The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Department of Religion in Spring 2022 were submitted by the course instructors.
Specific information regarding the dates, times, and locations of these courses may be found in the Registrar’s official webpage: Schedule of Courses for Spring 2022.
If you are looking for a complete syllabus for a course, check the Syllabi area for availability.
IDS 2935 – Women and Religion in US Popular Literature – Rachel Gordan
Women and Religion have been central to 20th and 21st Century American popular fiction. Why? And how have popular portrayals of womanhood and religion changed over time? These are some of the questions we’ll consider.
IDS 2935 – Conceptions of Selfhood in Asian Traditions – Mario Poceski and Jonathan Edelmann
How has Asian philosophy and religion conceptualized selfhood? The course explores a range of conceptions of selfhood and their impacts on the constructions of personal and group identities, as articulated by major philosophical and religious traditions in Asia. There is an equal emphasis on classical Indian and Chinese notions of self—covering orthodox Hindu views about an essentialized self, as well as Buddhist critiques of the very notion of self—as articulated by major thinkers such as Shankara, Nāgārjuna, Confucius, Zhuangzi, and Zhiyi. Through reading of primary and secondary sources, critical reflection, classroom discussion, and written arraignments, students will learn about major models of selfhood and the classical traditions that produced them, which remain immensely influential in the modern world. Additionally, they will have opportunities to examine the contemporary relevance of such conceptual constructs, especially in relation to understanding the implicit assumptions and cultural conditionings that shape prevalent constructions of personal and communal identities, and their impacts on the world of everyday reality.
IDS 2935 – Post-Holocaust American Jews – Rachel Gordan
This course on “Post-Holocaust American Jews” examines some of ways that the Holocaust affected American culture. In order to understand this change, we’ll be spending some time in “before” moment, in the early 1940s. We’ll spend a few weeks on the 1940s, in order to zoom in on the dramatic transformations that occurred in this decade. Not surprisingly, we’ll see some pretty big changes in how Americans thought about Jews, antisemitism, and diversity, during this decade. The second section of our course will focus on the 1950s and 1960s, and the third will cover a more recent generation.
REL 2121 – American Religious History (online) – David Hackett
This course offers an introductory overview of the American religious experience from an historical and cultural perspective. The interaction of American religions and cultures is examined in three chronological periods: 1) Colonial America 1500-1800 2) Nineteenth Century, and 3) Twentieth Century.
REL 3076 – Cults and New Religious Movements – Erin Prophet
This course examines the “cult” and “new religious movement” in the context of modernity. Students will explore common typologies of religious groups, the dynamics of charismatic leadership, the sociology of small-group behavior, millennialism and apocalypticism, schism, violence, and government response, and models of conversion— including “brainwashing.” They will investigate how new religious groups push the boundaries of social norms concerning family, work and community, and trace the dynamics of tension and accommodation as groups change over time. Specific groups to be reviewed include the Shakers, Mormons, Peoples Temple (Jonestown), Rajneeshies, Branch Davidians, and Wicca. Methodological approaches include sociology, anthropology, and religious studies. Students will perform case studies or engage in comparative work on two or more groups as they learn to use the tools of social science research.
REL 3098 – Religion, Medicine, and Healing: Contemporary Perspectives (online) – Robin Wright
The focus of this course is on traditional healers and healing practices in religious traditions around the globe. The most important themes we shall discuss are: the efficacy of religious symbols for the healing process; cross-cultural notions of the body, pain, and healing; embodiment of healing powers by religious specialists; ritual performances and their meanings; the importance of sound, sonic imagery, and music to healing processes; the relations of healing practices to cosmology, metaphysics, and sacred narratives; and, the transformations of self and meaning that emerge during or from a cure.
REL 3136 – Global Religions in the U.S. – David Hackett
This course explores the dynamic multi-religious landscape of the US with special focus on Global Christianities, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu traditions in the most recent period of post-1965 immigration. Over the past fifty years the ethnic composition of the United States has changed with the arrival of new immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. What changes have taken place in the religious landscape of America’s cities and neighborhoods? How have new religious traditions changed and been changed by American society? How have the second generation of new immigrants made religious sense of their Americanization? And what are the implications of this changed religious landscape for American culture and society?
The method employed to answer these questions will combine classroom discussions and field work. In the classroom, students will become familiar with recent ethnographic reports of new immigrants’ religious adaptations to the American environment. Using Gainesville as our field, students will several times go out and visit sites of religious worship created by these newcomers, describe and seek to explain their religious practices, enter into relationship with people whose national and religious backgrounds are likely different from their own, and through this process seek to cross over into understanding alternative points of view. Back in the classroom, students will report on their experiences while working together to understand the significance of this growing diversity for American culture and society.
