Courses
Welcome! Explore our Spring 2021 offerings below, and click the course title to register in MyPlan.
A Life Worth Living
RELIG 101
5 credits, I&S
MTWTh 10:30 – 11:20 pm
James K. Wellman
Discover a course about love, life, and finding your groove: What makes a life worth living? Using religious and humanistic traditions, we create meaning; we develop ethical traditions that enable a thriving social order. We study the resources in our lives, which mobilize energy to drive our dreams. Rites of passage, from the indigenous to the post-modern, empower us to navigate our journeys. Each student will ask, “What makes life worth living?” Each will find the tools to navigate our global market to fashion a flourishing life. A life worth living, therefore, masters meaning, morals, and the resources that create a life that uplifts, delights, and loves the world.
Yoga: Past and Present
RELIG 120 / CHID 120
5 credits, I&S / VLPA / DIV
Times TBA
Christian Novetzke
Studies yoga and its history, practice, literature, and politics. From the ancient past to modern yoga, studies essential texts and ideas, as well as the effects of class, religion, gender, nationalism, development, Marxism, colonialism, and physical culture on yoga.
History of Biblical Interpretation
RELIG 306 / NEAR E 306
3 credits, I&S / VLPA
MW 1:30 – 2:50 pm
Gary Martin
Traces Biblical interpretation and translation technique from the earliest translations of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to the various historical literary, deconstructionist, and holistic strategies of more recent times. Adopts a “hands-on” approach to the material and explores various hermeneutics by applying them in class.
Gender, Sex, and Religion (334)
RELIG 334 / GWSS 334
5 credits, I&S / DIV
TTh 3:30 – 5:20 pm
Mika Ahuvia
The Bible and its interpreters invented the gender categories and hierarchies that readers take for granted. Employs academic approaches that illuminate the construction of those categories and explores the debates within Judaism and Christianity as well as within academia today about gender, sex, sexuality, and religion.
Gender, Sex, and Religion (534)
RELIG 534 / GWSS 534
5 credits, I&S / DIV
TTh 3:30 – 5:20 pm
Mika Ahuvia
Delves more deeply into foundational texts of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity, while paying closer attention to historiographic trends in the field of gender and feminist studies of religion. With JSIS C 334/GWSS 334
Hinduism
RELIG 354
5 credits, I&S
MW 1:30pm – 3:20pm
Heidi Pauwels
Varieties of Hindu religious practice; the diverse patterns of religious thought and action among contemporary Hindus. Includes ritual behavior, village Hinduism, tantrism, sadhus, yoga, sects, the major gods and their mythologies, religious art, and the adjustments of Hinduism to modernity.
Theories in the Study of Religion
RELIG 380 / CHID 380 / ISS 380
5 credits, I&S
Times TBA
James K. Wellman
Provides a variety of approaches to the study of religion centered on examining the relationship between religion and modernity in the tradition of post-enlightenment, Euro-American scholarship. Examines theories of religion across disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, political theology, and Freudian psycho-analytical theory.
Greek and Roman Religion
RELIG 430 / CLAS 445
5 credits, I&S / VLPA
MW 10:30 – 12:20 pm
Alexander Hollmann
Religion in the social life of the Greeks and Romans, with emphasis placed on their public rituals and festivals. Attention is given to the priesthoods, personal piety, rituals of purification and healing, and the conflict of religions in the early Roman Empire. Many lectures illustrated by slides.
Seminar: Christianity in Roman Egypt
RELIG 472
5 credits, I&S / W
MW 10:30 – 12:20 pm
Michael Williams
Colloquium in Comparative Religion
RELIG 598
1 credit
M 5:30 – 7:50 pm
James K. Wellman
Required colloquium for graduate students in comparative religion program. Introduction to faculty research and to major methods and disciplines in the study of religion.