Religious Studies

Contemplative practices such as mindfulness and yoga, silent retreats and pilgrimages have seen a significant rise in popularity in recent years, in part driven by a rapidly growing body of scientific literature on the purported benefits of such practices for the relief of the ills of modern life, such as stress, anxiety, depression, but also as elements in the enhancement of human resilience and capacity. A sustained, critical and practical engagement with this field using a broad humanities approach can offer students an unusually rich and concrete experience in combining scholarly and personal inquiry. Through a close engagement with contemplative practices as objects of academic study and debate, as social phenomena in contemporary society, and as lived practices, this course provides an opportunity to explore fundamental questions in the humanities; for example, about the nature and meaning of being human; about consciousness, cognition and experience; about the relationship between mind and body; about freedom and connectedness; and about the relationship between the humanities and the sciences. The course introduces a rapidly growing field of research with considerable public interest to which humanities research makes significant contributions. By exploring contemplative practices in context, in theory, and in practice, students have an opportunity to develop a critical ability for assessing scholarly and popular claims about the nature and purported effects of contemplative practices. Literature for the course includes both scholarly texts about contemplative life and practice and historical and contemporary texts from contemplative traditions, including from classical philosophy, Christian, Sufi, and Buddhist contexts, as well as modern forms, such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

This course examines the major issues and core ideas of Buddhism from its beginnings to subsequent developments in others parts of Asia. It covers Buddhist understanding of liberation, existence, and knowledge, with a focus on exploring how Buddhist thought and practices, such as ritual and meditation, shape each other in larger socio-cultural contexts.

This course explores how the first Islamic caliphate transformed the society, culture, and politics of western Asia in the centuries after the mission of Muhammad, c. 600-950. In the 7th century the new faith of Islam emerged in Arabia. Its adherents, though few in number, overturned the geopolitical world order, defeating the superpowers of their day to create the world’s largest empire, stretching from Portugal to Pakistan. This course asks how this first Islamic state was brought into being and how it changed life in the Middle East and beyond.