Courses

This course examines Black spirituality, religion, and protest from an historical perspective, beginning with African traditions and Christianity during enslavement, which created resistance ideology and racial nationalism. Prophetic Christianity and church formation became primary political weapons after enslavement, particularly in the Age of Jim Crow, and foundationally led to twentieth century civil rights movements. While exploring these themes, the course will also analyze the complexities and contractions (i.e. Southern Baptist Convention, Nation of Islam and Black Lives Matter) inherent in resistance movements based on spiritual leadership.

Full details for RELST 2112 - Black Spirituality, Religion & Protest

Does hatred have a history? Historians insist that Europe invented a tradition of hating Jews and Judaism; some go so far as to argue that the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust was the culmination of a thousand-year-old prejudice against Jewish difference, cultivated not only by cranks and lunatics at the margins of European discourse, but by great luminaries with a reputation for progressive, even radical, opinions. In fact, the cultural problem of Jewish difference was implicated in both the destruction and the creation of European Jewry. In this seminar, we will examine exemplary works of Europe's famous anti-Jewish canon — such as Paul's letter to the Romans, Luther's "On the Jews and their Lies," and Marx's "On the Jewish Question" — in order to contextualize a mythology of Jewish "otherness" that enflamed the anti-Jewish imagination even when there were few Jewish "others" around to hate. We will also look at critical moments in Jewish history marked by the appropriation of anti-Jewish arguments in the name of Jewish social discipline and moral authority. Through the prism of provocative Jewish texts such as the Crusade chronicles, Mendelssohn's Jerusalem and Pinsker's "Auto-emancipation" we will explore some of the ways in which the "enabling violation" of anti-semitism both constrained Jewish existence and liberated Jewish self-consciousness, turning Europe into a home for Judaism as well as a Jewish "hell on earth."

Full details for RELST 2156 - Anti-Semitism and the Making of European Jewry

This course is designed for students who are interested in reading the language of the Qur'an with accuracy and understanding. The first week (4 classes) will be devoted to an introduction of the history of the Qur'an: the revelation, collection, variant readings, and establishment of an authoritative edition. The last week will be devoted to a general overview of "revisionist" literature on the Qur'an. In the remaining 12 weeks, we will cover all of Part 30 (Juz' 'Amma, suuras 78-114) and three suuras of varying length (36, 19, and 12).

Full details for RELST 2204 - Introduction to Quranic Arabic

Whether it is politics, society, the law, sexuality, popular culture or minorities' rights, the media are saturated with news on Islam. This course introduces topical issues in Islam as a religious, historical, cultural and political phenomenon. We will discuss this religion's manifold interpretations and investigate its multiple manifestations across the globe, giving special attention to Asia (from Iran to China, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India, Thailand, etc.). Key themes include religious devotion, the arts, Islamic law, gender, statehood, jihad, and sectarianism. No previous knowledge of Islam is required as the course covers the fundamentals of Islam as a religious system as well as a historical phenomenon.

Full details for RELST 2247 - Controversy and Debate in Islam

This course probes the truths behind traditional claims of the priority of internal practice in Indian traditions. We will examine both practices themselves - techniques of meditation and contemplation - religious ways of using intellect, forms of chant and ritual, and the dynamics through which these have left a wider mark on South Asian civilization. These dynamics include not only the evident reverberations of practice in philosophical reflection and socioreligious institutions, but also wide-ranging processes of stylization, elaboration, and popularization found throughout South Asian culture. In order to get a sense of the experiences treated in classical religious texts, students will be expected to experiment with some basic meditation practices. At least as important for the work of the course (and much more important for the grade) will be the ways in which students situate these practices within larger South Asian world views as suggested by doctrines, rituals, iconic forms, and literary texts. To keep the interaction between internal practice and broader world views central, we will examine both Hindu and Buddhist sources, consistently examining the ways in which similar practices are given distinct shapes by the two religious traditions.

