Religious Studies

The Reformation, which began with Martin Luther in early sixteenth-century Germany, was one of the great turning-points of modern European history, splitting Catholic Christendom and giving rise to many different strands of Protestantism. Using primary sources extant from the period, in English translation if necessary, this course addresses this development in a mixture of lecture and seminar formats. With a broad chronological span, and a geographical scope stretching across much of Western Europe, it offers the stimulating intellectual challenge of learning how to relate key theological concepts to the experiences of the people, in all their diversity.
 

Jews and Christians in the ancient, medieval, and modern world were fascinated, scandalized, and inspired by religious difference and the challenges it posed to their intellectual, moral, and cultural projects. In this course, students focus on explorations of Jewish-Christian relations in various literary genre, and students discuss how they take up, question, and disrupt prevalent representations of "the other" and themselves.

Contemporary Jewish identity is commonly refracted through the prism of two seminal historical events: the Holocaust, and the establishment of the State of Israel. However, at the dawn of the 21st century, closer examination reveals that Jewish identity is today an increasingly diverse and ever changing entity. This unit will probe and explore the reasons for this heterogeneity, identifying and interrogating the intersections between the religious, cultural and political currents shaping today's Jewish identities in diverse communal and state settings.

This course examines the relationship between philosophy and religion from the perspective of different philosophical and religious traditions. Topics include: the nature of ultimate reality, arguments for and against the existence God or gods, competing philosophical and religious accounts of life after death, religious pluralism and God or gods, competing philosophical and religious accounts of life after death, religious pluralism and diversity.

This course covers Ancient Israel from its cradle to the beginning of the common era, ending with Qumran. It covers the theories about the origins of Israel, including the exodus from Egypt, against the socio-political background of Ancient Israel with due attention to historiography. The succession and successes of various royals are covered, as well as the activity of the prophets in a comparative perspective. Cultic practices throughout the period are discussed.

This course surveys the formation and development of Islam and its position and characteristics in the modern world. Divided into five thematic units, the course will cover:  

1) Origins of Islam and the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad;  

2) Islamic authoritative texts – the Qur’ān and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muḥammad;  

3) Various dimensions of classical Islam, including law and ritual practices;  

4) Alternative visions of Islam, in particular the Shī‘ite and the Ṣūfi interpretations of Islam, and  

5) Modern developments in Islam. 

The course provide students with a comprehensive view of the global Christian movement in time and space. Considers the period from its Middle Eastern and European origins in theological and sociological/political terms to the Inquisition (50.CE to 1500). It looks at the origins and growth of Christianity in the Mediterranean world and beyond, from the first generation of Christians to the fall of Constantinople (50CE to 1453CE). The course covers Christianity's role in and interaction with the various cultures of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the early and medieval Islamic states, and the emergent civilizations of medieval Europe, looking at persecution, education, mission, monasticism, piety, orthodoxy, and heresy and other major themes. 

This course takes its title from a series of letters and papers that Dietrich Bonhoeffer composed while imprisoned in Berlin from 1943-1945. The theological questions posed by Bonhoeffer in these personal letters will set the tone for this course, as well as its overall aims. Specifically, those aims are to identify and to critically assess a variety of challenges that have been posed against religious thought and belief by the rapid development of secular culture and its rising influence in the modern, Western world. In doing so, this course will explore a wide range of political, social, and personal/existential ideas and provocations that theologians, philosophers, and religious thinkers have been made to confront in this “world come of age”.