Historical introduction to Buddhist thought, scriptures, practices, and institutions. Attention given to Theravada, Mahayana, and Tantric Buddhism in India, as well as selected non-Indian forms.Recitation Section Required.

Lecture and discussion. An introductory survey that studies East Asian Buddhism as an integral , living religious tradition. Emphasis on the reading of original treatises and historiographies in translation, while historical events are discussed in terms of their relevance to contemporary problems confronted by Buddhism.

Survey of Christianity from its beginnings through the Reformation. Based on lectures and discussions of readings in primary source translations, this course will cover prominent developments in the history of Christianity. The structure will allow students to rethink commonly held notions about the evolution of modern Christianity with the texture of historical influence.

Development of the Three Teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism: folk eclecticism; the contemporary situation in Chinese cultural areas. Readings drawn from primary texts, poetry, and popular prose.

An exploration of how religion has shaped modern society and culture and has influenced science, politics, economics and art. The course begins with the Reformation and proceeds to consider the critiques of religion during the Enlightenment and the responses to these critiques during the 19th and early 20th century. Consideration is also given to the theological background of leading social theorists like Adam Smith, Marx, Freud, Durkheim and Nietzsche.

What is religion? This course will seek to engage a range of answers to this question, beginning with some of the reasons we might want to ask it. Acknowledging the urgency of the matter, the class is not a survey of all religious traditions. Rather, it will seek to address religion as a comparative problem between traditions (how does one religion compare with another? Who invented comparative religion?) as well as between scholarly and methodological approaches (does one live--or ask about--religion the way one asks about Law? Culture? Science? Politics?). We will seek to engage the problem of perspective in, for example, the construction of a conflict between religion and science, religion and modernity, as well as some of the distinctions now current in the media (news and movies) between religion and politics, religion and economics. Historical and textual material, as well as aesthetic practices and institutions will provide the general and studied background for the lectures.

An introduction, by critical methods, to the religious history of ancient Israel against the background of the ancient Near East.

A survey of American religion from colonization to the Civil War, with an emphasis on the ways religion has shaped American history, culture, and identity.

This course will use the city to address and investigate a number of central concepts in the study of religion, including ritual, community, worldview, conflict, tradition, and discourse. We will explore together what we can learn about religions by focusing on place, location, and context.

An introduction to the comparative study of religion focusing on dominant approaches to the conceptualization, interpretation, and explanation of religious phenomena and on key issues relating to the methodologies appropriate to such investigations.

Prerequisite: the instructor's permission.

With the Dalai Lama's marked interest in recent advances in neuroscience, the question of the compatibility between Buddhist psychology and neuroscience has been raised in a number of conferences and studies. This course will examine the state of the question, look at claims made on both sides, and discuss whether or not there is a convergence between Buddhist discourse about the mind and scientific discourse about the brain.

Prerequisites: Instructor's permission.

Latin Christendom, 1050-1130, as general background for the First Crusade, 1095-1099. Readings in both primary and secondary sources in English translation.

Prerequisites: Instructor's permission required.

An examination of a series of episodes that are of special consequence for papal history in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Readings in both primary and secondary sources in English translation.

The platform of every modern Islamist political party calls for the implementation of the sharia. This term is invariably (and incorrectly) interpreted as an unchanging legal code dating back to 7th century Arabia. In reality, Islamic law is an organic and constantly evolving human project aimed at ascertaining God's will in a given historical and cultural context. This course offers a detailed and nuanced look at the Islamic legal methodology and its evolution over the last 1400 years. The first part of the semester is dedicated to classical Islamic jurisprudence, concentrating on the manner in which jurists used the Qur'an, the Sunna (the model of the Prophet), and rationality to articulate a coherent legal system. The second part of the course focuses on those areas of the law that engender passionate debate and controversy in the contemporary world. Specifically, we examine the discourse surrounding Islamic family (medical ethics, marriage, divorce, women's rights) and criminal (capital punishment, apostasy, suicide/martyrdom) law. The course concludes by discussing the legal implications of Muslims living as minorities in non-Islamic countries and the effects of modernity on the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence.

Prerequisites: Instructor permission is required.
Background in Talmud and Hebrew is encouraged.

This course examines the rich world of Talmudic narrative and the way it mediates between conflicting perspectives on a range of topics: life and death; love and sexuality; beauty and superficiality; politics and legal theory; religion and society; community and non-conformity; decision-making and the nature of certainty. While we examine each text closely, we will consider different scholars' answers - and our own answers - to the questions, how are we to view Talmudic narrative generally, both as literature and as cultural artifact?

