Courses

• GRS RN 629: Modern Jewish Thought
  This course explores the attempts of major modern Jewish philosophers to reconcile Judaism and the modern consciousness. Authors studied include Mendelssohn, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, Kaplan, and Fackenheim. Responses of traditional Judaism to modern strategies of identity and self-preservation; possible contribution from the sources of Judaism to the crisis of modernity itself.
• GRS RN 630: American Jewish Experiences
  Examines history, culture, politics, and identities of American Jews and Judaism, 1654-2010. Communal documents, family histories, liturgy, sermons, music, films, literature, art, and artifacts are employed to study similarities and differences with other Jewish communities and other American minorities.
• GRS RN 631: Zionism and the State of Israel
  Introduction to the development of Jewish nationalism from its traditional and European origins through its culmination in the modern state of Israel. Readings from Zionist and Israeli literature on political, religious, and philosophical implications.
• GRS RN 633: Antisemitism
  Theological and social sources of antisemitism in the ancient, medieval and modern worlds. Comparisons with other modes of persecution such as slavery and witchcraft. Jewish responses to otherness. Intellectual and social antisemitism in contemporary America.
• GRS RN 634: Dead Sea Scrolls
  Examination of the ancient Hebrew documents discovered in the Judean desert. Their authorship; the theological significance of the Scrolls; their relations to Ancient Judaism and early Christianity; the controversy over their release and publication.
• GRS RN 635: Judaism in the First Century
  Explores the diversity of Judaism in the first century CE, and traces the emergence of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism. Sources include ancient Jewish literature, early Christian literature and archaeological evidence.
• GRS RN 637: Gender and Judaism
  Monotheism, especially the Jewish tradition, examined from the perspectives of gender theory, feminism, and homoeroticism. Topics include religion and gender, women and homosexuals as "other" in Jewish and Christian thought, rappropriation of traditional texts, and issues in contemporary spirituality.
• GRS RN 639: The Modern Jew
  Explores modern Jewish experience of space, body, language, and the self as sites of the struggles over a secular identity. Part of a sequence on “The Other Within.” Counts toward concentrations in Judaic Studies and Religion.
• GRS RN 640: The Quran
  The emergence of the Quran as a major religious text, its structure and literary features, its principle themes and places within the religious and intellectual life of the Muslim community.
• GRS RN 641: Islamic Mysticism: Sufism
  Rise and development of the mystical movement in early Islam; analysis of the thought of leading Sufi brotherhoods, their organization, liturgy, and religious life; the impact of Sufism on classical and postclassical Islam.
• GRS RN 644: Islam and the West
  Considers centuries of cooperation and conflict between Islam and the West, including the "Golden Age" of Islamic Spain, the Crusades, medieval European views of Islam, enslaved Muslims in the New World, colonialism and its legacies, and Western Muslim communities today.
• GRS RN 645: Islamic Law
  A survey of major trends in Islamic jurisprudence from the 7th century to the present; the structure of Islamic law, its regulative principles, its place in Islamic society, and the mechanisms by which it is elaborated and applied.
• GRS RN 647: Islamic Theology and Philosophy
  An introduction to the most important philosophers and theologians in Islamic intellectual history, with a focus on the concepts they articulated and the movements they engendered.
• GRS RN 649: Qur’anic Negotiations: Contemporary Muslim Writers and the Holy Book
  Contemporary Muslim writers’ responses to the Qur’an, especially their imitations of its rhetorical effects, and their use of the Holy Book to attack social and political ills. Writers include Mahfouz, Durrani, Nisrin, and Rushdie.
• GRS RN 660: Daoist Religion
  A historical survey of the Daoist traditions in China. The philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu and Han dynasty religion. Early Daoist movements, as well as the heyday of the religion in the Six Dynasties and the Tang. Modern Daoism as it was first formed in the Tang dynasty is also discussed.
• GRS RN 662: Chinese Medicine
  A wide range of traditional Chinese health and religious practices, interpreted in light of ancient concepts of body and mind, illness and health, and the like. Techniques are discussed, as sell as magical, ritual and popular healing.
• GRS RN 663: Zen Buddhism
  A study of Zen teachings and practices as a sect of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, as a philosophic system, and as a pattern of culture.
• GRS RN 664: Buddhist Literature
  Focuses on Buddhist sutras and other literature to explore key issues of doctrine, philosophy, and praxis in the Theravada and Mahayana traditions of Buddhism. Topics include the Buddha's life, practicing the path, emptiness, and interdependence.
• GRS RN 672: Indian Philosophies of Religion
  This course will study the co-existence of religious communities in India, with special emphasis on recent history of inter-communal relations. The course is divided into three sections. Part I is an introduction to the philosophical and religious culture of India. Part II is an examination of some (but not all) of the classical Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. Part III explores the development of modern ("Neo-Hindu") philosophy, with special emphasis on Gandhi.
• GRS RN 675: Culture, Society and Religion in South Asia
  An ethographic and historical introduction to the Indian subcontinent with a focus on the impact of religion on cultural practices and social institutions. Topics to be covered include kinship, gender, geography, linguistic diversity, ethnicity, ritual, agriculture, economics and politics, expressive tradition, colonialism and nationalism and communal violence.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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