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Division of Religion Main PageTraditional and Modern (Same as PHIL 789V)
W 1:00-4:00 Max: 8
Content: The seminar focuses on major founding insights, principles
and practical explication of moral thinking in India, from classical to
contemporary times. It critically engages Brahmanical-Hindu, Buddhist and
Jaina ethics, Muslim personal law, nationalist and postcolonial critiques
for their responses to the subcontinent's moral, social and legal challenges.
The text-based part will survey the formative impact of competing ethical
theories that have determined the culture, or have in turn been criticized
and transformed over India's intellectual history. The activist-study part
will center on caste-class, sati-gender, dharma-duty, virtues-violence,
religion-intolerance, and biohealth-environmental issues.
Texts: A Companion to Indian Ethics (An Anthology edited by P. Bilimoria, J. Prabhu, R. Sharma)
(in preparation, available in pre-publication Kinko format, Jan. 2000).
Ethical and Political Dilemmas of Modern India, Ninian Smart and Shivesh Thakur (eds.) (NY: St Martins Press) November 1993. Relativism, Suffering and Beyond: Essays in Honour of B K Matilal (P. Bilimoria, ed. with J. N. Mohanty) NY/ Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. (stocks in Emory University Bookstore)
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason Toward A History of the Vanishing
Present, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999) (stocks in Emory University Bookstore)
Selections from classical texts and recent papers will be made available.
Particulars: One critical presentation and one major paper submission.
(Same as RLHT 738H)
M 1:00-4:00 Max:12
Content: This seminar concerns the body, architectural form,
and sacred space in China and Japan, with some reference to Europe, America,
and other cultures for comparative purposes. We focus on two kinds of highly
ritualized spaces: surrounding (and producing) (a) the emperor's body,
and (b) the Buddhist monastic body. We begin with an overview of the philosophical
frameworks for East Asian conceptions of the body and space, and read recent
scholarship on body and space in East Asia, ranging from the body in art,
medical practices, and gender construction to Grapard's notions of geosophia,
geognosis, and geopiety. Readings from Bourdieu and Foucault help us further
develop a shared theoretical vocabulary. Then we deal with imperial formations
of body and space, especially in guest ritual and sacrifice. In China and
Japan, the emperor's body was the most ritualized object in the world.
Variations of the same set of spatial distinctions served to structure
the imperial palace, major cities, the territory of the empire, houses,
altars, graves, mandalas, heavens, and mountains. As Buddhism "flowed East"
from India, the encounter with Chinese culture also fundamentally restructured
the Buddhist monastery and the Buddhist body. We deal with Buddhist monasticism
and ritual space, and the encounter of Buddhist body/space with Chinese
imperial body/space.
Texts: Readings may include: Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice; Angela Zito & Tani E. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject and Power in China; Angela Zito, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China; Dogen, Pure Standards for the Zen Community;
Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism;
Jun Jing, Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese
Village ; and a reader of selections and articles.
Particulars: No previous class work in Chinese religion or Buddhism is required. Students in the seminar will present summaries of readings and identify questions and issues they want the seminar to discuss. A 20-page research paper will be presented to the seminar by the end of the course. Students
from other programs in the GDR, History Department, or ILA may find the seminar useful and would be welcome.
TH 2:30-5:30 Max: 12
Content: The seminar will be devoted to examining recurring themes as well as identifying important divergences in the social teachings of the Christian tradition. Using Ernst Troeltsch's Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, we will read some of the major figures whom Troeltsch discusses (e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin) as well as twentieth-century theologians whose work was influenced by Troeltsch's statement of the problems of Christian social ethics (e.g., Barth, Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr).
TU/TH 11:00-12:15
Content: The objective of this course is to introduce students to the nature, sources and techniques of Islamic Law (Shari'a), and to enable them to understand some of its main concepts, principles and rules. In addition to discussing the origins and early development of Shari'a, this course will cover the main substantive aspects of this legal tradition: contracts and commercial law, property, criminal law, family law and inheritance, constitutional law, and international law.
