Department of Religious Studies
Course Offerings: Fall, 2006
Religions of Asia
Religious Studies 001
MWF 10:00-11:00
Instructor: Welbon
gwelbon@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
History and Tradition Sector
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto - the essential beliefs, doctrines, institutions, and practices of the major religious traditions (or traditional worldviews) of Southern and Eastern Asia. Historical backgrounds and development will be surveyed briefly to provide context for the course's central focus: understanding the distinctive worlds of meaning created, maintained and expressed in these religions. Reading and discussion of representative primary texts in translation will be emphasized in this effort to understand basic attitudes and beliefs. Particular attention will be devoted to answering questions about the persisting influence and vitality of these religious traditions - about the nature and significance of change and about the importance of these great religions in shaping the sense of identity, aspirations, and expectations of their adherents in the face of the technological and ideological challenges of the contemporary world.
Requirements: No prerequisites. Moderate reading load. Optional paper.
In-class midterm and final examinations.
Religious Violence and Cults
Religious Studies 006
MW 1:00-2:00, plus 1 hr recitation
Instructor: Dunning
sdunning@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Society Sector
Since September 11, 2001, America has become more aware than ever that there is a connection between religion and violence. But what is it? Why do religious people embrace violence? Are all cults prone to violence? And do terrorists tend to belong to cults? This course will introduce students to representative terrorist groups from five different religious traditions and to cults that have taken the path of group suicide. We will also examine a number of ways to understand religious terrorism, religious suicide, and cult affiliation in general.
Introduction to Africana Studies
Religious Studies 007
(AFRC 001)
T 2:00-5:00
Instructor: Dyson
mdyson@sas.upenn.edu
Society Sector
This course will provide an introduction to black studies by examining some of the huge themes that constitute black life: identity, religion, slavery, popular culture, class conflict, Atlantic relations, global influences, gender, sexual orientation and generational conflict. We will probe some of the major figures and forces that define black life, and help to construct a reasonable understanding of how Africana Studies is both situated within such discourses, and helps to define them as well.
Classical Indian Epics
Religious Studies 008
(SAST 020)
MW 2:00-3:30
Instructor: Cox
wmcox@sas.upenn.edu
In this course we will explore the two Indian epic masterpieces, the Ramayaoa and the Mahabharata, poems that are among the most important pieces of imaginative writing in world history. By examining these, both through translation of their Sanskrit originals as well as reworkings in test and performance (including film and other media), we’ll try to understand the fundamental claims made by the epics about family and political life, the ethics of violence, and the status of gender. The epics present startling and contrasting understandings of the social world in its ideal state as well as in its destruction, and these visions of order and chaos will be our recurrent themes. This course is introductory and assumes no previous knowledge.
Religious Studies 012
(SAST 012)
W 2:00-5:00
Instructor: Behl
abehl@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Historically, India has held a prominent yet paradoxical place in the Western imagination – as a land of ancient glories, a land of spiritual profundity, a land of poverty, social injustice and unreason. In this course, we examine these and other images of India as presented in European and American fiction, travel literature, news reportage, and film. We will consider the power and resonance of these images, how they have served Western interests, and how they may have affected Indian self-understanding.
The Bible as Literature
Religious Studies 015
Instructor: Hall
adhall@english.upenn.edu
Distribution III: Arts and Letters
Successive generations have found the Bible to be a text which requires – even demands – extensive interpretation. This course explores the Bible as literature, considering such matters as the artistic arrangement and stylistic qualities of individual episodes as well as the larger thematic patterns of both the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha. A good part of the course is spent looking at the place of the Bible in cultural and literary history and the influence of such biblical figures as Adam and Eve, David, and Susanna on writers of poetry, drama, and fiction in the English and American literary traditions.
Science and the Sacred
Religious Studies 102
Instructor: Newberg
newberg@rad.upenn.edu
Distribution I: Society
An introduction to the rapidly expanding dialogue between religion and science. Episodes from the historical interaction between Judeo-Christian theology and the nature sciences will highlight parallel revolutions in each accompanying fundamental shifts in world view. This serves as crucial background to understanding the present relationship between scientific understanding and religious reflection and the implications they have for each other. The basic findings of classical and modern physics, biology and the neurosciences will be introduced in the context of issues such as divine action, the nature of the human, and the relationship of scientific and religious ways of knowing.
