Fall 2006 Course Atlas

 

RLAR 701 /ANT 585: Performance and Ethnography (OPUS # 3081)
Flueckiger Wednesday 10-1 Max: 12

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 enterprises of fieldwork and writing. Students will be required to engage in some level of fieldwork (for their major or short paper) focused on performative and/or ritual traditions, depending on their interest. This course is relevant to students interested in ethnographic and performative analyses of ritual, expressive culture, and religious practices.

Texts:

• : May include Abu-Lughod, Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories
• Flueckiger, In Amma's Healing Room: Gender & Vernacular Islam in South India; Sax, Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal
• Gold, Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims
• Gold and Raheja, Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India
• Nabakov, Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography ofTamil Rituals
• Narayan, Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Folktales
• Bowen, Muslims Through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society
• Ewing, Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam
• Loeffler, Islam in Practice
• Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Particulars: Required site visits to Hindu temple and a mosque; a short essay (5-7 pages): a performance analysis [i.e., fieldwork-based]; a research paper.

RLE 700J/RLPC 749/PSYC 749: Character and Moral Judgment (OPUS # 3079)
Snarey Tuesday 2:30 – 5:30 Max: 12

Prerequisites: Doctoral student in ethics, or psychology, or religion

Content: A fundamental dimension of being human is the inevitable necessity of making moral judgments. This course initially approaches moral judgment (also known as social-moral cognition) from the perspectives of philosophically-oriented psychologists, William James and Lawrence Kohlberg. The structures and functions of moral judgment will then be explored within the course of character and personality development as modeled by several scholars of human development (e.g., Erik H. Erikson, Jane Loevinger, Bernice Neugarten, and others).

Texts may include:

• Readings Weekly assignments, usually on e-reserve, and regular participation in discussions of the readings.

Particulars: One paper presentation during the course, selected from topics outlined in the syllabus, and one end-of-the-term paper.

Exams: None

RLE 700R: Seminar in Ethics: Religious Practices of Peace and Violence (OPUS # 4125)
Elizabeth M. Bounds Thursday 12 - 3 Max: 12

Content: This course will examine an interdisciplinary set of approaches to religious practices addressing violence with particular attention to the ways these practices are understood within frameworks of peacemaking, reconciliation, forgiveness, conflict resolution/transformation, restorative justice and interfaith dialogue. Primary attention will be given to Christian religious practices, but there will be also be several comparative readings.

Texts may include:

• Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Reconciliation, Justice, and Co-existence: Theory and Practice
• Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred
• David W. Augsburger, Conflict Mediation Across Cultures: Pathways and Patterns
• Marc Gopin, From Eden to Armageddon
• John de Gruchy, Reconciliaion: Restoring Justice
• Michael Hadley, ed., The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice
• Raymond G. Helmick and Rodney Peterson, eds.,Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy, and ConflictTransformation
• Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds., Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft
• Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness
• John P. Lederach, Moral Imagination Donald Shriver, An Ethics for Enemies
• Oxford Daniel L. Smith-Christopher,ed., Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions
• David Smock, ed., Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding
• Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

   Particulars: Assignments will include a leadership paper (providing a framework for class discussion), and a choice among several short analytic papers or a long project (which will include both reflection on theory and an evaluation of a model of practice) or a mock examination

RLHB 750: Israelite History (OPUS # 3095)
Hayes  Fridays 11:00-2:00 Max: 12

Description:This seminar will meet weekly and focus on selected issues pertaining to the history of ancient Israel. It presupposes a general knowledge of ancient history and especially of Middle Eastern history during biblical times.

Particulars: There will be weekly assignments for all participants in the seminar, rather than a single research paper or final examination.

RLHT 735/HIST 533: American Religious History (OPUS # 3082)
Holifield Tuesdays 2:30 – 5:30 Max: 12

Content: The course looks at the history of religious movements in America, from the seventeenth century to the present. It will reflect on various ways of telling the larger story, explore two conflicting interpretations that underlie much of the current scholarship, examine articles that exemplify different methods and approaches to topics in each period, and read some brief excerpts from selected primary sources. The excerpts will open up the topic of "the leader and the group" in American religious movements and institutions.