While seeking to firmly ground this introduction and understanding on
prevelant conceptions of Shari'a among Muslim scholars and communities
today, class discussions will emphasize comparative analysis and examine
issues raised by the modern application of this legal tradition.
In other words, this course is about Shari'a as a viable and practical
legal system for a modern state, rather than simply a historical phenomenon
that has no relevance to the lives of Muslim individuals and communities
today.
(Same as LAW 646)
T/TH 11:00-12:15 Max: 4
(Note: This is a lecture, rather than seminar format)
(Same as Law 845, 04A) Tuesday, 4:00-6:00pm Max: 14
Content: This seminar is designed to provide an opportunity to
explore moral assumptions concerning human nature and the nature of community
as reflected in the purpose and function of law. We will explore the moral
assumptions in basic schools of thought in legal philosophy and in theology.
We will survey the classic schools of jurisprudence (natural law, legal
positivism and legal realism (Austin, Hart, Fuller, Finnis, Weinreb, Cohen,
Horwitz), and look at key issues in classic Christian theology (biblical
texts, Augustine, Luther, Calvin) and the Jewish tradition (Cover, Elon).
We will also focus on the interaction of common moral assumptions in both
law and theology (Reinhold Neibuhr, Holmes, Calabresi).
Particulars: Each student will be expected (a) to participate
in class discussions based upon assigned (photocopied) reading materials;
(b) to prepare a major seminar research paper; and (c) to teach a portion
of the class using the research and analysis of the paper. Maximum enrollment
is 14 students and permission of the instructor is required.
M 1:00-4:00 Max: 12
Content: This seminar will focus on the book of Exodus, with
a good deal of attention to the legal/ethical material. I am willing, however,
to let someone combine the seminar with the annual paper and then deal
less substantively with Exodus.
Particulars: A major part of the seminar will be systematic attention
to exegetical processes (a little of textual criticism, more of linguistics,
rhetoric and poetics, and anthropology-social and other structures of human
existence.) We will do some "rapid" reading, but much of the time will
be spent on close analysis, taking the different processes in turn, in
conjunction with appropriate secondary readings on substance and method.
W 2:30-5:30 Max: 12
Content: This course provides an examination of classical patristic
Christology from the Arian controversy of the fourth century through the
monophysite reaction to the council of Chalcedon of 451.
Particulars: Two class presentations on primary authors and a
final research paper
W 9:30-12:30 Max: 12
Content: An introduction to the Northwest Semitic language and
literature from ancient Ugarit.
Particulars: Permission of the instructor is required.
W 2:30-5:30 Max: 12
Content: The main work of this seminar will be an exegetical
study of the Book of Revelation, based on the Greek text. Some attention
will be given to the history of interpretation.
Particulars: Translate the Greek text, participate in the seminar
discussions. Students will do a particular 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.
TU 2:30-5:30 Max: 12
Content: The course will examine different facets of the Hellenistic
milieu of early Christianity, concentrating on historical, religious, philosophic,
literary, and cultural issues. Our time will be roughly split between investigating
primary and secondary materials. Besides extensive reading, students will
be asked to make a variety of in-class presentations and write several
research papers, book reviews, etc. Knowledge of Greek, Latin, and German
is required.
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 of confession, penance and reconciliation in 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: Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic
Theory of Neurosis; Otto Kernberg, Object Relations Theory and Clinical
Psychoanalysis; Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation; Helen
Block Lewis, Shame and Guilt in Neurosis; Michael Lewis, Shame,
the Exposed Self; Donald Nathanson [ed.], The Many Faces of Shame;
Frank Summers, Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology. In
addition we will read from a seminar packet of selected materials relating
to the history and theology of Reconciliation, including such thinkers
as Augustine, John Cassian, Cyprian, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard and
various Reformation liturgies.
