2007-2008 SPRING COURSE OFFERINGS
Undergraduate Program
REL 222
Religion in Modern Thought and Film
Professor(s): Jeffrey L. Stout
Description: This course surveys conceptions of religion that have been influential in the modern period, and critically examines the theories of knowledge, interpretation, society, and culture associated with them. Among the approaches considered are Augustinian theology, Enlightenment skepticism, Marxism, cultural anthropology, phenomenology, feminism, and Freudian psychology. Films by such directors as Hitchcock and Von Trier are used to explore the main issues covered. Two lectures, one precept, one screening.
REL 251
The New Testament and Christian Origins
Professor(s): AnneMarie Luijendijk
Description: A historical introduction to early Christian texts within and outside of the New Testament canon. The course emphasizes studying ancient sources relevant for early Christianity from a variety of backgrounds (Jewish, Greco-Roman, Christian) and teaches different strategies to read these texts. When possible, archaeological remains and papyrological sources are brought in as material context. The precepts function to explore important topics such as early Christian attitudes towards slavery and the position of women in Early Christianity and to bring up debates in contemporary culture involving New Testament and other early Christian texts.
REL 256
Sacred Space in the History of Christianity
Professor(s): Jon Pahl
Description: How have Christians in selected times and places oriented themselves imaginatively - via discourse and practice, in relationship to places? The course will be both chronologically and topically organized, moving through the early, medieval, and modern history of Christianity via attention to relationships between Christians and nature (waters, light, trees, rocks); the body; pilgrimage; hell and heaven; and built environments such as shrines, monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and cities.
REL 262
"Can these bones live?" An Introduction to Christian Theology
Professor(s) : Robert W. Jenson
Description: The question, taken from one of the most famous passages in the Bible, the prophet Ezekiel's vision of "them bones... them dry bones," functions here in two ways. In the one way, it is the question from which all Christian theology starts. The story told by Israel 's Scripture reaches a climax when God's project with humanity seems to be a heap of bones; then the question is whether this is an end or a beginning. The church is the community of those who see the resurrection of Jesus as God's resolution of this question; and all her theology is reflection on that event. In the other way, modernity has generally regarded the church's faith as itself dead and dried up; and we must consider that possibility.
REL 311
Religious Existentialism
Professor(s): Leora F. Batnitzky
Description: An in-depth study of existentialist philosophies of, among others, Søren Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. The course will focus on their respective arguments about the relations between philosophy and existence, reason and revelation, divine law and love, philosophy, religion, and politics, and Judaism and Christianity.
REL 320 /AAS 320
African-American Religious History
Professor(s): Judith L. Weisenfeld
Description: Reading , reflection, discussion, and writing upon the religious history and culture of African-Americans with particular attention to ritual, music, literature, and creative expression. Folktales, blues, spirituals, gospel music, the chanted sermon, worship traditions, magical-medicinal practices among black Americans will be examined through literary texts, visual presentation, public performances, and film.
REL 323 /EAS 315
Visual Worlds of Himalayan Religions
Professor(s): Andrew H. Quintman
Description: How do Tibetan Buddhists look at religious images? What do pilgrims in Nepal see when faced with sacred monuments? Why do devotees in Bhutan display erotic caricatures in public? This seminar will explore the ubiquitous role of images and imagining in the religious traditions of the Himalayan region. Readings and viewings will examine the painting, sculpture, architecture, and performing arts of the Himalaya (including Tibet , Nepal , north India , and Bhutan ), placing them in the context of local religious beliefs, ritual practices, and literary canons. The seminar aims to understand how Himalayan cultures produce religious images and the ways of seeing that invest them with meaning. Classes will address specific modes of visual representation, the relationships between text and image, the social lives of images, as well as processes of reading and interpretation. Later sections will survey broader visual representations of the Himalaya , both as self-reflections and in the imagination of the western gaze.
REL 341 /JDS 341
Jews and Judaism in Ancient Egypt and Other Diaspora Communities
Professor(s): Martha Himmelfarb
Description: This course covers the development of Judaism in the diaspora from 33 BCE to 200 CE, including the rich body of literature produced by Egyptian Jewry, the best documented of the ancient diaspora communities, the archeological and epigraphic evidence for Judaism in Rome and Asia Minor, and the writings of ancient non-Jews on the Jews and Judaism.
REL 352
Jesus: From Earliest Sources to Contemporary Interpretations
Professor(s): Elaine H. Pagels
Description: In this seminar we will investigate the earliest known sources--both gospels in the New Testament and "gnostic gospels" outside the NT, including the [Gospels of Thomas], [Mary Magdalene], and [Philip]; second, we will explore a range of attempts to place Jesus in historical context, third, we will look at interpretations of Jesus in some poetry, theology, fiction, and film.
REL 367 /AAS 346
The American Jeremiad and Social Criticism in the U.S.
Professor(s): Eddie S. Glaude
Description: This course examines the religious and philosophical roots of prophecy as a form of social criticism in American intellectual and religious history. Particular attention is given to what is called the American Jeremiad, a mode of public exhortation that joins social criticism to spiritual renewal. Michael Walzer, Sacvan Bercovitch, and Edward Said serve as key points of departure in assessing prophetic criticisms, insights and limitations. Attention is also given to the role of black prophetic critics such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cornel West.
REL 377 /AAS 377
Race and Religion in America
Professor(s): Judith L. Weisenfeld
Description: This course examines the ways in which constructions of race have shaped how varied Americans have constructed religious identities and fostered religious experience, as well as made meaning of the religions of others. Topics addressed include American interpretations of race in the Bible, religion and racial slavery, religious constructions of whiteness, and religious resistance to notions of race. Readings are drawn from a range of primary and secondary sources.
REL 380 /AAS 380
The American Sermon: Homiletics in the Mainstream and on the Margins
Professor(s): Wallace D. Best
Description: The sermon is one of the most unique contributions to the American literary and oral tradition. This course will examine sermonic texts and recordings from the late eighteenth century up to the present. We will explore these written and recorded homilies, placing both the sermons and the sermonizers in historical context. In this way we want to discover not only the theological perspectives contained in the sermons but also the cultural, social, economic, and political situations in the U. S. that helped shape them. Rather than a concern for the "practice" of preaching as one would find in a regular course in homiletics, our course will focus on sermons as literature and historical narratives. The course, then, is a history and literature course that will focus on what has been the craft of sermon writing and performance in the U.S. over the past four hundred years.
REL 382
Death and the Afterlife in Buddhist Cultures
Professor(s): Jacqueline I. Stone
Description: In this seminar we will study Buddhist approaches to death, dying, and the afterlife in a variety of Buddhist cultures. Topics may include theories of ritual and anthropological studies of mortuary rites; Buddhist cosmology and the doctrine of karmic causality; Buddhism, the family, and rites for ancestors; Buddhist funerary and mortuary practices; tales of exemplary deaths; accounts of journeys to the hells and other postmortem realms; the placation of ghosts and revenants; and changes in contemporary Buddhist funerals. We will consider both Buddhist doctrinal teachings and social roles with respect to death and the afterlife, as well as interactions of Buddhism with local religious cultures.
For more detailed information on each course, please visit:
http://registrar1.princeton.edu/course/course.cfm