REL 3171 – Ethics in America – Anna Peterson
This class teaches students to reflect on and analyze ethical issues facing contemporary American society. We focus on racial justice, immigration, and religious diversity. As a foundation for thinking about ethical dimensions of these issues, the course will provide an overview of ethics as an academic discipline, including introductions to major ethical theories and thinkers. We will explore the ways that issues such as justice, integration, cultural autonomy, and the common good shape visions of an ethical society. We will also address various obstacles – cultural, economic, and political – that make those visions difficult to achieve.
REL 3191 – Death and Afterlife in World Religions (online)– Carol Rodriguez
This course explores notions of death and the afterlife in many religious traditions as well as in popular culture. It is divided into two major sections. In the first (and larger section, we will look at several topics including: conceptions of a soul (if any), what happens to a person at death, funerary rites, various conceptions of a/the ultimate reality (theistic, monistic, and so forth), notions of salvation and/or liberation, judgment, and various conceptions of time (e.g., linear or cyclical). The second section will explore how some of these religious perspectives are reflected in popular culture and spiritual movements. This section will focus on views of reincarnation and debates over the topic of near-death experiences, and briefly look at what is “death?”
REL 3294 – Apocalypticism – Robert Kawashima
Apocalypticism refers in the first instance to a development within Second Temple Judaism. As such, it originated in the religious culture of ancient Israel and the ancient Near East more generally, and it eventually came to constitute the religious-cultural matrix out of which Christianity was eventually born. This development entailed both a new literary form, namely, the apocalypse (literally “revelation”), and also a new way of viewing reality, what we might refer to as the apocalyptic “worldview.” This course will focus in particular on Jewish and Christian apocalypticism through a survey of apocalyptic texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Jewish literature (including the Dead Sea Scrolls), and the New Testament. While surveying this body of literature and its historical contexts, we will, in the course of the semester, consider various aspects of apocalyptic writing and thinking: the nature of the cosmos, the nature of history, and the literary forms used to convey this religious vision.
REL 3330 – Religions of India – Jonathan Edelmann
What do early South Asian texts say about god, humanity, and world? What terms and concepts do they use to describe human experience? What arguments do they make about language, salvation, knowledge, beauty, soul, and god? This course is an examination of these terms as argued by authors in the early development of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the larger intellectual context of South Asia. Some of the authors covered in this course are Nagarjuna, Kumarila Bhatta, and Shankara. The structure of this course is weekly lectures, readings, and discussions, addressing questions about the terms of Indian religions and philosophies. Through this course, students will learn how the religions of India thought about language, salvation, beauty, soul, and god. This course will develop the ability to comprehend related texts of second to tenth century South Asia. Students develop the ability think historically and philosophically about the early history of South Asia, and students will develop the skill of writing critically and creatively about this period.
REL 3931 – Junior Seminar – Erin Prophet
Intensive introduction to the study of religion.
REL 3938 (Writing Rule 4) – Religion and the Paranormal – Erin Prophet
As many as three-quarters of Americans hold at least one paranormal belief. What does this tell us about the future of religion? We will examine the paranormal as an “other” category for both religion and science. Organized religion uses it to distinguish the miraculous from unsanctioned activities like witchcraft and the occult. Science frames itself as the opposite of superstition. And yet in a “disenchanted” world, it’s important to ask why we continue to be fascinated with the paranormal, as seen in the explosion of the topic in film (horror, superheroes), television, gaming and manga. This course takes a multi-methodological approach that includes critical theory, folklore studies, laboratory research, and cognitive science. It also examines the role of the paranormal in human experience of healing and psychological transformation. Topics include telepathy, precognition, UFOs, government-sponsored research (US and Soviet), cryptozoology (Bigfoot, etc.), hauntings, curses and taboos, near-death experiences, possession (including erotic encounters), mediums, and channeling. Students will learn to look critically at both the phenomena and attempts to explain them. WR 4000.
REL 3938 – The Old Testament in the New – Robert Kawashima
The New Testament is in essence a Jewish text, or better, set of texts. It is thought that almost all of the New Testament writers were apocalyptic Jews who happened to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah – “messiah” being a thoroughly Jewish idea and title that slowly evolved during the roughly thousand-year history of Ancient Israel, the Babylonian Exile, and second-temple Judaism. And all of the New Testament writers were clearly steeped in the Jewish scriptures – what we now know as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, as well as a handful of other sacred texts that didn’t make it into the Jewish canon. As a result, the New Testament abounds with quotations, allusions, and echoes of the “scriptures” of its authors. In this course, we will focus on the biblical allusions found in the New Testament narratives: namely, the four gospels, Acts, and Revelation. Our approach will be literary. How does identifying and analyzing biblical allusions lead to a richer and more accurate interpretation of the New Testament? More generally, students will come to recognize and understand better the Jewish background of the New Testament.
