Advanced Seminar: Religion and Law RELST-UA.15, de Vries
Wednesday 11:00am-1:45pm. Class #9819. 4 pts. 726 Broadway, Rm 542
Varying topics with cross-cultural applicability (for example: ritual, the body, sacrifice, religion and the state). Students examine topics within context of their own area of specialization, as well as within other traditions. This semester's topic is Religion and Law. Check back here for upcoming detailed course description.
Gender, Sexuality, & The Body in Early Christianity RELST-UA.86 (Same as CLASS-UA.XXX), Cady
Monday, Wednesday 3:30pm-4:45pm. Class #21471. 4 pts. Location TBA
Reexamines the light shed by ancient writings (and other evidence) not only on the role(s) of women in ancient Christian groups but also on the ideologies of gender promoted or assumed by those groups. The focus, while predominantly on women, also extends to the way in which gender identities were constructed and adhered to by males and females.
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00am-12:15pm. Class #20948. 4 pts. Location TBA
Topics: Race and Religion RELST-UA.244, Baysa
Monday, Wednesday 9:30am-10:45am. Class #9820. 4 pts. Location TBA
Seminar: The German Intellectual Tradition RELST-UA.991 (Same as GERM-UA.244 and COLIT-UA.244), de Vries
Thursday, 4:55pm-7:25pm. Class #XXXX. 4 pts. Location TBA
Immanuel Kant's 1781 Kritik der reinen Vernunft coined the critical terms, next to developing influential transcendental arguments, that all serious subsequent claims of reason in modern philosophical discourse have had to contend with ever since its first publication. From the Neo-Kantian and phenomenological schools of thought, via Frankfurt School Neomarxism, up to the reception of contemporary analytic philosophy (as in so-called analytic German Idealism), Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy has remained the touchstone and central reference. This course will survey the remarkable legacy of Kant's critical vocabulary, the so-called canon of pure reason and the architectonic or art of constructing a philosophical system, as he saw it, and investigate the ways in which this modern classic has fundamentally reoriented the philosophical imagination and debate to the present day.
Pagan and Christian Mythologies in Antiquity RELST-UA.992 (Same as CLASS-UA.XXX), Cady
Monday, Wednesday 2:00pm-3:15pm. Class #21572. 4 pts. Location TBA
Texts and Ideas: God CORE-UA.400, de Vries
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30pm-1:45pm. Class #8114. 4 pts. Location TBA
What or who is- or was- “God”? And what or who might “He” still - or yet again- become, for us, whether we consider ourselves true believers or not? Do admittedly insufficient philosophical proofs for His existence that, throughout the ages have been attempted, add up, in the end? And, if so, in what sense or to what extent, precisely? Or, if God's existence and essential predicates can neither be verified nor even sharply defined, can they instead be falsified, as has also ben claimed? Are God's concept and names - and there are, across past and prsent traditions and cultures quite a few in circulation - as many instances of "nonsense," at least in rigourous logical, conceptual and argumentative, terms? Is to speak of and reason about “God” proliferate mere noise, an inchoate feeling of cosmic and existential dependence, nothing more?
This course is devoted to historical and contemporary efforts to nonetheless understand and justify this at once most familiar and strangest of invocations or references: the Being called highest, by many, but also eternal, all-knowing, perfectly good, itself enough, and much else besides.
Internship RELST-UA.981, Staff
Permission required. Class #8318. 4 pts.
Independent Study RELST-UA.998, Staff
Permission required. Class #8319. 4 pts.
Zionism & The State of Israel RELST-UA.180 (Same as HBRJD-UA.180), Patt
Monday, Wednesday 12:30pm-1:45pm. Class #XXXX. 4 pts. Location TBA
Greek and Roman Mythology RELST-UA.404 (Same as CLASS-UA.404), Meineck
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00pm-3:15pm. Class #8317. 4 pts. Location TBA
This course discusses the myths and legends of Greek mythology and the gods, demigods, heroes, nymphs, monsters, and everyday mortals who played out their parts in this mythology. This course begins with creation, as vividly described by Hesiod in the Theogony, and ends with the great Trojan War and the return of the Greek heroes, especially Odysseus. Roman myth is also treated, with emphasis on Aeneas and the foundation legends of Rome.
American Jewish History RELST-UA.695 (Same as HBRJD-UA.172), Fox
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30pm-10:45pm. Class #20948. 4 pts. KJCC, Rm. B01
Students in this course will examine the major events and personalities in American Jewish history since colonial time, including the waves of Jewish immigration and development of the American Jewish community.
Ancient Egyptian Mythology and Religion RELST-UA.719 (Same as MEIS-UA.780), Fox
Monday, Wednesday 3:30pm-4:45pm. Class #21468. 4 pts. Location TBA
This course examines the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, including the nature of the gods, syncretism, private religion, theories of divine kingship, the judgment of the dead, cultic practices, the life of priests, the relationship between this world and the afterlife, wisdom literature as moral thought, festivals, funerary practices, creation myths, and foreign gods and influences – all illustrated by Egyptian religious texts or scenes from temples and tombs.
Islamic Law & Society RELST-UA.785 (Same as MEIS-UA.780), Katz
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00pm-3:15pm. Class #21468. 4 pts. KEVO, Rm LL2
Introduces students to Islamic law through a reading of its various genres and a study of a selection of secondary sources covering a number of substantive topics (for example, ritual, criminal, and public law). Also focuses on the ways Islamic law has interacted with Islamic societies in historical practice and the way it has adapted, or not adapted, to the challenges of modernity.
COURSES ABROAD APPLICABLE TO THE MAJOR OR MINOR
LONDON
What is Islam? RELST-UA.9085 (Same as MEIS-US.9085), Instructor
Day and Time TBA. Class #19160. 4 pts. Location TBA
Introduction to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of Islam; the beliefs and practices of the Islamic community; differences between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam; Sufism; the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic life of the Islamic commonwealth; and modern Islamic revival.
FLORENCE
Magic, Religion & Inquisition RELST-UA.9671 (Same as MEDI-UA.9995.F01), Matteo
Tuesday 3:00pm-5:45pm. Class #10213. 4 pts. Location TBA
This course is made up of four sections. The first opens with an analysis of the intellectual foundations of the witch-hunt from late Antiquity to the early Renaissance. The second section concentrates on the most infamous handbook for witch-hunters, Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of the Witches”) and on the roots of medieval misogyny. The third section looks at the mass witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the backdrop of the break between Protestant and Catholic Europe, and examines the connections linking witch-hunting to the momentous social, political and religious changes of the times. In the fourth part, the course will shift focus to the grassroots level, shedding light on the economic and social mechanisms which lead a community to “make a witch”.