Full details for RELST 2277 - Meditation in Indian Culture

Global conflicts, raising children, electing presidents, praying for a loved one: from the mundane to the extraordinary, religion plays a significant role in social life, regardless of whether or not one considers oneself "religious." In this course we will investigate religion and its impacts in society from a sociological perspective. Questions we will ask include: How does religion "fit" into society? What are the contours of contemporary religion in the United States and around the world? How do religious identities interact with other aspects of social life, including gender, race and politics? In what ways have religions and religious life changed over time? As social scientists, how can we best study religion? The course will use examples from a variety of religious and secular traditions to help us understand religion's sociological significance in the contemporary world.

Full details for RELST 2330 - Religion and Social Life

What does Islam "say" about music? This course will trace circulations of this question in scholarly, popular, media, and religious discourses. Why and how does it matter what sound is called music and not, what music is called Islamic and not? We ask both how the thinking and the doing of music and Islam have been entangled in particular moments and places and how and why Muslim and non-Muslim scholars have sought out these entanglements. No prior study of music or Islam is required.

Full details for RELST 2360 - Music and Islam

This course will survey the cultic practices and beliefs of ancient Babylonia and Assyria, the two major civilizations of Mesopotamia. We will examine the major myths of this region, e.g., Ishtar's Descent into the Netherworld, Etana, and Gilgamesh, in light of what they reveal about Mesopotamian religion, politics, and understanding of the afterlife. We will also examine the performance of magical rituals and incantations, methods of predicting the future, and the role of sacred marriage, prostitution, and slavery in the ancient temple.

Full details for RELST 2575 - Myth and Religion in Mesopotamia

In the early twentieth century, a series of movements arose in the Middle East and South Asia, calling Muslims to return to Islam. Today, leaders and members of such groups –now known as Islamists –insist that one cannot live a fully Islamic life in the absence of an Islamic state. How and why did these movements come to focus on building an Islamic state? When did Islam come to be seen as indivisible from Politics, and what does it mean for Islam and Politics to be related? Are contemporary claims to Islam as the basis for political action consistent with the ways in which Muslims have understood their core texts historically? This course will introduce students to the study of Religion and Politics in Islamic History, beginning with the early Islamic community under the rule of the Prophet Muhammad, stretching through a period of rule that saw multiple Islamic Caliphates, and finally, reaching the present day. The bulk of this course, however, will focus on the diverse ways in which Muslims in the twentieth and twenty first centuries have laid claim to their religion as a template for political and social action. In particular, it will push students to consider how Muslim men and women live religion in their daily lives, whether through dress, prayer, or facial hair, and how these claims to religion shape political systems from the ground up.

Full details for RELST 2617 - Islam and Politics: Between an Islamic State and Daily Life

This course offers an introduction to the history of Christianity from the first century through the seventeenth and perhaps a bit beyond. Our emphasis will be on the diversity of Christian traditions, beliefs, and practices throughout history. We will explore the origins of Christianity within the eastern Mediterranean world, the spread of Christianity, the development of ecclesiastical institutions, the rise and establishment of monasticism, and the various controversies that occupied the church throughout its history. Throughout the course, we will supplement our reading of primary texts with art, archaeology, music, and manuscripts.

Full details for RELST 2695 - Introduction to Christian History

A selective survey of Western philosophical thought from the fourth to the 14th century. Topics include the problem of universals, the theory of knowledge and truth, the nature of free choice and practical reasoning, and philosophical theology. Readings (in translation) include Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. Some attention will be given to the development of ideas across the period and the influence of non-Western traditions on the West.

Full details for RELST 3150 - Medieval Philosophy

How do Buddhists live out their philosophies and ethics? What are the spaces of ritual, devotion, meditation, education, and politics? How do Buddhist practices and affiliations satisfy aesthetic and emotional needs and build social networks? This course explores the unfolding of Buddhist life in contemporary South and Southeast Asia, in locations such as Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Cambodia. 