REL 3938/RLG 5338 – Islam in South Asia – Ali Mian
The study of Muslims in South Asia—in India, but also in Bangladesh and Pakistan—is crucial for understanding contemporary Islam in our global world. South Asian Muslims are also active in the Arabian Gulf region and in Western Europe and North America, especially in the UK. In this course, we take “Islam in South Asia” as a case study for studying both Global Islam and religion and modernity more broadly. Our key questions include: How have Muslims in South Asia grappled with colonialism, the rise of science and technology, secular liberalism and globalization, and environmental as well as planetary issues? How have Muslims navigated the question of religious pluralism? What are the specific challenges facing South Asian Muslims in terms of gender equality and sexual liberation? The course readings shed ample light on these questions and will also facilitate discussions of numerous Muslim spaces and institutions in South Asia. The course also highlights cultural and aesthetic dimensions of South Asian Islam in addition to theology, jurisprudence, and Sufism.
REL 3938 – Jews and Orientalism – Katalin Rac
This course reconstructs the history of how European Jews, for centuries Orientalized as the perpetual Other of the west, became influential scholars of Islam, the Middle East, and the many regions, cultures, and religions of Asia. Moreover, as literary authors, painters, composers, and playwrights, Jews depicted the Orient of their imagination and the Asia they saw as travelers. The course asks how the political inclusion of Jews in European societies and continuing hostilities toward them informed their contributions to the west’s knowledge of the east. In addition, it investigates how Jewish communities of the Middle East, Arabia, Central Asia, and India influenced European Jewish scholarly, cultural, and political attitudes to Asia. Last but not least, the course examines how the image of the biblical Zion shaped European Jewish Zionism and the creation of a modern Jewish state.
REL 4188 – Environmental Values and Practice – Anna Peterson
This course explores the relationship between attitudes and actions regarding the natural environment. We will ask how people connect their values to their actions (or not), what motivates people to change, how different ethical theories relate to (and shed light on) environmental behavior, the ways that material structures constrain or enable moral actions, and the challenges of environmental practice at different geographic scales. We will draw on interdisciplinary sources including ethics, conservation behavior, and moral psychology.
REL 4368/RLG 5361 – Global Islam – Terje Ostebo
As one of the world’s largest and fastest growing religions, Islam exerts significant global influence in politics, culture, and society. This course addresses the urgent need for a deeper understanding of the diversity of Muslim cultures and societies in the contemporary global context. With a focus on lived Islam in the contemporary world, the course will provide knowledge about the diversity and complexity of Global Islam, and provide a unique opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of the richness of Muslim cultures and societies in the global context. The course will have a combined topical and geographical approach, and study Islam as it intersects with broader social, cultural, political and economic dynamics, and focus on areas such as America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North-Africa/Middle East. The course will be of an interdisciplinary character, drawing from perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities.
REL 5937 – Muslim Thought and Practice II – Ali Mian
An in-depth study of primary and secondary texts on early modern and modern Muslim thought and practice, with particular attention to the formation of Islamic reformist trends, Muslim-majority states, Islamism and political Islam, and intellectual and cultural institutions of contemporary Islam.
RLG 6036 – Method and Theory II – Benjamin Soares
Study of religion in light of recent challenges in the humanities and social sciences. Special attention to the concept of religion and its origins in Christian culture of Western Europe; and to the engagement of religion in colonial culture.
RLG 6126 – Religion in the Americas – Robin Wright
This graduate-level course offers a long-range, historical and hemispheric overview of the encounters and exchanges among the religions and spiritual traditions of the Americas. Course readings and discussions focus on six broad thematic areas: 1. Theoretical and Methodological Questions on a Hemispheric Approach to the study of Religions in the Americas; 2. Indigenous Religious Traditions of the Americas; 3. Colonial Encounters Part I: Christianity and Indigenous Religious Traditions; 4. Colonial Encounters Part II: African Religious Traditions and Diaspora; 5. Borderland Religions and Post-Colonial Encounters; 6. Globalization, Transnationalism, and Migration.
REL 6183 – Environmental Ethics – Anna Peterson
This course explores theoretical approaches and models in environmental ethics, including ecocentrism, theistic and non-theistic religious ethics, ecofeminism, social ecology, bioregionalism, and others. Special attention will be paid to thinkers and debates within the discipline of religious studies, although readings will also come from philosophy, anthropology, environmental studies, education, ecology, and related fields. Throughout the class, we will pay attention not only to theoretical issues but also to the real-world implications and applications of ethical theories. Thus we will explore areas such as environmental education, ecological restoration, and sustainable resource consumption, in addition to philosophically-oriented topics and readings. We will also discuss the process of teaching environmental ethics, at both university and secondary levels, in both practical and theoretical dimensions.