Religious Studies 106
M 6:00-9:00
Instructor: Fryer (CGS)
dfryer@titan.iwu.edu
Distribution II: History and Tradition
What does it mean to be “post-modern”? What does “post-modern” religious thought look like? In this class, we will explore major trends and thinkers in this field. We will examine themes such as the idea of “God”, the role of authority, the nature of the “self”, and the question of ethics, and we will draw on thinkers such as Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Barth, Rosenzweig, Lacan, Levinas, Derrida, Taylor, Irigaray, Armour, Jones, Hollywood, and Wyschogrod.
Religious Studies 111
(AFRC 111)
W 2:00-5:00
Instructor: Callahan
ldcallah@sas.upenn.edu
Society Sector
For Christians, he is proclaimed the Son of God. But within American culture Jesus has undergone transformations to fit the cultural moment and the current debate. “Who is Jesus?” and “What would Jesus do?” are questions that have been answered throughout American history in myriad ways by religious elites, writers, movie makers, and regular people, Christian and non-Christian alike. This course explores the images of Jesus in the popular culture throughout American history, with the goal of understanding the people who imagined Jesus as an American ideal.
Science, Magic and Religion: 1500 to the Present
Religious Studies 116
(FOLK 025, HIST 025, STSC 028)
W 6:00-9:00
Instructor: Blum (CGS)
jnblum@sas.upenn.edu
History and Tradition Sector
This course will explore issues and questions that arise at the intersection of magic, science and religion. Both historically and popularly, it has often been assumed that some sort of diametrical opposition exists between science and religion. This course will examine the possibility and reasons for such an assumption, seeking to demonstrate that the junction between magic, science and religion is far more complex – and potentially complimentary – than a simple categorical disagreement. Magic, science and religion will be compared and contrasted as different types of belief systems, each operating under its own distinctive assumptions.
Readings will vary and may include works from anthropologists, scholars of religion, scientists, and journalists, and will include both historical and contemporary materials. Students will be expected to gain not only some appreciation of the historical development of these issues, but also to actively and critically analyze the questions involved.
Religious Studies 117
(AFRC 117)
TR 1:30-3:00
Instructor: Callahan
ldcallah@sas.upenn.edu
This course is intended as an introduction to movements and figures of African American religion from slavery to the present. Lectures, readings, and discussions will focus on themes related to content and methodology in the study of African American religious history. Guiding themes include the relationship between race and gender; the tension between piety and activism; the ambivalence between mainstream respectability and racial pride; and the interaction between Christianity, lived religions, and alternative traditions.
Religious Studies 121
(HIST 140, JWST 157, NELC 052)
TR 1:30-2:30, plus 1 hr. recitation
Instructor: Ruderman
ruderman@sas.upenn.edu
History and Tradition Sector
A broad introduction to the history of Jewish civilization from the early Middle Ages to the 17th century. An overview of Jewish society and culture in its medieval and Renaissance settings.
Religious Studies 125
Instructor: Tigay
jtgay@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Arts and Letters Sector
A survey of the major themes and ideas of the Bible, with special attention paid to the contributions of archaeology and modern Biblical scholarship, including Biblical criticism and the response to it in Judaism and Christianity.
Introduction to Christianity - CANCELLED
Religious Studies 133
TR 3:00-4:30
Instructor: Matter
amatter@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Distribution II: History and Tradition
Benjamin Franklin Seminar
This course is an introduction to the historical development and modern diversity of the Christian tradition. We will begin with a historical overview that will get us from the ministry of Jesus to the modern configuration of Christian churches, denominations, and movements. During this time, students should be choosing a particular Christian congregation they wish to study. In the middle of the semester, we will discuss the particular challenges and opportunities of studying real congregations rather than textbook examples. In the last part of the semester, as you are exploring one church tradition, we will consider Christianity, both historically and from a modern perspective, in different parts of the world.
Introduction to Hinduism
Religious Studies 163
(SAST 163, SAST 663)
T 5:00-8:00
Instructor: Welbon(CGS)
gwelbon@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Distribution II: History and Tradition
Hindu religious beliefs and practices from the earliest period to the present, stressing contemporary religious thought, performances and institutions and their historical backgrounds. Basic human issues such as the origin and nature of the world and society, the meaning of personal existence, sex, birth, death, human responsibility, the family, and destiny – and the variety of Hindu understandings of them as revealed in myth, story, philosophy, and ritual will be the focus of this course. Readings will mostly be from original sources and all will be in English translations.