Full details for RELST 3309 - Temple in the World: Buddhism in Contemporary South and Southeast Asia

Ancient Gandhara, modern northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, has long captivated the imagination of scholars with its great cultural diversity and haunting Hellenistic Buddhist art. This course explores the history, religion, and culture of Gandhara from the 4th century BCE to the 4th century CE, with a focus on the region's unique expression of Buddhism, especially as it is demonstrated in recently discovered Buddhist manuscripts. We take up the themes of syncretism and hybridity to better understand the encounter between Indian, Iranian, Greek, and Central Asian cultural forms. Students will read Buddhist texts in translation, interpret sculptures, coins, and other visual and material culture, and study trends in secondary scholarship on the region.

Full details for RELST 3328 - Buddhism in Ancient Gandhara

This course will survey the rich and sophisticated tradition of Indian philosophical thought from its beginnings in the speculations of Upanishads, surveying debates between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and materialistic philosophers about the existence and nature of God and of the human soul, the nature of knowledge, and the theory of language.

Full details for RELST 3344 - Introduction to Indian Philosophy

This course explores the Zen's central religious, historical and aesthetic developments. We read primary sources in translation and secondary sources. We examine the rise of the Ch'an tradition in China and the development of Northern and Southern Schools. In Japan, we examine the establishment of Zen in the Kamakura period, through the development of both Rinzai and Soto Zen, and early transmissions of Chinese texts and practices to Japan through Japanese emissaries. We study the lives and writings of Eisai and Dôgen, and explore how their works influenced later developments in Zen. Next we read works by Hakuin. Last, we study how Zen is implicated in Japanese fascism and later, postwar identity discourses. Finally, we look at Zen in an American context. This course is being taught both as an integrated arts in the curriculum course in collaboration with the Johnson Art Museum and is also part of a "Internationalizing the Cornell Curriculum."  An optional 10-day trip to Japan to spend time in Zen temples and a monastery will be offered to students.  Furthermore, students studying Japanese  language can sign up for an optional 1-credit language course exploring Zen practice and arts vocabulary (JAPAN 2216).

Full details for RELST 3416 - Zen Buddhism: Ecology, Sustainability and Daily Life

The purpose of the course is to place the Bible within the context of a larger ancient world that can be explored by systematic excavation of physical remains. Students will become familiar with archaeological excavations and finds from ancient Syria-Palestine from 10,000 bce to 586 bce. We will explore this archaeological evidence on its own terms, taking into consideration factors such as archaeological method and the interpretive frameworks in which the excavators themselves work, as well as the implications of this body of evidence for understanding the complexity and diversity of biblical Israel.

Full details for RELST 3588 - Biblical Archaeology

This course will explore the relationship between DNA and Jewish life. We will conceive of Jews and Judaism broadly, in terms of religious, ethnic, and national discourses as we consider theories of kinship and nationalism, definitions of ethnicity and race, the "molecularization" of human life, the use of DNA as a spiritual metaphor, the ethics of "playing God" through biomedicine, and imaginations of utopian and dystopian futures. The entangled social, political, economic, legal, metaphorical, and theological questions that DNA has raised during the twentieth century will serve as a lens to fundamental issues in Jewish Studies and Science and Technology Studies about the nature of Jewish identity and about the social and political elements of knowledge production, respectively. Our readings will combine scholarly texts with a range of primary sources, while our classroom discussions will include guest lectures by scholars from Molecular Biology and other relevant fields to discuss the religious and social implications of their research. 

Full details for RELST 3719 - The Jewish Life of DNA

Reading and translation of Latin philosophical texts.

Full details for RELST 4100 - Latin Philosophical Texts

From the Garden of Eden to Noah's Ark, from Abraham's journey from Haran to Joseph's coat of many colors, the book of Genesis contains stories that are at once familiar to Western readers, and foreign in their ancient Near Eastern setting.  Through reading the book of Genesis in the original Hebrew, this course will address issues such as how the Israelites understood their origins, and their relationships with their God, Yahweh, their neighbors, and the land of Canaan itself, as well as how these themes are developed in biblical myth and folklore. Close attention will be paid to matters of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary in order to develop students' skills in reading biblical Hebrew prose and to enhance their understanding of the Hebrew language itself as a window on ancient Israelite thought. Students will be expected to utilize commentaries, biblical Hebrew grammars and lexicons in their preparation of assigned texts.

