Religious Studies

The course focuses on the role of religion in the modern and contemporary Middle East and will cover four main parts: an introduction to Islam and its relations to the other monotheistic religions, namely Christianity and Judaism; Islamic thinkers and their reactions to modernity, including modern reformist movements, modernist, and Islamist thinkers; Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East; and Jewish-Muslim relations. Here the focus is on the effects of the creation of the state of Israel and its impact on Jewish-Muslin relations. 

The seminar gives an introduction into the different ideas around sex and gender in the Hebrew Bible. It discusses matters such as the creation of man and woman, the connection of sexuality and male struggles for power and honor, laws about sexuality in the Pentateuch, and the use of the marriage metaphor for the relationship between Yhwh and Israel.

This course examines contemporary Korean society, with special focus on social issues across various fields including sociology of religion. 

This course provides an examination of the structure and dynamics of culture, focusing on how they have created, maintained, and changed religions.

This course covers the three main religions of Spain: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It examines the historical processes that impacted Spain from the Middle Ages to the present, the debate regarding cultural heritage as a tool of narrative construction of the past, and the role cultural heritage plays in the identities of the present.

This course focuses on philosophically interesting questions surrounding religion, including such issues as the evidential value of religious experiences and testimony of miracles; the existence of God; and the dependence or independence of morality and meaning on religious foundations.

This course examines the evolution of Buddhist meditation: from its origination to its latest manifestation as psychosocial interventions spanning more than 2000 years. Through the study of Buddhist meditation texts and experiential learning, the theories and practices of several important Buddhist meditation methods will be introduced, such as mindful-breathing, compassionate meditation, samādhi and vipassanā. 

Buddhism has been repeatedly highlighted as being a “science of mind” rather than a religion. Puzzled by surprising research results (such as the superposition of quantum states or entanglement), physicists with philosophical questions have turned to Buddhism in search of new models of reality finding striking parallels between a “quantum interconnectedness” and Nāgārjuna’s dependent arising and emptiness. Common ground was also discovered through the constant corrective of repeatable experiments (physics) and first person experience of standardized meditation techniques (Buddhism). Physical and Buddhist models of reality thus share the principle of being valid only until refuted through valid cognition. Neuroscientists also struggle with the problem of correlating the “third-person” data of an experiment to the respective “first-person” experiences, and have also taken an interest in Buddhism. A significant result of the dialogue between Buddhists and neuroscientists are popular applications such as “Healthy Minds,” which largely make use of experiments conducted on meditation practitioners in laboratories. What has eventually been labelled “the Mindful Revolution,” brings meditation beyond traditional Buddhist contexts to benefit people from all walks of life.

Through lectures/seminars, students will explore the ways in which philosophers have sought to understood and respond to the demands of Christian faith from both within and without that faith.Students will explore the social and psychological context of such faith, and the ways in which one might understand Christian notions of love, purity, devotion and sainthood, amongst others. Students will explore the ways in which some thinkers have seen Christianity as deepening our sense of the human condition whilst others have seen Christianity as degrading of our condition. The course is text based as, in this context, this is one of the best ways in which students can come to a deepened intellectual understanding of the matters under consideration.

This course gives an overview of the key arguments in the sociology of religion, including the social, cultural, and political significance of religion to the individual, social groups, and society at a national and global level. The course begins by covering the classical sociological theorists on religion (Durkheim, Weber & Marx) and examines the key debates around secularization and post-secularization. It then considers the social and cultural significance of new religious movements and the rise of spirituality and New Age movements in the West. Finally students consider the growth of fundamentalism around the world and how religion is becoming globalized.