Texts:Each student will read one recent survey text - choosing from among histories written by Sydney Ahlstrom, Catherine Albanese, Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt, Winthrop Hudson and John Corrigan, George Marsden, Martin Marty, and Peter Williams - and serve as the expert on that text for the seminar. In addition, we will read together the following texts along with a few articles illustrating methods and approaches:

• Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
• Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
• Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)
• Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout, Religion in American History: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Thomas A. Tweed, ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1997)

Particulars: The course will be in a seminar format, with reading and discussion of texts. The final two or three sessions will allow students to present research papers to the seminar and to discuss the nature of historical argument.

RLHT 735C: Topics in American Religious History: American Religious Culture (OPUS # 4127)
Pollard Thursday, 9-12 Max: 12

Content: This seminar explores cultural forms of religious expression and practice in the United States of America.  Students will be exposed to a variety of methodological approaches in this endeavor, including but not limited to social and cultural history, sociology, cultural anthropology, history of religions and theological studies.  The explanatory power of the older views of religious history and social theory, while still valuable, no longer hold.  The course will consider a variety of cultural forms of religious expression.  Additionally, it will have a comparative, multicultural emphasis that will ground our discussions in specific social, political, and regional contexts either in terms of well-defined communities or broader cultural arenas.   Readings will include be broad-ranging, negotiating the genres and contradictions in narratives that account for religious life in America

Texts and articles by:

• Robert Orsi
• Charles Reagan Wilson
• Charles Long
• Clifford Geertz
• Yvonne Chireau
• Robert Wuthnow
• Arlene Walsh, and
• Christian Smith, among others.

Particulars: review essays, student-driven discussion, final research paper.

RLHT 736: Topics in Religious History: The Practice of Religion: Asceticism in Historical and Theoretical Perspective (OPUS # 4130) Valantasis Monday 2-5 Max: 12

Content: This course explores the practice of religion from two distinct and yet correlative perspectives: history and theory. In the past fifteen years, the literature about asceticism, the disciplined and critical reflection on the practice of religion, has exploded and has changed the way scholars and practitioners alike understand their lived religious practices. This course will explore various theories of asceticism while studying the formative practices of early Christianity. The historical texts will focus on early Christian catechetical instruction, the instruction given to neophytes about Christian life and thought, and other literature explaining the practice of religion in the ancient Church. Parallel to these historical studies, the seminar will explore recent literature on the theory of asceticism and religious practice. Students may write their final paper either on a Christian or non-Christian text, or study the formative practice of a contemporary community in any religious tradition. The seminar welcomes students wishing to study asceticism from a comparative perspective.

Texts:

Theory of Asceticism:

• Richard Valantasis, "Constructions of Power in Asceticism," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (1995) 775-821
• Vincent Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, Asceticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
• Gavin Flood, The Ascetic Self ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
• Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)

Ancient Texts:

• John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions
• St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, "Thanksgiving Oration"
• St. Augustine, The First Catechetical Instruction
• Symeon the New Theologian, Conferences
• Ambrose of Milan, De Mysteriis
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures
• Basil the Great, Letters LCL
• Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism
• Jerome, Lives of Paul, Malchus, and Hilarion
• Apophthegmata Patrum (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
• Egeria, Travels

RLHT 741G Kant and the Neo-Kantians (OPUS #4908)
Pacini Friday 9:00-12:00 Max: 8
(cross-listed w/ PHIL 789 - Max: 4)

Content: This seminar will explore crucial passages in Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason, Critique of Judgement and Religion Within the Limits of
Reason Alone. We will then assess the development of Kantian themes in
Ritschl, Durkheim, Troeltsch, Muller, Otto, and James with particular
attention to their interpretations of "religion." We will further attempt
to define the values implicit in the Kantian framework and to discern the
modes through which "Neo-Kantian" thinking continued to transmit these
values (albeit in oftentimes unacknowledged ways.)

RLL 701: Akkadian (OPUS # 3107)
Strawn Thursday 10:30 -12:00 Max: 12

Content:This is the first semester of a year-long introduction to the language and grammar of Akkadian.  By way of background, especially to the orthography (i.e., the cuneiform writing system), there will be a brief introduction to Sumerian; by way of the afterlives of the language, some brief attention will be paid to (western) peripheral dialects (in the Spring semester). Additionally, there will be monthly proseminars devoted to selected topics in the history, literature, and religion of the ancient Near East - more specifically, ancient Mesopotamia (including both Assyria and Babylonia).