Full details for RELST 4102 - Biblical Hebrew Prose: Genesis

This course is an exploration of the development of the Vajrayana tradition through a focus on the myths and stories about, and writings by central figures in what is known in the west as Tibetan Buddhism. A fundamental premise of this course is that any study of Tibetan Buddhism must take into consideration the implications of the dramatic events which have shaped the last sixty years of Tibetan history, and the fracture of meaning caused by the near destruction of this religious world after the communist invasion and subsequent full occupation of Tibet.  Understanding how the lens of exile and a nostalgia for a pre-Chinese invasion history shape current studies of Tibetan Buddhism will be a continuing theme throughout this course.  At the end of this course, it is hoped that students will have a grounded and nuanced understanding of the complexities of this great religious tradition, the implications of its appropriations in the western imagination as an idyllic Shangri-la, and the challenges Tibetan Buddhism faces as a diverse religious tradition as it attempts to rebuild its religious institutions in exile.

Full details for RELST 4400 - Tibetan Buddhism

This course examines beliefs in magic and magical creatures, looking at how the occult organized all aspects of early modern life.  Scientists believed that magic could help them create gold, doctors practiced blood magic, and court magistrates sentenced Jews or elderly women to death for allegedly performing devilish rituals on small children. Through the course readings, both primary and secondary, we will analyze how the superstitious was mobilized within struggles between Catholics and Protestants, the nobility and the peasantry, and within emergent Enlightenment philosophy.  In particular we will discuss why witches or werewolves were imagined (and hunted) in the period, what that can tell us about the cultural climate of the time, but also how their meaning could morph into the familiar horror stapes of our own world.

Full details for RELST 4404 - Magic and Demonic Creatures between Reformation and Enlightenment

With sectarian conflicts and discussions on orthodoxy and heresy dominating the headlines, it becomes important to better understand the relationship between Muslim majorities and minorities. This seminar focuses on Shi'a Muslims, a minority group that has existed alongside the Sunni majority since the first century of Islam. Focussing on the Asian region (e.g. Pakistan, Central Asia, Indonesia) and its transnational connections to the Middle East and Iran, the course will examine the emergence of Shi'a Islam as well as its ongoing transformation in the realm of politics, ritual, literature, the arts and more.

Full details for RELST 4434 - Muslim Resistance: Shi'a Islam in Asia

In popular discourses, Buddhism and Islam are now often conceptualized as sharply contrasting religious traditions. Moreover, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims now feature strongly in some contemporary Asian social and political arenas. However, historically, interaction between Buddhism and Islam, and between Muslims and Buddhists, reveals many striking instances of co-presence, and interdependence in Asian contexts. For instance, Buddhists and Muslims shared pilgrimage sites and trade routes, sometimes facilitating the growth of one another's religious communities.  Moreover, the expansion of these religious traditions often involved comparable patterns of patronage and localization. We explore the co-presence of Buddhists and Muslims in Asia thematically, using case studies from diverse Asian locations, from late 1st millennium A.D. to the present day. In doing so, we will come to understand the distinctive post-colonial and later capitalist dynamics that contribute to Buddhist-Muslim political violence in Asia.

Full details for RELST 4465 - Buddhists and Muslims: Asian Interactions

Chinese discourses have long linked the circulation of cosmic energies, political power, and bodily vitalities. In these models political order, spiritual cultivation, and health are achieved and enhanced through harmonizing these flows across the levels of Heaven-and-Earth, state, and humankind. It is when these movements are blocked or out of synchrony that we find disordered climates, societies, and illness. In this course, we will examine the historical emergence and development of these models of politically resonant persons and bodily centered polities, reading across primary texts in translation from these otherwise often separated fields. For alternate frameworks of analysis as well as for comparative perspectives, we will also examine theories of power and embodiment from other cultures, including recent scholarship in anthropology and critical theory.

