Courses

From its beginnings, Christianity has been concerned with the making of new persons and worlds: the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It has also maintained a tight relationship to power, empire, and the making of modernity. In this course we will investigate this relationship within the context of colonial projects in the Americas, Africa, India, and the Pacific. We will trace the making of modern selves from Columbus to the abolition (and remainders) of slavery, and from the arrival of Cook in the Sandwich Islands to the journals of missionaries and the contemporary fight for Hawaiian sovereignty.

How do we imagine the relationship between religion and science? Are they at odds, in harmony, or different ways of imagining ourselves, our world, and our futures? This course explores historical understandings of religious and scientific thought, and asks how the two came to be separated in the modern world. We use the imagination to explore the power dynamics and moral judgments embedded in assumptions about matter, nature, bodies, persons, and progress. We draw on literature, philosophy, and theology to consider questions about authority, ethics, and existential hope, focusing on climate crisis, AI and personhood, racism, and the possibility of alternative futures. Argument & Inquiry

For nearly two thousand years, Christians have considered Jesus the unique, miracle-working Son of God who came to earth to save humanity from its sins. But does this picture hold up to historical scrutiny? Who do historians think Jesus was? This seminar introduces the tools of historical inquiry that scholars use to reconstruct Jesus's original message. It also surveys how Americans in different cultural contexts have imagined Jesus, from the liberating Christ of Black theology, to the eastern sage and hippie of the 1960s, to the rabbi who never intended a non-Jewish movement.

The Qur'an is best known as the sacred text of Islam, but it is also one of the most widely read, dynamic, and influential texts in human history. It is not every text that can compel people to regard it as divine revelation. In fact, Muslims consider the Qur'an's literary composition a miracle. This course explores the literary style and structure of the Qur'an through close reading of its English translation. It also introduces students to the history of the Qur'an and its significance in Muslims' everyday lives. No background knowledge is assumed; nor is this an introduction to Islam.

The past is a strong presence in Ireland.  People live with Iron Age tombs in their backyards and Irish language place names rehearse ancient epics.  Places resound with collective memory as they have been storied through myth, literature, and folklore.  So too are Irish political identities made and remade through evocations and practices of sacred place. This course explores the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, Celtic Revival spiritualizations of the landscape, and materials by and about “New Irish” communities. The course centers place-based learning: curated experiences at archaeological sites, historical walking tours of Galway and Dublin, and an immersive week in the politically charged cityscape of Belfast.

Historically, yoga’s roots can be traced as far back as 1500 BCE. As for “religion,” in the modern period, yoga has largely been unyoked from it. But the Sanskrit root yuj means to “add,” “join,” or “unite”—and in Indian philosophy and practice it has long been: a method of devotion; a way to “yoke” the body/mind; a means to unite with Ultimate Reality; a form of concentration and meditation. Over time, it has been medicalized into a form of public health. This course will concentrate on texts, images, and cultures old and new. Come prepared to wear loose clothing!

This course introduces students to Western Christianity by studying Christian movements, theologies, communities, eschatologies, and sensibilities through the lens of marriage, sexual revolutions, and counter revolutions. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we will engage with scholarship from media theory, history, anthropology, sociology, and literary studies to consider the boundaries of “Christian traditions” and the transformation of religious and sexual cultures. While “sexuality” and “religion” are often imagined as oppositional social forces, this course will introduce students to a rich and complex range of practices, modes of embodiment, and territories of socio-cultural negotiation in which religion and sexuality are entangled, imagined, and co-constituted. 

Why do religious people do violence—in their words and deeds, against themselves and others? Is violence a distortion of real religion? Is it the inevitable result of certain beliefs? Or are these the wrong questions? This course considers several case studies of religious violence drawn from different traditions and time periods, including ancient paganism, early Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so-called cults. Our approach will be historical, literary, and comparative. We will seek to understand how violence can be meaningful as a religious act, and how adherents of the same religious tradition can have widely diverse views on violence and nonviolence.

This course introduces students to the history of the South and East Asian religious ethic of nonviolence (ahi?sa). We will discuss nonviolence and vegetarianism in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, including critical perspectives from inside and outside of those traditions. The course will explore the philosophical and cultural aspects of nonviolence, with a focus on its relationship to karma, self-purification, animal welfare, and food practices. We conclude by examining modern deployments of the ethic in charged discourses concerning agriculture, nationalism, environmental destruction and conservation, and social justice.

As the chosen messenger of God's final revelation, Muslims consider Muhammad to be God's beloved par excellence. He is believed to have not only received God's words but to have also experienced the divine. For Muhammad's followers, love has been a central means of attaining experiential knowledge of God. The Islamic tradition, particularly in the form of Sufism, developed a highly sophisticated literature for understanding God through love. This course will trace and analyze the historical development of this literature and the practices associated with it from the Qur'an (600s) to Rumi (1200s).

This course explores the history of samurai since the emergence of warrior class in medieval times, to the modern developments of samurai ethics as the icon of Japanese national identity. Focusing on its connection with Japanese religion and culture, we will investigate the origins of the purported samurai ideals of loyalty, honor, self-sacrifice, and death. In addition to regular class sessions, there will be a weekly kyudo (Japanese archery) practice on Wednesday evening (7-9 pm), which will enable students to study samurai history in context through gaining first-hand experience in the ritualized practice of kyudo.