Religious Studies

This course examines the body in relation to religion and identity. The course offers opportunities to examine historical, religious, and philosophical conceptions of the body in relation to broader frameworks of culture and society. It examines how societal norms intersect with embodiment, and may engage critical perspectives such as gender, sexuality, race, power, and/or identity formation. 

This course introduces the central problems and issues in contemporary philosophy of religion. Among the questions that students will consider are: Are there any persuasive arguments for the existence of God? Is religious belief rational if it is not supported by evidence? Is it reasonable to believe that just one religious tradition is true? The aims of the course are: Help students to engage with some of the most central and enduring problems in philosophy of religion; Enhance students' power of critical analysis, reasoning and independent thought, and ability to bring those powers to bear on important philosophical issues; Familiarise students with some of the most interesting and provocative texts in contemporary work on philosophy of religion.  

This course introduces South Asian Islamic society, culture and religious thought, especially in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives, the three South Asian countries with a Muslim majority and where Islam forms an important cultural element. The focus of this course is the period from c. 1750-1950, during which important developments took place in South Asian Islam. The course outlines the role of Islam in pre-colonial society as well as the movements for religious and political reform of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Questions of language and literature are also addressed.

This course looks at the relationship between the built environment and spiritual space with special focus on Southeast Asia. It looks at a range of spiritual practices and the forms they take including temples, mosques, shrines, and symbols. It addresses how religion shapes and connects cities in different ways as well as how globalization transforms and is transformed by spiritual space. The course examines debates surrounding these questions through cases within and beyond Southeast Asia. Topics range from ghost films to heritage sites. It provides a strong understanding of the religious and spiritual practices, global processes and political events shaping Southeast Asia. It also develops visual analysis skills necessary to read and write about spiritual space in a variety of forms. Course discussions and assignments unpack the aesthetic traditions, politics, and morals surrounding specific cases in order to complicate what it means to be global, regional or local. The content goes beyond Southeast Asia and cuts across disciplines, drawing from Art and Architectural History, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Geography.

This course explores Buddhist philosophical issues and logic that were established during Mahayanic development. Topics include Mahayanic issues such as icchantika and the Mahayanic theory of knowledge. Under the latter, topics such as the concept of Buddha nature, reality, sources of knowledge, sensations, reflexes, conceptions, judgement, inferences, etc. are examined.

This course explores the complex connections between religion and human rights, both in terms of the evolution of the contemporary human rights regime, and in relation to the specific disputed issue of gender. The relationship between religion and human rights is controversial and contested. On the one hand is the claim that human rights require a religious grounding. This course explores the complex connections between religion and human rights, both in terms of the evolution of the contemporary human rights regime, and in relation to the specific disputed issue of gender, and have their antecedents in religious traditions, while on the other hand is the view that human rights provide a necessary antidote to the prejudices and inequalities that are characteristic of religion. The course begins with a consideration of contemporary understandings of human rights, of the role of religion in the evolution of the language, values and norms of human rights, and of contemporary debates about orientalism, colonialism and post-colonialism in the articulation and implementation of human rights. The second section considers debates about the nature and politics of gender, the role that different religions play in the construction and maintenance of gender norms, and the manner in which different religions deal with the issue of women’s rights.

This course invites students to rethink their preconceptions about studying the complex modern topic of religion by introducing them to key approaches and debates in Religious Studies, including historical, sociological, and anthropological approaches. It uses these to examine through a comparative and theoretically informed perspective empirical examples and case studies of how religion/s are articulated by diverse people in multiple settings. The course gives prominence to people's everyday ideas and practices about religion, while also indicating the broader disciplinary shape of the Study of Religion/s.

This course pays special attention to issues of theory and method in the psychology of religion, in order to develop an understanding of personal identity, as well as mental and spiritual health in religious contexts. While recognizing the importance of gender, class, race, ethnicity and other social forms of identity, the course focuses on religious dynamics of personal identity and the formation of selfhood through case studies in consciousness, mysticism, embodiment, intertextual reading practices and cultural resources for being human. The course explores the various ways in which religion might inform personal, social and intersubjective notions of self, while providing conception of the good/the good life. Course entry requirements: Second-year status.

This course introduces students to the literary genres and theological contours of the Hebrew canon and its transmission, translation and interpretation in antiquity and in contemporary culture. The variety of terms used to designate the ‘Hebrew Bible’ (e.g. Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, Tanak) indicate the richness of traditions related to these writings, the various ways that they are viewed, and also their life within different communities at different times. This course orients students to the literary and theological contours of the Hebrew canon, introducing them to the rich variety of genres within. The exploration of the Pentateuch and Chronicler’s History provides a historiographical framework and develops students’ ability to identify literary themes while interrogation of the Prophets, Psalms and Wisdom Literature demonstrate the incredible diversity of literary and theological genres contained within the Hebrew Bible.