Courses

• GRS RN 607: Medieval Christian Spirituality
  Explores Christian beliefs and practices in medieval Europe within and outside formal church structures. Topics include accommodation of pagan culture, constructing identity, clerical and lay piety, heterodox practice and institutional response, and encounter with non-Christian traditions.
• GRS RN 608: The Open Heaven: Apocalyptic Literature in Early Judaism and Christianity
  Examines literary and historical roots of "apocalypticism" in early Judaism and Christianity. Attention to literary genre, symbolism, metaphor, heaven, hell, angelology, demonology, attitudes toward the end of the world. Examines relationship of apocalypticism to shamanism, mysticism, magic, magic, gnosticism, liturgy.
• GRS RN 612: Buddhism in America
  The transplantation and transformation of Buddhism in the United States. Time period ranges from the 18th century to the present, but the emphasis is on contemporary developments, including the new Asian immigration, Jewish Buddhism, feminization, and engaged Buddhism.
• GRS RN 614: Religious Thought in America
  Surveys many of the strategies that American religious thinkers have adopted for interpreting the cosmos, the social order and human experience, and the interaction of those strategies with broader currents of American culture. Also offered as GRS HI 708.
• GRS RN 616: Modern Islam
  Focuses on formations of Islam in colonial and postcolonial periods. How modernist and Islamist thinkers have negotiated the encounter between tradition and modernity.
• GRS RN 622: History of Judaism
  Major trends in postbiblical Judaism; academy and synagogue; Mishna and Talmud; Babylonian diaspora; medieval poetry, philosophy, and mysticism; codes of law; organization of the Jewish community "in exile"; land of Israel; Judaism and Islamic and Christian civilization.
• GRS RN 623: Classical Jewish Thought
  Basic human and religious issues as they have been understood within the classical Jewish framework of God, the people of Israel, and Torah: good and evil, creation, the relationship of human beings to God and to one another.
• GRS RN 624: Introduction to Rabbinic Literature
  Chronological exploration of rabbinic Judaism's major documents, using a modern scholarly anthology. The Mishnah; legal and legendary selections from the midrashim and both the Jerusalem and Palestinian Talmuds. Themes: monotheism, sin and atonement, heaven and hell, conceptions of gender, the impact of rabbinic texts on medieval and modern Judaism.
• GRS RN 625: Seminar: Early Jewish Mysticism
  Analysis of the development of Jewish mysticism from the biblical to the early medieval era. Emphasis on the forms of mysticism--and the texts in which they are embedded-- from the rabbinic era. No knowledge of Hebrew is required.
• GRS RN 626: Jewish Mystical Movements and Modernization, 1492–2000
  Mysticism, spiritual, and social influences. Early modern, modern periods. Focus on "conservative" and "revolutionary" tendencies. 1492 and Iberian, German, Polish Jewry; leadership of "third generation" of survivors; Christian and Islamic influences; Kulturkampf precipitated by popularization of Kabbala, antinomianism, Hasidism, magic, science.
• GRS RN 630: American Jewish Experiences
  Traces the achievements and reputations of Jews, shaped by stereotypes of wealth, power, intellect and sexuality. Students examine film, literature, art, popular music, attitudes towards Israel, religious practices, and intermarriage rates for evidence of changing trends.
• 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 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 636: The Heretical Jew
  Explores heresy in the Jewish context, both in the classic sense and as a category evolving in the secular world. Topics include biblical and rabbinic heretics, early modern and Enlightenment philosophy, post- Holocaust theology, and feminist and gay/lesbian challenges to normative Judaism. Also offered as GRS XL 656.
• 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 638: Mysticism and Philosophy: Medieval Jewish Perspectives
  Thematic introduction to mysticism and philosophy, with a focus on dynamics of religious experience. Readings from medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, Biblical interpretation, Sufi-inspired mysticism, poetry from the Golden Age of Muslim Spain. Attention to interactions with Islamic philosophy and mysticism.
• GRS RN 639: The Modern Jew
  Explores Jewish modernity through attitudes toward place (migration, diaspora, land of Israel) and history (utopian, pragmatic, secular, religious), as well as individual and collective modes of Jewish self- expression, including literature, art, music, and film.
• 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 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.

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