Non-Western

This course will provide students with useful tools for reading about, thinking about, or otherwise engaging with Islam and Muslims. It is first a survey of important topics in the study of the religion of Islam, including the Qur’an and the Prophet, the role of Islamic mysticism, Islam and the state, Islamic law, and Islamic theories of family and person. We also discuss Orientalism and the western study of Islam, so that we can understand ourselves as students of the Islamic tradition. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

An introduction to China’s three major religions—Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism—through the reading of classic texts. Also, a look at important elements in Chinese folk religion: ancestor worship, temples, heavens and hells, and forms of divination. Special attention will be paid to the importance of government in Chinese religious thought and to continuity and change in the history of Chinese religion. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

In all the attention focused on Islam at present, a newspaper reader could be forgiven for supposing that between Muhammad and Usamah bin Laden, there has been no change in Islam. This course surveys developments in Islamic religious history, thought, and practice since 1800, with special emphasis on topics of current controversy, including the status of women, the nature of government, and the place of Islamic law. Readings will be mostly from primary texts written by contemporary Muslims, both modernists and Islamists. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

This course examines basic theoretical and methodological questions about the study of religion. We begin with several definitions and approaches to religion emerging from Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Cognitive science, to Comparative Religion. Next we explore the formation of World Religions, the emergence of New Religious Movements, and the problematic definitions of Asian religions. We also explore theoretical issues regarding ritual, mythology, sacred time and scared space, the body and the cosmos. DIST: TMV or INT; WCult: NW.

The Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad are the source and center of Islam. In this course we will consider the form and content of the Qur’an and the form and content of various accounts of the Prophet’s life: the hadith or anecdotes of the Prophet’s life, the sirah, or biography of Muhammad, and the maghazi, or accounts of the Prophet’s battles and campaigns. Topics covered include the aural Qur’an, the dating of the Qur’an and the hadith, diverse images of the Prophet, and “what can we know about the life of Muhammad?” Desirable background: A College course on Islamic history, culture, or society, including Religion 8 and Religion 16. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

This course will focus in some depth on a particular aspect of religion in India—for example, a particular religion, sect, time period, body of literature, type of religion, or religious movement. The topic will change with each offering, and students may take the course more than once. Sample topics include: “Gods, Demons, and Monkeys: The Ramayana Epic of India,” “Women In Indian Religions,” and “Modern Hinduism.” Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

This course will examine the relationship between women, monasticism, and Buddhism through an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. We will begin in ancient India by examining the founding of the Order of Nuns; the monastic lives, spiritual poetry, and struggles of early Buddhist nuns; and the decline and death of the nuns’ order in India. Then we’ll move on to explore a wide range of topics from throughout the Buddhist world—such as the economic and political power of the nuns’ order in parts of East Asia; the death of the nuns’ order and the phenomenon of low-status “unofficial” nuns throughout much of Southeast Asia; the power of yoginis and other non-monastic spiritual roles for women in Tibet; the increasing phenomenon of Western nuns; and the feminist possibilities (or impossibilities) inherent in Buddhist doctrine. The term will conclude with a sustained look at the contemporary global movement to re-establish the valid ordination lineage for nuns throughout the world—a movement in which the voices arguing “for” and “against” are not always what one might presume them to be. Dist: INT; WCult: NW.

This course will use both elite and popular Hindu religious texts in conjunction with contemporary sociological and anthropological accounts, scholarly analyses, visual art, and film to explore the diverse identities and roles of India’s many goddesses, both ancient and modern. Special emphasis will also be given to the relationship between goddesses and women. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

A study of the advent of Buddhism in China, its accommodating yet transforming response to Chinese traditions and values, the emergence of the authentically Chinese schools of T’ien-T’ai, Hua-yen, Ch’an, and Pure Land Buddhism, and the enduring Buddhist heritage of China. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.

In this course students will read and discuss the latest research on one of the religions of East Asia, or a particular sect, movement, or time period in the history of East Asian religions. The topic will change with each offering. Thus, students may take this course more than once. Sample topics include: “Literature and Religion in China,” “Politics and Religion in China,” and “The Body in Japanese Religion.” Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.