Texts :

• Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian
• Frankfort and Frankfort, eds., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man; Roux, Ancient Iraq
• Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia; Postgate, Early Mesopotamia

RLNT 711L: John (OPUS # 3117)
O'Day Wednesday 2-5 Max: 12

Content: The main work of this seminar will be an exegetical study of the Gospel of John, based on the Greek text. Some attention will be given to the history of interpretation, critical issues in the study of John, and various methodological approaches.

Particulars : As part of the work of the seminar, students will translate the Greek text and participate in the seminar discussions. In addition to weekly work, students will prepare a study of a topic or text of their choosing, present the work to the seminar, and complete a paper on the text or topic in light of the seminar discussion.

RLNT 745: Greco-Roman Backgrounds (OPUS # 3108)
Brown Friday 2-5 Max: 12

Content: This course will assist the student in understanding and navigating the ancient Mediterranean context that lies behind the New Testament. In itself this is an ambitious project. For practical purposes, breadth, rather than depth, shall be emphasized in our examination, providing the student with a basis for further research in the area. Although the course will sketch out the contours of the Greco-Roman world, special focus shall be placed on Roman Egypt. Students will be expected to participate in this seminar fully, which means preparing weekly presentations to be distributed to other members of the course, as well as for the course website and podcast. For a copy of the course syllabus, go to:

http://web.mac.com/mjbout/iWeb/MJBrown/Greco-Roman%20Backgrounds_files/RLNT745%20G-R%20Backgrounds.pdf

Texts:

• Michael Joseph Brown, The Lord’s Prayer through North African Eyes: A Window into Early Christianity
• Wendy Cotter, Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the study of New Testament Miracle Stories
• Jan Willem van Henten and Friedrich Avemarie (eds.), Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity
• Peter Garnsey, Food And Society in Classical Antiquity
• Abraham Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, A Greco-Roman Source
• Fik Meijer and Onno van Nijf (eds.), Trade, Transport and Society in the Ancient World:A Sourcebook
• Richard Mellor (ed.), The Historians of Ancient Rome: An Anthology of the Major Writings
• Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra
• Jane Rowlandson (ed.), Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook
• Jo-Ann Shelton (ed.), As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History (2 nd ed.)
• John E. Stambaugh and David L. Balch, The New Testament in Its Social Environment
• Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity

RLPC 720G: Intercultural Pastoral Care and Counseling (OPUS # 3109)
Lartey Tuesday 2-5 Max: 12

Content:Pastoral counseling, like other forms of counseling, is culturally embedded. This course will examine the influence of race, ethnicity, class, gender, culture and religion on theories and practices of pastoral counseling. By examining the writings of selected counseling practitioners who address these issues, cross-cultural, multi-cultural, intercultural and other approaches will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to how cultural analysis may assist the care and counseling process

Texts may include:

• Augsburger, D.W. (1986), Pastoral Counseling Across Cultures
• Boyd-Franklin, N. (2003) Black Families in Therapy (2 nd Ed)
• Dalal, F. (2002), Race, Colour and the processes of Racialization
• Dupont-Joshua, A.(ed), (2003), Working Inter-culturally in Counselling Settings
• Foster, R. P. et al (1996), Reaching across Boundaries of Culture and Class.
• Jackson, L.C & B. Greene, (2000) Psychotherapy with African-American women
• Lartey, E.Y. (2003), In Living Color (2 nd Ed)
• McGoldrick, M.(1998), Re-Visioning Family Therapy
• Mishne, J. (2002), Multiculturalism and the Therapeutic Process
• Rigazio-DiGilio, S.A. et al (2005), Community Genograms

Particulars: Course will include student led seminars, lectures, lecture-discussions, group work and role play. Course is open to Th.D. students. Two papers will be required: an examination of a selected approach and a final essay outlining the student’s own methods and approach to the subject. Students will also be evaluated on class participation.

Prerequisite: Some exposure to clinical counseling practice.