TH 1:00-4:00
Content: David Tracy claims that, "despite their own sin and ignorance, religions at their best, always bear extraordinary powers of resistance. When not domesticated as sacred canopies for the status quo nor wasted by their own self-contradictory grasps at power, the religions live by resisting." Similarly, Edith Wyschogrod observes that "the world's religious traditions have in the past addressed the problems of the wretched of the earth in the person of saints, those who put themselves totally at the service of the Other. . . " This course invites students to reflect critically upon the thesis that religious practices can be powerful sources of resistance to "false consciousness," in both its individual and its collective manifestations. Special emphasis will be given to consideration of the multifarious and complex interactions between theory and practice, in a context delimited by, but not limited to, intentional practices of Christian spiritual formation. Various religious and non-religious diagnoses of "false consciousness" --ideology, neurosis, sin, attachment, mimetic desire, self-deception, concupiscence, resentiment, etc.--and the associated practices undertaken to resist and transform these will be enumerated, compared, and contrasted. Students will be encouraged to attend carefully to two distinct diagnoses (and associated practices of resistance) of false consciousness, one of which can be realistically construed as "religious."
Texts: The following texts are included among those either
required or recommended for this class: Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude
Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture; Rene
Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World; Bernard
Lonergan, Insight: An Essay in Human Understanding; Martha C. Nussbaum,
The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics; Max
Scheler, Resentiment; Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schon, Theory
in Practice; Juan Luis Segundo, Evolution and Guilt; Denys Turner,
Marxism and Christianity; Gary Thomas, "What's the Use of Theory"
(Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 67, Spring 1997); David
Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion and Hope;
Edith Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmoderism: Revisioning Moral Philosphy.
Particulars: Each student will prepare one class presentation
and one presentation response, this in addition to a final research paper
(approximately twenty pages in length) addressing the similarities and
differences (or incommensurability) between the two diagnoses and associated
practices selected for study.
Patton and
Lewis TU 1:00-4:00 Max: 12
Content: This course will approach the question of sacred/foundational texts through a consideration of the religious or national epics of India and Iran, specifically the Mahabharata and the Shahname. While the Indian Epics have only recently come to the attention of the West, in their native soil they have been one of the major vehicles of transmitting the dharma, or law of the Hindu tradition. The Mahabharata provides a unique lens onto the religious history of India, the Vedic sacrificial system and temple devotion. Likewise, though most Iranians would not consider the Shahname a sacred text per se, it has been of equal if not greater importance to the Qur'an in transmitting and preserving the ethics, ethos and epic history of the Iranian people, as well as the Persian language, throughout the medieval and modern period. This course will engage both the ancient formation of these epics and their contemporary interpretation, exploring the ways in which each tradition "spiritualizes" or "internalizes" its mythology and national history. The methodological goals of the course are to develop the skills of a close textual reader, and a careful comparatavist. We will first engage in close readings of the epics using critically edited and annotated editions and translations of the Mahabharata and Shahname, with students reading from original-language editions of texts in their area(s) of speciality. We will also build a repertoire of clearly articulated, comparative questions about the two epics, and about the relationship of national epics and sacred texts, arising processually through our readings, rather than through predetermined, reified categories. We will also develop these comparative methods through readings in theoretical writings about the nature of sacred texts, epic and the tradition(s) of comparative Indo-European mythology. We will focus on the relationship between textual study, philology, mythology, ethnography, history, philosophy and literature. The course will conclude with a re-consideration of the relationship between foundational texts traditionally considered epic and sacred texts traditionally considered scriptural, to address the question whether Epics can be religiously read.
Particulars: Regular attendance and active participation in weekly seminars, including leadership of class discussions required. One presentation of research project, including circulation of a draft/outline.
One long (25pp) research paper based on class presentation.
(Same as SOC 720) W 2:00-5:00 Max: 15
Content: This course marshals thematically related works in sociology
and social theory, moral and political philosophy, religious ethics, and
anthropology to address three interlocking questions: (1) What general
relationships obtain between the institutional structures of society and
its moral ideals and norms, conceived in terms of virtues, duties, and
rights? (2) What are the moral implications of social modernization in
the West, particularly for conceiving persons individually? (3) What categories
permit analysis of contemporary American moral ideas in a way attentive
both to their inner logic and cultural autonomy and to their social location
and plausibility?
