Examines Jain history, belief, and practice. Prerequisite: RELG 1040, RELH 2090, 2110, or instructor permission.

This seminar takes as its point of departure Carolyn Bynum's statements: "No scholar studying religion, no participant in ritual, is ever neuter. Religious experience is the experience of men and women, and in no known society is this experience the same." The unifying theme is gender and Buddhism, exploring historical, textual and social questions relevant to the status of women and men in the Buddhist world from its origins to the present day.

Reading historical and social analyses along with a range of environmental theologies, this seminar investigates entanglements of Christianity with modern environmental problems. It considers the influence of Christianities in various environmental imaginations, and the role of ecological science and environmental stress in reshaping religious imaginations.

Common to all the world¿s philosophies is engagement with the claim that all that exists in the universe is ultimately one, whether in one¿s awareness or in actual fact. This course examines how Hindus and Buddhists have articulated this idea, basing the same in detailed analysis of one¿s subjective awareness of reality, in an examination of the nature of existence independent of one¿s experience of it, and on the basis of scriptural revelation.

Common to all the world¿s philosophies is engagement with the claim that all that exists in the universe is ultimately one, whether in one¿s awareness or in actual fact. This course examines how Hindus and Buddhists have articulated this idea, basing the same in detailed analysis of one¿s subjective awareness of reality, in an examination of the nature of existence independent of one¿s experience of it, and on the basis of scriptural revelation.

Islam began strange and will return to strange as it began. So blessings to the strange ones! So goes a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, celebrating the virtue of truth over conformity. This course examines Islamic movements that have sought to push back against religious and political norms of their times. Along the way, we read debates about orthodoxy: what are the limits of the Muslim community and how are such limits contested?

Surveys the history of Christianity in the Byzantine world and the Middle East from late antiquity (age of emperor Justinian) until the fall of Constantinople.

Studies the structure and content of Jewish law in terms of its normative function, its historical background, its theological and philosophical principles, and its role in contemporary society both Jewish and general.

This course examines the history of the interplay between theology, morality, social movements, and politics in America. Topics covered include temperance and prohibition, abolition, labor, civil rights, anti-war and pacifism, and environmentalism. Lecture, weekly readings (often a book), class presentations, short papers, and original research.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of African Religions.