 

RLPC 730C: Constructive Practical Theology (OPUS # 3110)
Moore Wednesday 2:30-5:30 Max: 12

Content: Explorations in method and substantive development of practical theology, with particular focus on human vocation and the PRAXIS of God. The seminar focuses on reading from contemporary practical theologians and invites constructive work by participants in developing ways to imagine and communicate coherent accounts of God's involvement in creation, governance, liberation and redemption, and to probe the depths of human existence and human vocation in relation to God and creation. The seminar will engage in constructive and systematic theological work, grounded in the study of human experience and envisioning the future of human vocation.

 

RLPC 749/RLE 700J/PSYC 749: Character and Moral Judgment (OPUS # 4122)
Snarey Tuesday 2:30 – 5:30 Max: 12

Content: Pastoral counseling, like other forms of counseling, is culturally embedded. This course will examine the influence of race, ethnicity, class, gender, culture and religion on theories and practices of pastoral counseling. By examining the writings of selected counseling practitioners who address these issues, cross-cultural, multi-cultural, intercultural and other approaches will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to how cultural analysis may assist the counseling process.

Prerequisites: Doctoral student in ethics, or psychology, or religion

Texts: : Readings Weekly assignments, usually on e-reserve, and regular participation in discussions of the readings.

Particulars: One paper presentation during the course, selected from topics outlined in the syllabus, and one end-of-the-term paper.

Exams: None

RLR 700H: First Year Colloquy (OPUS # 3116)
Bounds Tuesday 11-1

Content: This colloquy is required for all first-year students in the GDR. We will meet periodically throughout the year to discuss issues in the study of religion.

RLR 705: Teaching Religion (OPUS # 3009)
Hawkins Tuesday 11-1

Content:This course examines pedagogical theories and practices of pedagogical reflection, particularly as these relate to teaching religious and theological studies. We will explore various theories and models of effective teaching, and various theories and models of learning. We will also discuss "practical" elements of teaching including syllabus design, preparing and executing class plans, setting up and facilitating discussions, designing and grading writing assignments and tests, etc.

Texts may include:

• Bean, John D. Engaging Ideas
• Brookfield, Stephen. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher
• Brookfield, Stephen and Stephen Preskill. Discussion as a Way of Teaching
• hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress
• Seldin, Peter. The Teaching Portfolio
• Shor, Ira. Empowering Education
• Walvoord, Barbara, et al. Effective Grading

Particulars: This course fulfills the pedagogy requirement for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences TATTO program. The course will be in seminar format, with students required to bring short written reflections to each class session as discussion starters. Students will begin to develop a pedagogical philosophy statement, a syllabus for a course they would like to teach, and several assignments for that course (e.g., a paper assignment; a presentation assignment, etc.).

RLSR 700: Religion and Ecology: American Practices of Religion and Place (OPUS # 3097)
Patterson Tuesday 2-5 Max: 12

Content: Examining American conceptions of and experiences with “place” in dialogue with philosophical, theological, and experiential approaches to “place” in Buddhism and Christianity in American and beyond, this course asks: How nature becomes religious and/or sacred “place?” What does “place” have to do with religious identity, community, and/or spiritual maturation or demise? How do individuals and communities practice religious and sacred “place?” How and what do these practices perform religious insights, processes, and values? When and why does “place” become a site (sites) of contestation, and what’s at stake? What difference does urban or wild make in the religious practices of “place?” Primary and secondary texts addressing historical and contemporary analyses and theories of “place,” cultural geography, nature, sacred space, and landscape in relation to religious conceptions and practices will guide class discussions. Some level of fieldwork in religious practices of “place” will complement class reading, providing additional methods and theories for examining comparative concepts of sacred space and practices of religious “place.”

RLSR 767/SOC 720: Morality and Society (OPUS # 3101)
Tipton Thursday 7-10 pm Max: 15

Content: This seminar studies the relationship between the distinctive moral ideals and experience of social life and its varied institutional arrangements, including the moral implications of social modernization for conceiving persons individually and evaluating their globally structured relations. It maps diverse moral logics and constituencies across cultural traditions seen as continuities of conflict over socially shared ways of life. It probes the social processes of producing, distributing, receiving and contesting moral meaning; and its role in inspiring social action and judging social institutions to shape social conflict as well as order. The course charts the sociology of morality as a field by marshaling thematically related works in sociology and social theory, moral and political philosophy, comparative religious ethics and anthropology to span classical theories and recent empirical studies of contemporary American moral life, including racial and gender inequality, public participation, religious conflict, hard work and romantic love.

