RLAR 710: Islamic Theology and Ethics. -
Richard Martin Tues. 6:00 -9:00 MAX: 12
Content: The purpose of the seminar is to introduce graduate students in Religion and related fields to various schools and problems in Islamic religious thought. One premise of the seminar is that problems and issues in contemporary Islamic thought have historical antecedents in early and medieval Islamic theological, philosophical, and political history, and thus each meeting of the seminary will be a dialectic between early problems and issues in Islamic theology and ethics, including relations with non-Muslim communities and societies, and those issues of today. What role has modernity played in the way traditional Islamic discourses get framed and articulated in contemporary religious thought? Another premise of the seminar is that a wide range of today’s teaching scholars in the humanities need to know and teach something about Islam, even if they are not specialists. The seminar invites graduate students and advanced undergraduates in a variety of disciplines to join the seminar, read and discuss Islamic texts, and become acquainted with the rich and diverse universe of Islamic Intellectual life. In addition to classical texts of the Mu’tazilite and Ash`arite schools, the heresiographical tradition, the Brethren of Purity, Sufi theologians, and the Muslim Aritotelians, in early and medieval Islam, we will read some contemporary theological texts. Students with a background in Arabic will meet occasionally with the instructor to read and discuss passages of text in Arabic. A term paper and brief weekly responses to assigned texts will be required of all students.
RLAR 738:
How to Teach Islam:Historic and Pedagogic Issues in Islamic
Civilization
(Cross-listed with MES 570R, HIST 585)
Newby Wednesday 1:00-4:00
MAX: 12
Content: This course is designed for graduate students who wish to learn about Islamic civilizations in their historical contexts as a basis for further study of Islam, for comparative purposes, and in particular to become prepared to offer undergraduate lectures on Islam or to offer an undergraduate survey course on the history of Islamic civilizations. By the end of the course, each student will be familiar with the origins and development of Islam, its spread worldwide, and the major methodological and historiographic issues involved in studying Islam in a historical and geographic context. For each topic and period, students will receive a general overview of the topic, read primary and secondary texts related to the period, and discuss the issues in a seminar setting. In addition, each student will have an opportunity to present an in-depth analysis of one or more topics during the course of the semester. Each presenter or team of presenters will prepare an oral presentation for the seminar discussion of an assigned topic (for examples of weekly assignments, see attached samples).
They will also prepare a final written version of their material in the form of a lesson plan to be distributed to all members of the seminar. All students will also be involved in preparing an annotated bibliography that will be available to each seminar member. At the end of the course, each student will have a file of lesson plans, an annotated bibliography, and will have read relevant primary and secondary texts on the major phases of Islamic
civilizations.
No prior knowledge of Islam or Islamic languages is required
RLE 733: LOVE AND JUSTICE
Jackson Wednesday 2:30-5:30 Four credit hours
Max: 12
Content : Few concepts are more central to ethics than love and justice, but none is more subject to varying interpretation than these two. This course seeks to clarify several philosophical, theological, and literary accounts of love and justice, with emphasis on how they interrelate. Is love ideally indiscriminate and/or self-sacrificial and therefore antithetical to justice? Is justice a single virtue equally binding on all human beings, regardless of sex, race, creed, or ethnicity? Does God possess either moral attribute? Does the practice of charity or the upholding of justice require the denial of dilemmas or belief in an afterlife? How are we to conceive (and act on) such related values as rationality, human equality, and civil liberty? How, more specifically, do love and justice bear on such issues as women's liberation and gay and lesbian rights?
Readings are selected from a broad range of perspectives, displaying both temporal and ideological diversity. Texts include works by/words of Plato, Amos, Jesus, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Rawls, Nussbaum, Kittay, and the instructor. This course is designed for
graduate students and presupposes some knowledge of ethical theory; it is, however, open to advanced Candler students, with permission of the professor
Text :
- Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. by Henry Bettenson
- The Bible, New Revised Standard Version
- Timothy P. Jackson, Love Disconsoled
- Eva Feder Kittay, Love's Labor
- Martha C. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice
- Plato, The Republic, trans. by Allan Bloom
- The Symposium, trans. by Christopher Gill John Rawls,
- Political Liberalism
Recommended articles:
• Timothy P. Jackson, "To Bedlam and Part Way Back: John Rawls and
• Christian Justice," in Faith and Philosophy (Oct. 1991)
•"The Return of the Prodigal?: Liberal Theory and Religious
• Pluralism," in Religion and Contemporary Liberalism, ed. by
Paul J. Weithman (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)
Course requirements: Substantial reading per week, class participation and a class presentation, and two 12-15-page papers. The papers may be synthetic,
critical, or original, but they should display knowledge acquired in
the course and not simply be research projects.
