Religion

IDS2935: Authentic Leadership: How to Lead without Selling your Soul – Anantharam

This class will introduce students to a variety of leadership styles –from a diverse range of national and international public figures, scholars, and theorists all of whom have drawn on mindfulness, intentionality, spirituality, non-violence, social justice, and compassion as informing their leadership strategy. The purpose of this class is to help you become fluent in these various leadership styles and to recognize approaches to leadership that align best with your own. Not everyone wants to lead given the corporate business expectations on leaders to answer to people who are writing their paychecks—but in a world of dysfunctional and morally bankrupt leadership, people are searching for “authentic” leadership. This class will provide a toolkit of leadership style from various social and behavioral science disciplines to explore, evaluate, and discern between leading authentically and selling your soul.

REL2300: Introduction to World Religions – Ahrens James

Origin, historical development, and key figures, concepts, symbols, practices and institutions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and East Asian traditions, including Taoism, Shinto, and Confucianism.

REL2362: Introduction to Islam – Sanni

Historical introduction to Islamic tradition. The foundational elements of the tradition, based on the life of Prophet Muhammad and the text of the Qur’an and on an examination of subsequent Islamic expressions.

REL3082: Global Ethics – Peterson

Explores ethical dimensions of global social, political, and environmental issues. Introduction to and application of diverse theoretical approaches in philosophical and religion ethics to contemporary global issues such as human rights, war and peace, climate change, and public health.

REL3120: Religion & Migration – Choi

Offers a survey of the roles that religion has played in some significant movements of people into and out of the U.S. from the pre-Colonial period to the present.

REL3191: Death & Afterlife – Narayanan

Examines conceptions of death and the afterlife from the perspectives of various religious traditions and popular culture. Considers certain ethical issues related to death and how some American religious traditions engage with such issues.

REL3213: Hebrew Bible as Literature – Kawashima

Intensive introduction to the literary study of the Hebrew Bible within the context of ancient Near Eastern literature and history.

REL3249: The Christian Gospels – Kawashima

Redaction-critical study of selected portions of the canonical Gospels with particular attention to the development of traditions about Jesus in the earliest church.

REL3305: Global Christianity – Choi

Presents Christianity as an agent of globalization, contributing to the homogeneity and heterogeneity of contemporary society and creating the doctrinal and ritualistic diversity of Christianity in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Analyzes the patterns in which Christianity continues and changes in different geographical regions.

REL3330: Religions of India – Narayanan

Historical look at the major religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent.

REL3381: Religion in Latin America – Choi

Main religious traditions in Latin America: native religions, Catholicism in its various forms, Protestantism, and African-based religions.

REL3410: Religion & Nationalism – Anantharam

Direct and indirect influences of religion on nationalism and the relationship that exists between them historically and today. Understanding this relationship is important to national security and national interests in the US and globally. Explores topics of colonialism, linguistic nationalism, identity, gender, social movements, and family.

REL3931: Junior Seminar – Poceski

Intensive introduction to the study of religion. Required of all religion majors during the junior year.

REL3938: Taoism & Chinese Culture – Wang

Taoism (now often written “Daoism”) is a Chinese cultural tradition focused primarily on methods, strategies and communities for individual and socio-political integration with the totality of reality, including its transcendent dimensions. Taoism encompasses a broad array of moral, social, philosophical, religious and cultural ideas, values, and practices. Like other religions around the world, Taoism included some contemplatives, whose orientation often seems attractive to modern people— particularly to Westerners looking for alternatives to their own cultural traditions. In this course, you will learn that Taoism is an ancient and immense tradition of great subtlety and complexity. You will see how its many dimensions evolved to answer the needs of people of different periods and different propensities, and you should learn respect for, and understanding of, the teachings and practices of all those people. Taoism is not some abstract “timeless wisdom” that simply consists of a set of warm, fuzzy ideas. Rather, Taoism is a specific set of cultural traditions that evolved within the historical context of ancient, medieval, and modern China, evolving to meet the spiritual needs of people in specific historical situations. The multi-sources and complexity of Taoist belief systems and ritual practice, and the influence of Taoism upon Chinese thought, religion, art, culture and society will also be covered.

REL3938: Arguing Jewish Law – Lidsky

The course is designed to improve the students’ persuasive skills through reading the Talmud, other Rabbinic Texts and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The course covers the Rabbinic system of persuasion and Aristotle’s theory of Logos.

REL4092: Ethics, Utopia, Dystopia – Feller

This course examines the ways that utopian, dystopian, and anti-utopian ideas interact with ethics, understood as systematic thinking about the good for individuals and societies. We will focus in particular on the ways that dystopias and utopias – fictional, theoretical, and also historical – serve as political and ethical critiques of present conditions and present positive visions of a good society. Readings will include fictional utopias, historical utopian communities, and theoretical analyses of the idea of utopia.

REL4103: Religion & Nature in North America – Taylor

Investigates ways that religion and nature have evolved and influenced one another during the cultural, political, and environmental history of North America since European contact.

REL4141: Religion & Social Change – Peterson

Investigates diverse relations between religion and processes of social change. Uses both theoretical and ethnographic case studies to explore issues raised by religion’s social role in the US, Britain, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

REL4400: Religion & Psychology – Mian

Covers history of philosophy and religion on psychological theories of consciousness, intelligence, cognition, as well as the mind’s role in the construction of knowledge, ignorance and morality, and it facilitates students in articulating their psychological models to explain human experience, belief, and well-being.