Full details for RELST 4931 - Vitality and Power in China

For undergraduates who wish to obtain research experience or do extensive reading on a special topic. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course.

Full details for RELST 4991 - Directed Study

RELST 4995 is the first course in the Honors two-part sequence. The Honors Program is open to Religious Studies majors who have done superior work and who wish to devote a substantial part of their senior year to advanced, specialized, independent research and writing of a thesis. Successfully completing an honors thesis will require sustained interest, exceptional ability, diligence, and enthusiasm. While admissions to the Honors Program and completion of a thesis do not guarantee that students will be awarded honors in Religious Studies, most students find the experience as intellectually rewarding as it is rigorous.

Full details for RELST 4995 - Senior Honors Essay I

RELST 4996 is the second course in the Honors two-part sequence. The Honors Program is open to Religious Studies majors who have done superior work and who wish to devote a substantial part of their senior year to advanced, specialized, independent research and writing of a thesis. Successfully completing an honors thesis will require sustained interest, exceptional ability, diligence, and enthusiasm. While admissions to the Honors Program and completion of a thesis do not guarantee that students will be awarded honors in Religious Studies, most students find the experience as intellectually rewarding as it is rigorous.

Full details for RELST 4996 - Senior Honors Essay II

Reading and translation of Latin philosophical texts.

Full details for RELST 6020 - Latin Philosophical Texts

This course explores the Zen's central religious, historical and aesthetic developments. We read primary sources in translation and secondary sources. We examine the rise of the Ch'an tradition in China and the development of Northern and Southern Schools. In Japan, we examine the establishment of Zen in the Kamakura period, through the development of both Rinzai and Soto Zen, and early transmissions of Chinese texts and practices to Japan through Japanese emissaries. We study the lives and writings of Eisai and Dôgen, and explore how their works influenced later developments in Zen. Next we read works by Hakuin. Last, we study how Zen is implicated in Japanese fascism and later, postwar identity discourses. Finally, we look at Zen in an American context. This course is being taught both as an integrated arts in the curriculum course in collaboration with the Johnson Art Museum and is also part of a "Internationalizing the Cornell Curriculum."  An optional 10-day trip to Japan to spend time in Zen temples and a monastery will be offered to students.  Furthermore, students studying Japanese  language can sign up for an optional 1-credit language course exploring Zen practice and arts vocabulary (JAPAN 2216).

Full details for RELST 6616 - Zen Buddhism: Ecology, Sustainability and Daily Life

Ancient Gandhara, modern northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, has long captivated the imagination of scholars with its great cultural diversity and haunting Hellenistic Buddhist art. This course explores the history, religion, and culture of Gandhara from the 4th century BCE to the 4th century CE, with a focus on the region's unique expression of Buddhism, especially as it is demonstrated in recently discovered Buddhist manuscripts. We take up the themes of syncretism and hybridity to better understand the encounter between Indian, Iranian, Greek, and Central Asian cultural forms. Students will read Buddhist texts in translation, interpret sculptures, coins, and other visual and material culture, and study trends in secondary scholarship on the region.

Full details for RELST 6628 - Buddhism in Ancient Gandhara

In popular discourses, Buddhism and Islam are now often conceptualized as sharply contrasting religious traditions.  Moreover, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims now feature strongly in some contemporary Asian social and political arenas.  However, historically, interaction between Buddhism and Islam, and between Muslims and Buddhists, reveals many striking instances of co-presence, and interdependence in Asian contexts. For instance, Buddhists and Muslims shared pilgrimage sites and trade routes, sometimes facilitating the growth of one another's religious communities.  Moreover, the expansion of these religious traditions often involved comparable patterns of patronage and localization.  We explore the co-presence of Buddhists and Muslims in Asia thematically, using case studies from diverse Asian locations, from late 1st millennium A.D. to the present day. In doing so, we will come to understand the distinctive post-colonial and later capitalist dynamics that contribute to Buddhist-Muslim political violence in Asia.

Full details for RELST 6665 - Buddhists and Muslims: Asian Interactions