Texts: Plato's Laws; Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments;
Rousseau's Emile; Marx, Weber, Durkheim; Bellah, Erikson, John Meyer;
Walzer, Benhabib, Charles Taylor and related contemporary works.
Particulars: Active participation in seminar discussion; one
short paper and presentation; term paper.
Content: Evil being a somewhat broad topic, we will focus our
discussions in ways that leave much out. We will look at evil from the
perspective of theodicy (justification of God) and from the perspective
of theological anthropology. We will in particular emphasize tragic over
moralistic theodicies and attend to affliction more than guilt as a paradigm
of evil. Students will choose some particular issue to do research on as
the semester proceeds. We will use seminar time primarily to read theological
texts together. Final papers will ideally be some sythesis in which theological
writings are brought to bear on an example of evil or suffering.
Texts: Possible texts would include: Whitehead, Adventures
in Ideas; Berdyaev, Destiny of Man; collected writings of Jacob
Boehme; collected writings of Simone Weil; Karl Rahner, Foundations
of Christian Faith; selections from the desert fathers; Julian of Norwich,
Showings.
Particulars: There will probably be 2-3 short papers over the
course of the semester more analytical in nature and a long (15-25 page)
term paper in the genre of constructive theology.
RLTS 710H Christian Sexual Ethics Jordan
M 1:00-4:00 Max: 12
Content: This seminar is concerned to trace changes in the ways
Christian theologians have evaluated sexual acts. The seminar's aim is
neither to construct a grand historical narrative nor to impose a completed
ethical system. The aim is to think through a sequence of particular texts
that tried to speak about genital pleasure in the terms of Christian revelation-by
describing, judging, exhorting, ignoring, idealizing, stigmatizing, bewailing,
mocking.
Texts: The common texts for the seminar will consist of influential
'primary' texts from the various Christian traditions, including short
works or integral sections of longer works by Ambrose, Augustine, John
Cassian, Peter Damian, Alan of Lille, Andreas Capellanus, Aquinas, Luther,
and Jeremy Taylor. (It is not the least interesting feature of this list
that it is exclusively male.)
Particulars: Besides thoughtful reading and participation, members
of the seminar will be asked to write a single paper (of about 25 pp.)
on a question arising from the common readings.
W 9:00-12:00 Max: 12
Content: This graduate seminar introduces
phenomenology of religion as a discipline by way of examining the distinguishing
features of black North American religion(s) and culture(s), specifically:
1) ritual-transformative dynamics, for example ecstatic worship and spirit
possession, folk magic, healing, and conjuration; 2) ritual-aesthetic dynamics,
for example in music, literature, visual arts, and performance arts; 3)
ritual-political dynamics, for example the use of scriptural and spiritual
figures and symbols to pattern social change and freedom movements.
Texts: Katie Canon, Katie's Canon:
Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community; James Cone, The Spirituals
and the Blues; Mozella Mitchell, Spiritual Dynamics of Howard Thurman's
Theology; Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms;
Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion; Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion
and Black Radicalism; Josiah Young, Black and African Theologies.
Particulars: Class members will have
the opportunity to a) provide presentations on course materials,
textual and nontextual; b) develop and present a midterm ethnographic or
media project focused on some aspect of black religion and culture; and
c) research and draft a summary term paper.
W 4:00-7:00 pm Max: 12
Content: An exploration of the aims and methodologies
peculiar to liturgical theology, focusing especially on the development
and usages of the eucharistic prayer as a paradigm of liturgy as source
and norm for theology. Attention will be given to the modes and interrelations
of praying, ritual enactment, and believing (lex orandi, lex credendi)
and to the critical function of liturgical theology in ecumenical contexts.
Texts: Primary sources from the history
of Christian liturgy (Jewish backgrounds) and contemporary reformed eucharistic
rites; secondary and critical readings from Schmemann, Kavanagh, Bouyer,
Saliers, Wainwright, and Lathrop.
Particulars: Full seminar preparation
and discussion; at least one class presentation, and a term project (20-25
pages). Open to D.Min. and advanced master's students by instructor's permission.
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