Texts : Readings include works by Aristotle, Adam Smith, Rousseau; Marx, Weber, Durkheim; John Meyer, Bourdieu, Walzer, Seyla Benhabib, Mary Douglas, Geertz, Bellah, Ann Swidler, Nina Eliasoph and William JuliusWilson.

• Weber, The Sociology of Religion
• Geertz, Islam Observed
• Douglas, How Institutions Think
• Asad, Genealogies of Religion
• Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Consumerism
• Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion
• Smith, American Evangelicalism
• Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World
• Lincoln & Mamiya, The Black Church in the African-American Religious Experience
• Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today
• Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice

Particulars: Ph.D. seminar; term paper, class presentations.

RLSR 770/JS 730R/ANT 585: Religion and Cultural Analysis: Ethnography of Jews and Muslims: An Experimental Seminar (OPUS # 4131) Seeman Thursday 3-6 Max: 15

Content: Jews have long been the "other within", just as Muslims have been an "other without" of the Western social science tradition. This seminar explores ethnographic representation of both Jews and Muslims with an eye towards fundamental theoretical and methodological questions: (1) How can ethnography be used in the study of literate, highly textual religious traditions like these? (2) What is the role of subject position in the writing of ethnography? (3) Can scholarly and political agendas in the modern Middle East be separated enough to allow new ideas to emerge? (4) What does the study of these two traditions teach us about the ethnographic study of all religion and religious experience? We will read one ethnography each week, focusing both on the intellectual history of the discipline as well as recent developments in the field. Students will write an analytic paper on a topic of their choice.

Texts will include:Texts may include the following:

• Michael Fischer, Debating Muslims
• Jonathan Boyarin, Storm from Paradise
• Westermarck, Ritual and Religion in Morrocco
• Virginia Dominguez, People as Subject, People as Object
• Talal Asad, Geneaologies of Religion
• Hagar Solamon, The Hyena People
• Zborowski and Herzog, Life is With People
• Erica Lehrer, Shoah Business
• Uni Wikan, Tomorrow, God Willing
• M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performance
• Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

RLTS 710C/CPLT 751: Theological Problems: Divine Names (OPUS # 3114)
Jordan Wednesday 9:30-12:30 Max: 12

Content: Christian theology claims a long tradition of “negative theology,” of writing that registers how unlikely are the “names” of God, even (or especially) in scripture. This seminar will consider the constitution of that tradition, some ways in which it has been ignored, and possibilities it offers for writing theology in the present. The first part of the seminar will consider influential works from the beginning of the tradition into the late Middle Ages. The second part of the seminar will turn to contemporary appropriations, modifications, and rejections.

Texts: The first part of the seminar will read works by Plato, Augustine, Ps-Dionysius, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. The second part of the seminar will read at least Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bataille, and Derrida.

Particulars: Members of the seminar will be expected to read the assigned texts attentively and to discuss them constructively. They will also be asked to write four or five short exercises. The topics for the exercises will be both interpretive and constructive. There will be no examinations.

RLTS 750: Religious and Theological Aesthetics (OPUS # 3106)
Farley and Saliers Monday 1-4 Max: 12

Content: Through the reading of classical and contemporary texts and meditation on particular works of art, this class will investigate the role of aesthetics in religion and theology. Beginning with selected Platonic texts, this seminar explores relations between beauty and desire as both problematic yet necessary to Christian theology. How may we speak of the beauty/glory of God and religious desire now? What ‘theological poetics’ are possible for this task? The class will compare a Thomistic approach which focuses on natural theology (Viladesau) to Edward Farley’s attention to beauty as a dimension of redemption. The class will also investigate how interpretations of the divine affect the capacity to experience beauty in the world.

