Topics: The Political Economy of Religion RELST-GA.1760, de Vries
Wednesdays 11:00am - 1:45pm, 726 BW, Rm 542
Next to law, economy, more specifically, political economy holds an important key to understanding the historical role--the genesis and value--of religious concepts and practices in modernity and well before. In fact, oikonomia, broadly defined, is an eminently theological category, used by the Church Fathers to spell out the meaning of the Trinity and the providential logic it enables. This graduate seminar will explore the founding ideas, texts and arguments, on which the imbrication of religion and economy has long been based, drawing on relevant examples taken from early Christianity, medieval and early modern political theology, up to Marx's critique of political economy in Capital, and beyond.
Islamic Law & Society RELST-GA.1852 (Same as MEIS-GA.1852), Katz
Thursday 4:45pm-7:35pm. 4 pts. Online.
This course explores the complex relationships between Islamic legal discourses and institutions and the social contexts that shape and are shaped by them. Focusing on the areas of property law, penal law, and ritual law, we will read scholarship using a range of methodologies to address instantiations of Islamic law in the premodern and contemporary periods.
Topics Seminar: Lived Islam RELST-GA.2467 (Same as MEIS-GA.1770), Alatas
Tuesday 2:00pm-4:45pm. 4 pts. Online.
This course is an introduction to historical and anthropological approaches to the study of Islam as it is lived out in the daily livs of Muslims. It is concerned with possible methodologies of studying the observable phenomena of Islam as actually practiced in different social and historical contexts. We examine how scholars, leaders, and ordinary Muslims negotiate varities of religious experience in their everyday lives. The first part of the course surveys several dominant historical and anthropological approaches to Islam and the debates they entail. In the second part of the course, we read historical and ethnographic monographs from different parts of the Muslim world to examine how Islam becomes sociologically and politcally manifested in the lived expereince of its adherents, whether through rituals and knowledge transmissions or social conflicts and contestations. In the process of examining these cases, we raise questions about the difficulties involved in studying people's most strongly held values and beliefs. In doing so, we consider how we can seriously think about "Islam" not only as a historically-situated religion or a moral tradition, but also as an object of academic study.
M.A. Thesis Research RELST-GA.2902, Staff
Class #2586, 4 pts.
Directed Study- Christianity RELST-GA.2922, Staff
Class #2587, 1-4 pts.
Directed Study- Judaism RELST-GA.2932, Staff
Class #2588, 1-4 pts.
Directed Study- Islam RELST-GA.2942, Staff
Class #2589, 1-4 pts.
Directed Study- Asian Religion RELST-GA.2952, Staff
Class #2590, 1-4 pts.
Directed Study- Philosophy of Religion RELST-GA.2962, Staff
Class #2591, 1-4 pts.
Directed Study- Topics in Religion RELST-GA.2972.001. and 2972.002, Staff
Class #2592, 24468 1-4 pts.
COURSES APPLICABLE TO THE JOURNALISM CONCENTRATION
Writing, Research and Reporting Workshop II (Literary Reportage) JOUR-GA.1022
Monday 2:00pm - 5:00pm. Class #3078, 4 pts. Room TBA
Portfolio JOUR-GA.1044, Featherstone
Wednesday 9:30am-1:10pm. Class #2799, 4 pts. 7 East 12th, LL23