Religious Studies 221
Instructor: Ben-Amos
dbamos@sas.upenn.edu
History and Tradition Sector
The Jews are among the few nations and ethnic groups whose oral tradition occurs in literary and religious texts dating back more than two thousand years. This tradition changed and diversified over the years in terms of the migrations of the Jews into different countries and the historical, social, and cultural changes that these countries underwent. The course attempts to capture the historical and ethnic diversity of Jewish folklore in a variety of oral literary forms. A basic book of Hasidic legends from the 18th century will serve as a key text to explore problems in Jewish folklore relating to both earlier and later periods.
Religious Studies 226
Instructor: Stern
dstern@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Arts and Letters Sector
This course is intended to introduce students to midrash, the activity of Biblical interpretation as practiced by the Rabbis in the ancient world; to its literature, its literary forms, and its techniques of interpretation; and to modern scholarship on midrash. We will study various texts from different periods in the history of Midrashic literature, and attempt to apply different critical and disciplinary methodologies – literary, historical, theological – to the task of analyzing these texts.
We will also seek to situate midrash within the larger history of Jewish Biblical interpretation and within the context of Jewish literary creativity through the ages, including our own. Class discussion will be held in English, but students must be able to read unpointed Hebrew texts. No other previous background in the literature is necessary. Since the content of this course may change from year to year students may take it for credit more than once (if the course is indeed different).
Requirements: Students must be able to read unpointed Hebrew texts.
Religious Studies 228
(NELC 285, JWST 258)
R 3:00-6:00
Instructor: Goldstein
mirm@pob.huji.ac.il
Arts and Letters Sector
This seminar will examine what Jews living in Muslim lands wrote during medieval times, focusing on a range of primary sources including poetry, Bible commentary, historiography and polemics. Through these sources we will develop an understanding of the place of this community in Jewish history as well as within the medieval empire of Islam..
Religious Studies 248
This course will introduce students to classical Islamic law. Most of the readings will be taken from primary sources in translation. Areas covered will include criminal law, family law, law in the Qur’an, humanities, and other selected topics.
Religious Studies 311
Instructor: Sharkey
hsharkey@sas.upenn.edu
Distribution II: History and Tradition
This class is a reading- and discussion-intensive seminar that addresses several recurring questions with regard to the Middle East and North Africa. How have Islam, Judaism, and Christianity influenced each other in these regions historically? How have Jews, Christians, and Muslims fared as religious minorities? To what extent have communal relations been characterized by harmony and cooperation, or by strife and discord, and how have these relations changed in different contexts over time? To what extent and under what circumstances have members of these communities converted, intermarried, formed business alliances, and adopted or developed similar customs? How has the emergence of the modern nation-state system affected communal relations as well as the legal or social status of religious minorities in particular countries? How important has religion been as one variable in social identity (along with sect, ethnicity, class, gender, etc.), and to what extent has religious identity figured into regional conflicts and wars? The focus of the class will be on the modern period (c. 1800-present) although we will read about some relevant trends in the early and middle Islamic periods as well. Students will also pursue individually tailored research to produce final papers.
Religious Studies 315
Instructor: Gordon
sgordon@law.upenn.edu
This course will explore major themes and moments in religious history that have shaped the development of the nation since the Civil War era. The approach will be chronological, but also topical. The course will move through time from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, from Native American religions to Evangelicalism, African American religions, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, Scientology and more. It will also connect past events to issues and problems that continue to affect religious beliefs and practices in our own culture, including the revival that has characterized American religious life for the past three decades. Rather than debating religious truth, the course explores and analyzes the many religious perspectives that have shaped American history. This exploration includes looking at things that many students would not consider “religious” at first glance, and thus thinking deeply about how we have defined religion. At times, the course will use a “case study” approach to explore specific events and ideas that have a wider applicability, rather than trying to cover every significant religious development and every religious group.
Religion in India in Practice: Modern Hinduism
Religious Studies 362
(SAST 362)
TR 10:30-12:00
Instructor: Novetzke
cln@sas.upenn.edu
Hinduism was named and included into the roster of “world religions” in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as knowledge about the modern world was taking shape. Colonial and Orientalist knowledge did much to create this vision of a unified religious practice called Hinduism, codifying texts (primarily in Sanskrit) and practices as definitively Hindu. In addition, the call to a single Hindu religion motivated indigenous political powers in India, helping to shape India’s independence movement as well as its post-independence politics. In the era of Indian diasporic cultures flourishing throughout the world, Hinduism has come to hold a central place in identity foundation and the characterization of India in a global context.
