three major western religious groups, they were also a time of coexistence and cooperation. This class shifts from extreme dichotomies and simplistic stereotypes to deeply examine the period in all of its complexity: what were the theological, political, and legal contexts in which Christians, Muslims, and Jews interacted in both Christian Europe and the Muslim world? How did these deeply religious societies organize themselves to tolerate the religious "Other"? When and why did toleration break down and lead to expulsion, forced conversion, or violence? What kinds of cross-cultural exchanges and cooperation take place in economic, cultural, intellectual, and social life? We will also look at new ideas of toleration (and intolerance) that emerged at the end of the Middle Ages and examine aspects of inter-religious encounters and dialogues today. We will discuss not only the significance of Jewish-Christian-Muslim interactions in the Middle Ages but also assess these encounters as a case study in the broader history of religious diversity, pluralism, and conflict.

RELGST 1652 Antisemitism, Race, & Gender

Cross-listed with JS 1652
This class on Antisemitism, Race and Gender investigates the similarities between gendered antisemitic representations of Jews and other forms of racism and sectarianism in Europe and America from the Middle Ages onwards. This interdisciplinary class takes a broad and deep approach to its subject matter, tracing the long history of antisemitism and racism; from obsessions with blood purity in early modern Spain and the rise of the Atlantic slave trade to scientific racism, imperialism, and social Darwinism in the nineteenth century. The class ends with a focus on the survival of racism into the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, contemporary Islamophobia and the recent resurgence of antisemitism in North America. The prominent role of gender in antisemitic representations of Jews, and in racist iconography more broadly, will be foregrounded throughout. The visual nature of antisemitism and racism is a major theme of this class and in-class discussions would be structured around cartoons, woodcuts, and posters that I would present to the students. As the class progresses, I encourage students to engage in their own interpretations of visual material and students are introduced to the study of history using material culture as a source material - an essential skill for anyone studying gender and race. This class does not aim to give students a complete history of antisemitism - that would almost certainly be impossible to achieve in just 15 weeks. What the class does aim to do, though, is to show how anti-Black racism, white supremacy and misogyny can and should be understood as having a shared history with antisemitism. The hatred and extremism that has come more to the fore in American life since 2016 has anti-Jewish roots. This means that the class has a western-centric focus, not because I think "the West" is more important than anywhere else, but because we all currently live in a western country and in this class we are going to trace the development of a specific and very negative strand of western culture. Sections (i) through (iii) are arranged chronologically, to give an overview of the historical roots and development of antisemitism. Having acquired this historical understanding, students will then engage, sections (iv) and (v), in two extended (and controversial!) case studies of contemporary antisemitism. Classes will be a mixture of lectures and discussions of the assigned readings.

RELGST 1681 Inventing Israel—Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Post-Zionism

Cross-listed with HIST 1712 and JS 1681
In this course, we will study the origins and development of Zionism as a form of modern Jewish nationalism, the emergence of different Zionist ideological streams, and non-Zionist, anti-Zionist, and post-Zionist views of Jews and non-Jews. We will also explore Zionism as a case study of relations of religion and nationalism in modernity. This course is an opportunity to carefully study and to contextualize writings and ideas of religious and political thinkers that have been both influential and controversial. The goal is to offer students historical background to ideas and issues of contemporary importance as well as skills in interpretation and contextualization of complex texts that continue to inform public discourse.

RELGST 1710 Perspectives on Religion

Cross-listed with ANTH 1774
A serious introduction to the study of religion is undertaken by reviewing the efforts and insights of the principal scholars in the field in the modern period.

RELGST 1715 Feeding the Soul: Food, Gender and Religion

Food is sustenance and absolutely essential to life. But food is never simply about nutrition. Because it is fundamental to the human experience, food is also a medium for the expression of culture and social identity. Moreover, food relays complex social messages about gender, sexuality, and family. Consequently, food is also a means for expressing the social and symbolic use of power and control in which social inequalities are expressed in culinary forms. This course will examine food from the vantage point of gendered and religious systems of production, distribution, and consumption as we consider: How does your food come to your table (or not) and what are the political implications of personal tastes?

RELGST 1720 Religion and Culture

Religion is thought, felt, and acted out in social and cultural contexts. The relationship between religion and culture is the focus of the course. The objectives are to understand religion wherever and whenever found and to understand the anthropological approach in the cross-cultural study of religion. Religious belief, ritual, myth, dogma and religious specialists in industrial and non-industrial societies are compared.