This seminar examines the role of religion in the antislavery movement, foreign missions, and women's rights in the nineteenth century, and its relevance to contemporary humanitarian activism.

Lecture and discussion. An introductory survey that studies East Asian Buddhism as an integral , living religious tradition. Emphasis on the reading of original treatises and historiographies in translation, while historical events are discussed in terms of their relevance to contemporary problems confronted by Buddhism.

The origin and development of central themes of traditional Hinduism. Emphasis on basic religious literature and relation to Indian culture. Readings include original sources in translation.Discussion Section Required.

What is religion? This course will seek to engage a range of answers to this question, beginning with some of the reasons we might want to ask it. Acknowledging the urgency of the matter, the class is not a survey of all religious traditions. Rather, it will seek to address religion as a comparative problem between traditions (how does one religion compare with another? Who invented comparative religion?) as well as between scholarly and methodological approaches (does one live--or ask about--religion the way one asks about Law? Culture? Science? Politics?). We will seek to engage the problem of perspective in, for example, the construction of a conflict between religion and science, religion and modernity, as well as some of the distinctions now current in the media (news and movies) between religion and politics, religion and economics. Historical and textual material, as well as aesthetic practices and institutions will provide the general and studied background for the lectures.

Prerequisites: instructors permission

An investigation of the main textual sources of the Buddhist ethical tradition, with attention to their historical operation within Buddhist societies, as well as consideration of their continuing influence on comtemporary developments, Western as well as Asian.

Survey of American religion from the Civil War to the present, with an emphasis on the ways religion has shaped American history, culture, and identity. .

An introduction to the comparative study of religion focusing on dominant approaches to the conceptualization, interpretation, and explanation of religious phenomena and on key issues relating to the methodologies appropriate to such investigations.

Prerequisite: the instructor's permission.

Prerequisites: Open to students who have taken one previous ocurse in either Buddhism, Chinese religions, or a history course on China or East Asian.

The course examines some central Mahayana Buddhist beliefs and practices through an in-depth study of the Lotus sutra. Schools (Tiantai/Tendai, Nichiren) and cultic practices such as sutra-chanting, meditation, confessional rites, and Guanyin worship based on the scripture. East Asian art and literature inspired by it.

Prerequisites: Previous work in biblical studies or early Christianity preferred; permission of instructor. Limited to 20 students.

Examines the religious and social worlds of ancient Mediterranean gnosis alongside its modern remnants and appropriations. Special attention is paid to scholarly reconstructions of ancient "gnosticism" and to theoretical problems associated with the categories of orthodoxy and heresy in Christian history. Strong emphasis on reading primary sources in translation.

Prerequisites: Instructor's permission.

Latin Christendom, 1050-1130, as general background for the First Crusade, 1095-1099. Readings in both primary and secondary sources in English translation.

Prerequisites: Instructor's permission required.

An examination of a series of episodes that are of special consequence for papal history in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Readings in both primary and secondary sources in English translation.

Corequisites: Permission of instructor required.

Although Protestant notions of textuality and the disjunction of matter and spirit have exerted an enduring influence over much of the study of religion, this seminar will explore the role of material objects in both representing and creating the categories and paradigms through which religion has been understood and performed in pre-modern East Asia. By focusing upon the material context for religious performance-by asking, in other words, how religious traditions are constituted through and by material objects-the course will seek to shed light on a cluster of issues concerning the relationship between art, ritual performance, and transmission.

This seminar examines the changing purpose and meaning of marriage in the history of the United States from European colonization through contemporary debates over gay marriage. Topics include religious views of marriage, interracial marriage, and the political uses of the institution.

Examines the relationship between morality and religious faith in selected works of Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. Examines Kant's claim that religious thought and practice arise out of the moral life, and Kierkegaard's distinction between morality and religious faith.

This seminar will reexamine the question of place and locality in an era characterized by virtualization and delocalization brought by digital media, electronic technology, and globalization. Readings will include theoretical as well as literary and artistic texts. Special attention will be given to the question of sacred places through a consideration of forests, deserts, gardens, mountains, caves, seas, and cemeteries.

Prerequisites: Majors and concentrators receive first priority

Are Americans becoming more secular or more spiritual (not religious), or both? What are the connections between secularism and what is typically called non-organized religion or the spiritual in the United States? We will address these questions by looking at some of the historical trajectories that shape contemporary debates and designations (differences) between spiritual, secular and religious.