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Division of Religion Main PageFlueckiger
W 9:00-12:00 MAX 15
Content: This course examines textual and nontextual performative
traditions of West and South Asia as they are represented in recent ethnographies.
We will examine the ways in which ethnographic and performance studies
expand the boundaries of both "who and what counts" in the study
of religion. The course will introduce theoretical frameworks and analytic
tools from performance studies and ethnography with which to analyze both
the traditions under consideration and the ethnographic enterprise of fieldwork
and writing. Students will be required to conduct fieldwork at some level,
dependent upon individual interests. This course is one of the four core
seminars for students in the West and South Asia program, but is relevant
to those interested in ethnographic and performative analyses of ritual
and expressive culture.
Texts: May include Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry
in a Bedouin Society; Delaney, The Seed and the Soil: Gender and
Cosmology in Turkish Village Society; Flueckiger and Sears, Boundaries
of the Text: Performing the Epics in South and Southeast Asia; Grima,
The Performance of Emotion Among Paxtun Women; Gold, Fruitful
Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims; Gold and Raheja, Listen
to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India;
Inhorn, Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility and Egyptian Medical
Traditions; Macleod, Accomodating Protest: Working Women, the New
Veiling, and Change in Cairo; Narayan, Storytellers, Saints, and
Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching; Wadley, Struggling
with Destiny in Karimpur.
Berger, Gustafson
M 2:30-5:30 MAX: 10
Content: This course has a two-fold aim: primarily to introduce
students to the sources and procedures of Jewish ethics, both traditional
and contemporary, and secondarily to use that introduction to reflect,
by way of comparison, on the procedures and assumptions of Christian ethics.
We will begin by analyzing issues in bioethics, studying sources and articles
which display the methods of focussing on biblical and rabbinic texts,
and how the argumentation is structured historically so that more recent
authorities build on their predecessors. As these techniques are assimilated
and appreciated, students will then be asked to take a particular issue
and compare it with a Christian treatment of the same subject. More broadly,
reflection on the relationship of law and ethics, exegetical vs. analytical
traditions, and other issues will also be covered.
Texts:
Particulars: Participation in seminar, presentation in class, final paper
Newsom
TH 2:30-5:30 MAX 10
Content: This exegesis course on the book of Job will focus on literary
methodologies. Selected readings in genre theory, metaphor, intertextuality,
and dialogics will be employed in close study of selected texts and problems
of interpretation in Job.
Texts: May include:
Particulars: A reading knowledge of Biblical Hebrew is required.
Hayes
W 9:30-12:30 Max: 15
Content: An examination of the history of interpretation of the
Hebrew Scriptures (with some attention to New Testament studies) from the
days of the early synagogue and church until the early 20th century. A
mixture of readings from primary and secondary texts.
Texts:
Holifield
T 2:30-5:30 Max: 10
Content: The seminar will use Herman Melvil le's Moby Dick as a
lens with which to view some of the issues in theology in America in the
nineteenth century. We will read conflicting interpretations of the religious
themes in the novel and then explore the theological traditions that stood
in its background, including Edwardsean Calvinism, Unitarianism, theological
treatments of slavery, discussions of language, and similar topics relevant
to looking at intersections between religious thought and the novel.
Texts:
O'Day
W 2:30-5:30 Max: 15
Kysar
TU 2:30-5:30 Max: 15
Content: The seminar will be an investigation of the variety of
New Testament writings, giving attention to the contributions of each to
the collection as a whole. Attention will be given to the distinctiveness
of the various books as well as to contrast and interrelatedness in their
meanings.
Texts: Major theologies of the New Testament as a whole, such as
Rudolf Bultmann, Leonard Goppelt, Joachim Jeremias, as well as studies
of individual writings. Particulars: Students should come prepared to discuss
the individual New Testament texts in the context of assigned readings
from the secondary literature. Credit will be based on class participation
and a research paper which focuses on a particular issue.
Hackett
TU 2:30-5:30 Max 12
Content: This seminar will compare contemporary psychoanalytic and
psychoanalytically- related theories of shame and guilt with the history
and theologies confession, penance and reconciliation in the western Christianity.
It will then address the question of how, in a society such as ours which
uses a psychological hermeneutic with shallow facility, can we deal with
the crucial issues of sin, responsibility and reconciliation. It will also
address the underlying hermeneutical problem of how we can understand texts
and concepts from such different universes of discourse as theology and
psychology without reducing one to the other.
Texts:
Readings selected from:
Courtright & Tipton
TU 9:00-12:00 Open only to first-year students in the GDR
Content: Required of and limited to first-year students in the Graduate
Division of Religion, this course enables them to reflect with a team of
faculty on the contours of their respective disciplines, commitments and
practices within the larger landscape of the study of theology and religion.