RELGST 1722 Healing, Shamanism, and Spirit Possession

Anthropological approaches to the study of religion have classically defined shamanism as a spiritual practice opposed to spirit possession. While shamanism is centered on the claims of individuals to exit their bodies and venture into other realms of consciousness and reality, spirit possession would chart the opposite movement, where other spiritual beings take over or are invited into a human host. Both of these activities however, involve fusing or blurring the normal states and boundaries of body, personhood and consciousness, in interaction with other supernatural beings. Both are also routine religious experiences and practices in many parts of the world, past and present. Notwithstanding, these phenomena have been mistakenly associated with mental disorder by sociocultural anthropologists and psychologists in the past. At this point, however, the argument that shamanism and spiritual possession are not a function of mental illness has prevailed. Today, there is no doubt that the impact of these practices in the social life of its practitioners is multiple and complex. Despite that fact, this course will focus on the therapeutic aspects of these traditions. Far from being "primitive" or purely "exotic" phenomena, we will explore how these living practices relate to great civilizations, as part of regional, national, and global ideologies of religion and culture. More precisely, we will examine the role of traditional medicine based on cross-cultural ethnographies. We will explore, for example, how indigenous groups throughout the Americas diagnose and treat folk illness and Western defined diseases with variety of methods. Culturally defined illness such as soul loss, evil eye, witchcraft and other psychosomatic afflictions will be explored through lecture, readings and films. We will examine the use of art, music and ritual as well as psychotropic plants as part of the very heart of many indigenous cultural traditions. That said, this course will also provide an opportunity to understand why these practices have been reawakened not only by modern anthropological inquiry, but also by multidisciplinary interest in states of consciousness and mechanisms of therapy, and by popular interest in alternative forms of spirituality.

RELGST 1725 Death in the Healthcare Professions

Cross-listed with HPS 1623
The American culture of the 20th and 21st centuries has been called, not death-defying, but death-denying. It is often said that America is the only place in the world that treats death as optional. Once upon a time, we couldn't have open, public conversations about breast cancer, because the word could not be uttered aloud. In many places, it is just as hard today to have an open, public conversation about death and dying. This phenomenon is not just a social more; it affects the practice of many professions and entire segments of our economy and society. This course will explore our individual and cultural reactions to mortality, the ways in which dying in today's America is different from dying throughout history or elsewhere in the world, and the responses of a variety of professions, both within the field of healthcare and beyond, to their encounters with people in the various stages of dying. Students will be asked, at turns, to be scientific, philosophical, clinical, analytical, and emotional in encountering the concepts and material presented here. This should be a true interdisciplinary experience.

RELGST 1726 Healing and Humanity

Medical ethics courses (such as Pitt's "Morality and Medicine") focus on critical analysis of societal questions such as abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, allocation of scarce resources such as organs for transplant, and the opioid crisis. There is no doubt these questions need to be addressed. However, I contend there is a "micro-ethics" of medicine thousands of individual interactions between healers (meaning any persons involved in delivering some part of a person's healthcare) and the people they care for. Their words, actions, demeanor, and the built environment in which they work can all contribute to, or detract from, the ultimate well-being and humanity of the person receiving the care. In this course, we will discuss these "micro-ethics" in detail, beginning with the religious and philosophical underpinnings of what it means to be well and what it means to be human. We will then look at how two individuals in relationship can work towards healing through listening, questioning, speaking, and communicating non-verbally. We will examine how placing those individuals in the context of a system of overlapping relationships affects their interaction. We will assess the impact of different factors about the healer, the person seeking healing, and their shared environment that detract from their relationship. Finally, we will propose and critique ways of strengthening that relationship both within the existing environment of the US healthcare system in 20 and by altering that environment.

RELGST 1762 Guide for the Perplexed

Cross-listed with PHIL 1762 and JS 1762
This course will study the guide of the perplexed by the great Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides (1138-1204). It will give special attention to the religious language and arguments for the existence of god in the text, and to Maimonides teachings on religious experience, revelation and his views on human perfection and immortality.

RELGST 1802 ReligYinz: Researching Religion in Pittsburgh

In this course, students will get a taste (sometimes literally) of lived, religious diversity in the city of Pittsburgh. In this experiential course, students will have a chance to visit some of the sites that Pittsburghers have made sacred, and learn more about the lives of religious Pittsburghers, past and present. In the process, students will learn about scholarly concepts like "urban religion," "lived religion," and "material religion," and how to apply those ideas to the sacred spaces, objects, foods, and rituals of Pittsburgh.

RELGST 1803 Capstone Seminar

The senior thesis capstone seminar required of all graduating majors is offered annually in the Fall Term and is taught by rotating faculty with a different theme each year. Students research, write, and present a project of their own choosing based on the annual theme under the supervision of the seminar instructor and a research advisor from among our faculty. Permission of the DUS is required.

RELGST 1900 Internship

A variety of projects may be undertaken by students under the close supervision of a senior faculty member.

RELGST 1901 Independent Study

A variety of individual reading and research projects may be undertaken by students under the close supervision of a senior faculty member.

RELGST 1902 Directed Study—Undergraduate

Students may undertake a variety of individual reading or research projects under the close supervision of a senior faculty member. Regular meetings are required.

RELGST 1904 Undergraduate Research Assistant

Students participate in a faculty member's current research project as a research assistant under the guidance of the faculty member. The student is given training in research methods. 1-4 credits available depending on number of hours per week worked. Credits earned will be S/N only. Permission of the department (DUS) and the faculty member is required.

RELGST 1905 Undergraduate Teaching Assistant

Students serve as an undergraduate teaching assistant in religious studies courses under the supervision of a faculty member. 1-4 credits available depending on number of hours per week worked. Credits earned will be s/n only. Permission of the department (DUS) and the faculty member is required.