This seminar examines how Hinduism became a modern world religion over the last two hundred years. We will read fiction, academic studies, and watch films and documentaries that have contributed to, or comment upon, the making of Hinduism.
Independent Study - Undergraduate
Religious Studies 399
Time and topic arranged
Instructor: Staff
rstudies@sas.upenn.edu
Please obtain section numbers from the department office or from the faculty member with whom you will be working.
Ancient Interpretations of the Bible
Religious Studies 418
(NELC 356, NELC 556, JWST 555,
JWST 356, COML 556)
TR 10:30-12:00
Instructor: Stern
dstern@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Distribution III: Arts and Letters
Benjamin Franklin Seminar
Christianity and Judaism are often called “Biblical Religions” because they are believed to be founded upon the Bible. But the truth of the matter is that it was less the Bible itself than the particular ways in which the Bible was read and interpreted by Christians and Jews that shaped the development of these two religions and that also marked the difference between them. So, too, ancient Biblical interpretation – Jewish and Christian – laid the groundwork for and developed virtually all the techniques and methods that have dominated literary criticism and hermenentics (the science of interpretation) since then.
The Sermon on the Mount: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Interpretations
Religious Studies 438
W 6:00-8:40
Instructor: Treat (CGS)
jtreat@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
MLA Seminar
This course introduces students to the development of Christian biblical interpretation by focusing on ancient, medieval, and modern interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount. Students will encounter a variety of important interpreters (including John Chrystosom, Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Dibelius, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hans Dieter Betz), guided by appropriate secondary materials. The Sermon on the Mount is part of the Gospel of Matthew and is often considered to summarize the essential teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
This course has no prerequisites. Readings will be made available in English. Students will be encouraged to do original research in the primary sources.
Topics in History of Islam in South Asia - CANCELLED
Religious Studies 466
(SAST-366 SAST-367)
TR 1:30-3:00
Instructor: Staff
The instructor and topic were not available at time of printing.
Theories of Religion
Religious Studies 500
(GRMN 554)
W 3:00-6:00
Instructor: Dunning
sdunning@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
A study of the various ways of interpreting religion as a phenomenon in human life. Analysis of the presuppositions involved in psychological, sociological, and phenomenological approaches. Authors include James, Weber, Freud, Otto, and contemporary writers offering anthropological and philosophical perspectives
Ethnography of Belief
Religious Studies 507
Instructor: Hufford
dhufford@sas.upenn.edu
This course will examine traditional systems of supernatural belief with an emphasis on the role of personal experience in their development and maintenance. The course will focus on subjects of belief generally conceived of as being "folk” in some sense (e.g., beliefs in ghosts), but will not exclude a consideration of popular and academic beliefs where appropriate (e.g., popular beliefs about UFO's and theological doctrines of the immortality of the soul). The course will be multidisciplinary in scope.
Topics in American Religion: Race, Poverty and Class
Religious Studies 517
(AFRC 518, FOLK 517)
M 2:00-5:00
Instructor: Dyson
mdyson@sas.upenn.edu
This course examines the intersections among race, poverty and class in the United States. We will probe recent theories on poverty, and examine the war against the poor undertaken by various cultural and political forces. We will investigate inraracial class conflicts in black communities, as well as tackle the rise of prosperity gospel messages in African-Amerian churches. We will also examine the Bill Cosby controversy, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in situating racial and class discourse around poverty. Finally, we will examine religious responses to poverty, race and class.
Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition
Religious Studies 533
(HIST 533)
M 3:00-5:00
Instructor: Matter/Waldman
Distribution II: History and Tradition
The collection of mystical writings attributed to Dionysius, the philosopher converted by Paul on the Areopagus in Athens, have one of the most interesting historical trajectories of any texts in the Christian spiritual tradition. Probably dating from sixth-century Syria, these explorations of apophatic theology were thought to be by Paul’s convert, who was also the first Bishop of Athens and later the Saint Dennis who was the Apostle to Gaul and first Bishop of Paris. The corpus of surviving texts (“The Celestial Hierarchy”, “The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”, “The Divine Names”, and “The Mystical Theology”) will be the starting point for an exploration of Dionysian spirituality in medieval Christianity, particularly the Western Europe. We will also read works of John Scotus Eriugena (ninth century), Peter Abelard and Suger of Saint-Denis (twelfth century) and Meiser Eckhart (thirteenth century), all of whom had some significant influence from this tradition. Finally, we will look at the development of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris as the center of architectural and artistic symbolism based on Dionysian ideas.
