Freshman Seminars

The Center solicits proposals from humanities and social sciences faculty for new freshman seminars on topics significantly concerned with the study of religion. Freshman seminars provide a unique opportunity for students to work in a small setting with a professor and a few other students on a topic of special interest. Such seminars are in high demand by students and often result in new regular courses being added to the curriculum. Prior to the Center’s efforts in this area, very few freshman seminars were offered on religion. This gap is now being filled, as the Center provides incentives for faculty to teach in this area.

The freshman seminar to be offered in 2008-2009 will be:

"The Varieties of Religious Experience Today" taught by João Biehl, Anthropology.

The freshman seminar offered for 2007-2008 was:

FRS 116 “People of the (Comic) Book: Jews and Their Images in American and French Popular Culture” taught by Andre Benhaim, French.

Course Descpription:
 “Thou shalt not make (engraved) images” says the Second Commandment. Yet, this injunction has always been challenged and redefined by Jews. Here, we explore the role and the representation of Jews and Jewishness in one of the most popular art forms of the 20th century: comic books. We do so by comparing two cultures, American and French, each seminal in the birth of the genre, but in very different ways, and in very contrasting historical contexts for Jews. In America, comics, with virtually all its iconic superheroes, was created by children of European Jewish immigrants fleeing persecutions, yet it is only recently that Jewishness, long effaced behind pseudonyms and apparently secular characters, has become more visible. And after the war, it was Jewish authors addressing Jewish issues who gave the genre its legitimacy with the modern “graphic novel,” epitomized by the Pulitzer Prize-winning testimony of the Holocaust, Maus. In Europe, on the other hand, where the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée matured much sooner, Jews had long been represented in comics, but mostly in depreciatory images: from the Wandering Jew to the caricatures of the Dreyfus Affair, to subtle clichés in the most popular works, including Tintin. Only recently have Jews begun to appear in a positive, assertive light, especially in the influential works of the Nouvelle Bande Dessinée, by authors like Joann Sfar, with The Rabbi’s Cat and Klezmer, who encompasses Sephardic and Ashkenazi cultures, and Christophe Blain, with Isaac the Pirate, the epic story of a fictitious Jewish painter in pre-Revolution France. From superheroes to (invented) self-portraits, this course will thus examine how “Jewish” comic books offer a paradoxical and artistically stimulating response to the ambiguous interdiction of representation that lays at the heart of Judaism, and even a challenge to the domination of images in Western culture.

2006-2007:
Kevin Kruse, History, “The Religious Right in Modern America”

2005-2006:
Leora Batnitzky, Religion, "Religion and Science: Biology, Minds, and Souls"
Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, Sociology, "God of Many Faces: Comparative Perspectives on Migration and Religion"

2004-2005:
Adam Elga, Philosophy, "Religious Conviction, Religious Disagreement."

2003-2004:
Michael Cadden, Theater and Dance, "Strange Angels: Some Twentieth-Century Annunciations."
Maria DiBattista, English, "Modern Heresies and the Literature of Belief."
Wendy Heller, Music, "The Music of the Jews: Worship, Culture, and Spirituality from Ancient to Modern Times."
Tom Leisten, Art and Archaeology,"Reconciling Unity and Diversity: Islamic Art and Islamic Culture."
Negin Nabavi, Near Eastern Studies, "Islamic Movements in the Modern Middle East."
Carolyn Rouse, Anthropology, African American Studies, "Engaged Surrender: Race, Gender, and Religion in the U.S."
Valerie Smith, English, African American Studies, "Religion and Resistance in Narratives of Slavery."
Tim Watson, English, "Conversions."