COURSES TAUGHT BY RELIGIOUS STUDIES FACULTY
Intro to Judaism RELST-UA.679 (Same as HBRJD-UA.102), Reed
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00am-2:00pm. Class #1256. 4 pts. Online
Provides a general introduction to Judaism in its many ancient and modern expressions. Students are introduced both to the historical narrative of the Jewish people and the beliefs and practices of the Jewish religion. We address the questions of "what do Jews believe?" and "what do Jews do?" Ideas and motifs of Judaism to be addressed include: the Bible in Judaism, rabbinic literature, theology, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) and philosophy, Jewish law, Jewish nationalism, anti-Semitism, messianism, Jewish culture and identity, the synagogue, ritual and worship, life cycle, festivals and calendar. We will take advantage of the many resources in New York City for understanding Jewish history and culture. This will include visits to the Jewish Museum, The Center for Jewish History, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, the Lower East Side, and the second cemetery (1805-29) of the Spanish and Portuguese community. These visits complement our in-class topics of study. All museum admission costs are covered by NYU.
COURSES TAUGHT BY AFFILIATED FACULTY
Varities of Mystical Experience RELST-UA.240 (Same as HBRJD-UA.240), Russ-Fishbane
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00am-2:00pm. Class #1255. 4 pts. Online
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Mysticism occupies a central place in the study of religion as a lived and transcendental experience. This course examines key approaches to the study of mysticism from the lens of comparative religion, religious theory, and neuroscience. It exposes students to classic mystical texts in the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The class also studies the ways in which a number of medieval and modern mystics strove to merge religious traditions or to transcend them altogether. We explore both direct and indirect accounts of mystical experience in its rich variety through the medium of text, film, music, and dance.
Ancient Performance: Global Classical Drama RELST-UA.650 (Same as THEA-UA.732.002), Meineck
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 12:00pm-4:00pm. Class #1584. 4 pts. Online
When we think of ancient drama most of us imagine the Geeks and perhaps some Roman drama. Although these plays are justifiably famous, they were not created in a cultural vacuum. In this course, we will be widening the concept of ancient drama to examine the performance traditions of other ancient cultures as well as the Greeks.
This seminar course involves the close and live reading of epic, poetic and dramatic texts and the study of performance conditions from several ancient cultures culminating in the ancient Greeks. Ancient Greek drama is usually presented as the “origin” of the theatre but even though they may be our earliest play scripts we can know a lot more about ancient drama if we embed the Greeks within the cultures that surrounded and influenced them. This includes Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Africa, India, China, and the Paleolithic and Neolithic inhabitants of the Mediterranean. We will also place texts from Mesoamerica and The Malian kingdom in Africa alongside Greek drama to learn about orality, ritual, dance, masking, chorality, music, narrative, space, altered state, shamanism, festivals and gods. We will then read Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides with this knowledge and see them as vibrant performative cultural artefacts and not just literary texts and gain a deeper understanding of performance and drama in general.
Students will learn a great deal about ancient drama, global performance traditions, narrative development, mythology and textual analysis. Recommended for those interested in performing, dramatic writing, the ancient world, mythology, Greek drama, classics, history, cross-cultural studies, religious studies.
We will be reading several texts live in class, but no acting experience is required.