This is an advanced seminar. The readings can mostly be done in English, but knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and/or German will also be helpful. Each student will write a research paper.
Christianity and the Late Antique Religious Revolution
Religious Studies 535
(COML 535)
W 3:00-6:00
Instructor: Stroumsa
stroumsa@huji.ac.il
The seminar aims at identifying the different dimensions of the major transformations of the very idea of religion in the Near East and the Mediterranean during the first five centuries of the common era. Among these transformations which amount to what one can call a religious revolution, are the deep changes in the perception of the self, the disappearance of blood sacrifices as a major, public and central religious ritual, among both Jews and pagans, the development of what one can call "the scriptural turn", and the new importance of religious community for the shaping of identity, both personal and collective. We will focus on the meeting of religious traditions from East and West, and will seek to identify the role of Christianity in this complex development.
Two books of sources in translation have been ordered for the students: A.D. Lee, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity and R. Valantasis, Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice
Topics in Islamic Religion: Sufi Tafsir Literature
Religious Studies 545
(NELC 534)
T 10:00-1:00
Instructor: Elias
jjelias@sas.upenn.edu
Permission of Instructor
This course explores Sufi commentaries of the Qur'an as a way of understanding key aspects of Qur'anic studies as well as Sufism. We will study secondary literature on the history and nature of Qur'anic commentary and read selections from a number of important Sufi works, some of which are edited and others available only in manuscript. Important theoretical questions to be raised over the course of the semester concern the purposes behind the writing of commentaries, how such commentaries help understand the intellectual and religious positions of their authors, and the significance of providing literal or exoteric explanations for knowledge that is esoteric by definition. Reading knowledge of Arabic is required.
Literature, Religion, and the Bible in Enlightment Germany
Religious Studies 630
(GRMN 630, COML 635, HIST 620)
M 1:00-3:00
Instructor: Richter
At a time when contemporary culture is markedly engaged in a repudiation of secularism and a return to religious belief, it may be interesting to explore the Enlightenment as a mirror image and origin of our present situaiton. The Enlightenment has long been understood as a trans-European effort to counter, if not flatly reject religion, superstition, the church, and divinely insituted monarchy. Recent scholarship challenges this conception and urges us to think of the Enlightenment engagement with religion and the Bible as a productive encounter. Enlightenment thinkers and writers in Germany (including members of the Haskalah) presided over an explosion of biblical scholarship, exegesis, interpretaiton, theologizing, and literary adaptation. As Jonathan Sheehan argues, the Enlightenment did not reject the Bible--the Enlightenment changed it. Topics will include: pietism, gender, and subjectivity; theodicy; the Berlin Haskalah; anti-semitism; Spinozism and radical Enlightenment; translation and exegesis. Authors will include: Lessing, Mendelssohn, Klopstock, Herder, Goethe, Jung-Stilling, Kant, Moritz, and Maimon, as well as new scholarship by Sheehan, David Sorkin, Jeffrey Freedman, Jonathan Hess, and others. French and English Enlightenment texts will also be brought in. Parallel readings in German and English. Discussion in English
Seminar in Judaism and/or Christianity in the Hellenistic Era: Papyrology
Religious Studies 735
(CLST 735, JWST 735)
T 4:00-6:00
Instructor: Kraft
kraft@sas.upenn.edu
Undergraduates Need Permission from Instructor
This work-seminar will introduce participants to the study of the ancient papyri, both documentary and literary, with a focus on Greek and Coptic materials (also some attention to Latin, Demotic, and Arabic). Hitherto unexamined fragments will be available for possible publication, from the collections here at the University as well as elsewhere. There will also be an opportunity for hands-on work with small cartonnage fragments (conservation, separation, classification and decipherment).
Independent Study - Graduate
Religious Studies 999
Time and topic arranged.
Instructors: Staff
rstudies@sas.upenn.edu
Please obtain section numbers from the department office or from the faculty member with whom you will be working.