Texts: Texts might include: Plato’s Symposium; Plotinus, “Beauty,” Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names; Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics, Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty; Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve; selections from Simone Weil; Saliers, “Beauty and Terror;” Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just

Particulars: Initial short papers on readings and responses to class presentations will aid in seminar discussions for the first few weeks. Students will prepare a writing project beginning early in the term focusing on a particular constructive engagement with the topic of beauty and desire, with possible implications for religious/theological aesthetics.

 

Other courses of interest:

JS 540: Rabbinic Judaism: Mishnah and Midrash (OPUS # 2575)
Gilders Tuesday 2:00-5:00 MAX: 15

Content: This course will provide the opportunity to develop or reinforce facility with the literature of early Rabbinic Judaism ("Tannaitic" literature) through the close reading and discussion of texts in the original Hebrew, with a special focus on Midrashic literature. We will begin our work with systematic study of Rabbinic Hebrew and the reading of some 'classic' passages of the Mishnah. We will then turn to the readings of selections from the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, the Tannaitic Midrash on the book of Exodus. Along with this primary text, we will read and discuss several works of modern scholarship on Midrash and Rabbinic biblical interpretation.

Texts:

• Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Hendrickson, 2006; or any other available printing)
• M.H. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Clarendon Press, 1927; repr., Wipf & Stock, 2001)
• Miguel Perez Fernandez, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew (trans., John Elwolde; Brill, 1999)
• Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Indiana University Press, 1990)

Particulars: Prior study of Hebrew (at least two years of Biblical, Rabbinic, or Modern Hebrew; or equivalent) is a prerequisite for this course. Interested students who are unsure about their preparation should consult the professor. The course is open to qualified undergraduates, with the professor's permission. Graded work will consist of a 'mid-term' Hebrew test; an end-of-term Hebrew test; several quizzes; take-home translation exercises; a final research paper (undergraduates, 10 pages; graduate students, 20-25 pages). Graduate students will make a class presentation, and will also introduce the materials and lead discussion in at least one class meeting.

 

JS 540: Introduction to Rabbinic Judaism and Its Literature (OPUS # 4279)
Berger Monday 9:30-12:30 MAX: 12

Content: Rabbinic Judaism flourished in the waning years of the Second Jewish Commonwealth and the first five centuries of the Common Era. Its rulings, practices, and ideology largely shaped Jewish religious life throughout the diaspora until the 19th century. However, much of the record of that period is the literary legacy of the Rabbis themselves. In this seminar, we will examine the sitz im leben of Rabbinic literature, understanding the emergence and consolidation of Rabbinic Judaism, and then examining various texts from that period. We will read a chapter of the Babylonian Talmud in the original, using it as a springboard for a general overview of the texts from this period and trying to understand the mind of the scholars mentioned in them and of those who redacted them.

Texts:

• The Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Berakhot, chapter 4 (with translations)
• G. Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age
• M. Chernick, Essential Papers on the Talmud
• H. L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash
• E. E. Urbach, The Sages

Particulars: Students must be prepared to read the primary text for each class. Hebrew is a prerequisite, although translations will be available. The final will consist of both written and oral components.

 

JS 730R: Popular Jewish Medieval Culture (OPUS # 2574)
Blumenthal Thursday 2:00-5:00 MAX: 8

Course description: Most surveys of medieval Jewish literature focus on the culture of the elite few, i.e. theology, philosophy, and Kabbalah. As interesting as these ideas and expressions are, they are not the whole picture. In this course, we will be looking at expressions of medieval Jewish "popular culture" in literary and documentary sources. We will be looking at travel accounts, popular history, poetry, magical texts, art, and polemics, which will be supplemented by documentary sources like personal letters and marriage contracts to try and form a picture of what Jewish culture was for the non-elites. We will be looking at both European and Middle Eastern sources, all of which will be in Hebrew.

Texts selected from:

• Nachmanides, Vikuah
• Judah Halevi, Kuzari
• Benjamin of Tuleda, Travels
• Bahya Ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart
• Ibn Gabirol's poetry
• Abraham Bar Hiyya's work on astrology
• Illuminated manuscripts
• In Praise of the BESHT (a biography of the first Hassidic rebbe)
  

Secondary sources:

• S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society
• Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition
• Ivan Marcus, Ritual and Childhood
• Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages

Particulars: The course is open to graduate students, and undergrads with a working knowledge of Hebrew.