The course will focus on several themes that bring to light aspects of
theology, religious ethics, sacred texts and rites, institutional cultures,
social and life-narratives in historical and contemporary settings that
link the study of theology and religion, broadly defined within the field.
to particular scholarly resources present at Emory. A number of Graduate
Division faculty will join the seminar to discuss aspects of the topics
listed below. In addition, the seminar seeks to assist students in formation
of intellectual community and scholarly practices that will help inform
their research and teaching as they move through the course-work phase
of their programs. Among the topics under consideration to be explored
in this year's seminar: scholarship and vocation: James M. Gustafson; the
historical Jesus (again); theology, law and the study of Islam; fundamentalism
and ecclesiology in comparative context; ritual performance, theology,
and ethnography; gender, selfhood, and the authority of scripture; psychoanalytic
traditions in comparative perspective. The seminar will also provide a
core reading list of basic works in the academic study of religion in relation
to the areas of specialization offered in the Graduate Division of Religion.
Students will make presentations in class, complete a journal-length book
review article, and article-length essay to be worked out with the instructors.
Foster
W 7-9:00 pm Max: 18
Content: RLR 705 meets the TATTO course requirement for students in the
Division of Religion and normally is taken in the first semester of the
second year of classwork. During the semester students will reflect on
their teaching assistantships and explore a range of theoretical and praxis
issues in the relationship of teaching context, theory, practice, and identity
in the religion or theology classroom.
Texts: Everyone will read three or four designated articles on teaching.
All other reading will be drawn from the seminar bibliography and will
be related to individual student questions.
Particulars: Students will each write 1) a brief paper articulating a philosophy/theology
of teaching; 2) four reports from their teaching assistantship for peer
reflection; and 3) develop a syllabus for a course they would like to teach.
Robbins, Newby & Patton
M 1:30-4:30 Max: 15
Content: This course represents a new approach to comparative study
of religious traditions. Instead of beginning with general comparative
categories, it generates them from a process of close and careful comparative
reading and interpretation of sacred texts. The texts represent both oral
and written sacred traditions in Hindu, Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities
throughout various centuries of their existence. The course explores sacred
texts in critically edited, translated, and annotated editions to make
knowledge available across traditions of specialty. Normally, students
will use original language editions of texts in the areas of their specialty,
and instructors will base analysis of texts in their respective areas on
the original language texts. The course will focus both on the ways the
texts were interpreted in the past as well as how they are used and understood
today. Diversity both within and across religious traditions will be topics
of investigations.
Texts: In addition to primary texts, books for purchase include:
Particulars: Regular participation in class and the completion of a major research paper.
Tipton
TH 2:30-5:30 Max 12
Content: This seminar charts the sociology of morality as a field
by marshaling thematically related works in sociology and social theory,
moral and political philosophy, religious ethics and anthropology to engage
three interlocking questions:
1) What general relationships obtain between the moral ideals and norms of society and its structural arrangements, and rights?
2) What are the moral implications of social modernization, particularly for conceiving persons individually?
3) What categories permit analysis of contemporary American moral ideas in ways attentive to their inner logic, cultural construal, institutionalization and social plausibility?
Texts: Readings include works by Plato, Adam Smith, Rousseau; Marx, Weber, Durkheim; Habermas, Benhabib, Charles Taylor, John Meyer; Mary Douglas, Kohlberg, Gilligan, and recent studies of contemporary moral life.
Particulars: Term paper, class presentations.
Farley
M 9:30-l2:30 Max l5
Content: Schleiermacher created a very distinctive methodology and
theological vision in response to features of modern thought and culture
that obscured the distinctive realities of religion. This course will be
dedicated to a close reading of two of Schleiermacher's main works, the
Speeches and the Christian Faith.
Particulars: During the semester two short papers or one exam
will be required on the readings. The term paper will ideally combine analytical
and interpretive analyses with the development of a constructive argument
using or criticizing (or both) some feature of Schleiermacher's work.
Texts:
Pacini
F 9:00-12:00 Max: 15
Content: This seminar will explore issues of figuration, embodiment,
and communion with God in ancient, medieval, and modern compositions. Although
the preponderant focus of the seminar will fall upon western materials,
we will pursue significant comparative analyses with Hindu compositions
drawn from the same periods. Devoting particular attention to the ways
in which authors in different historical periods and cultures represent
gender in the devotional context, we will attempt to establish an interpretive
perspective from which to assess a major contemporary novel treating similar
issues.
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Division of Religion Main Page