RLHB 720T: The Psalms: The Poetics of Prayer, Praise, and Pedagogy
William Brown Wed 2:00-5:00
MAX: 12
RLHB 790R: Medieval Art as a Bible for the Illiterate (Cross listed with ARTHIST 739)
Pastan Monday 1:00-4:00
Max 10
Content: This seminar examines the implications of Pope Gregory I’s statement, “What Scripture is to the educated, images are to the ignorant,” (Letter to Serenus of Marseille, c. 600 CE). Frequently cited throughout the Middle Ages, this statement became the standard defense of figural painting and sculpture, a rationalization for the expense of art making, and an implicit argument about the power of images. In this course, we will explore the both textual tradition and image cycles that could be construed as affirming or contradicting Gregory’s dictate. Other issues to be considered include: how one “reads” a medieval image, recent scholarship on the varieties and kinds of literacy, and the discrepancies or slippage between the intentions of a patron and meanings imparted to beholders. Case studies are focused on, but not limited to, arts of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, a period corresponding to the explosion of imagery in cathedrals, treasury arts and manuscript illuminations.
Texts:Reserve readings.Particulars: Weekly seminar discussions, seminar presentations, and a research paper. .
RLHB 792: Issues in Hebrew Bible Studies
Martin Buss Tues 2:00-5:00 MAX: 12
RLL 701(b) Akkadian (and Selected Topics in the History, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Near East)
Brent Strawn Thursday 11:00am-12:30pm MAX: 12
Content : The second half 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. 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).
RLNT 720 PAUL
Luke Johnson Wednesday 9:00-12:00 Max: 12
Content: Paul’s Second Letter To The Corinthians:
This seminar examines the Greek text of one of Paul's most challenging letters. It is challenging because it raises a number of critical issues, and also because it contains some of the Apostle's richest and most complex thought. The course is exegetical, and deals with the critical issues as they arise in the text. Students will each command a
classic commentary on the letter and will together engage a major study. Student participants will also find and report on scholarship pertinent to the section of text under consideration.
RLNT 770 History of NT Interpretation from the New Testament Period to the Reformation.
Ayres Friday 2:00-5:00 Max: 12
Content: This course will trace the history of NT (and where necessary some OT)
interpretation through late antiquity and the middle ages. We will begin by considering interpretative practices internal to the NT documents within Jewish and hellenistic contexts. The course will then focus around examining the relationship between the Christian reading practices emerging from the second century and ancient non-Christian
reading practices. A central theme of this examination will be emphasis on the difficulty of categorizing the wide varity of reading practices in this period in the basic categories that are frequently found in standard accounts (eg. "literal" vs. "allegorical")." The
course will end by looking at shifts in these practices in the medeival early reformation periods."
RLNT 780J/RLR 725: Rhetorical Power of Religious Literature
V K Robbins Tuesday: 2:00-5:00 MAX: 12
Content: Religious literature persuades both by evoking pictures in the mind and by advancing reasoning supported by common experiences. Recent studies of human thinking, based on language usage, brain function, body gesture, social location, and personal networking, provide new resources for understanding the rhetorical nature of speech and writing. Using these resources, rhetorical analysts and interpreters have gained new status and importance across all disciplines of study in the sciences, literature, history, philosophy, and the arts. Religion, religious speech, and religious writings are central players in this resurgence of interest in rhetoric as a discipline of study and a guide for analysis, interpretation, and constructive thinking, writing, and action.
This seminar will focus on the dynamic relation of rhetography (communication that evokes pictures in the mind) and rhetology (communication that is explicitly argumentative) in religious speech, writing, ritual, and community. Participants will be encouraged to study multiple religious traditions as a way of gaining new insights on religious traditions they know well.
Participants in the seminar will read both ancient and modern primary and secondary sources as guides to rhetorical theory, analysis, interpretation, and construction. Individual participants may choose between rhetography and rhetology as a major focus, but all will be asked to interrelate ways in which religious speech, writing, and/or modern technology both evoke pictures in the mind and use argumentation for purposes of persuading audiences.Texts:
- George Lakoff, Don’t Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
- George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live by
- Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
- George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction
- Chaim Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric
- Chaim Perelman & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric
- Nancey C. Murphy, Reasoning & Rhetoric in Religion
- Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities
- Vernon K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts
- Vernon K. Robbins, The Invention of Christian Discourse, Vol. 1
- Klaus K. Klostermaier, Hinduism: A Short Introduction
- Laurie L. Patton (ed.), Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation
- Farid Esack, The Qur’an: A Short Introduction
-
Particulars: In addition to regular reports on the readings, participants will write short papers as a means to progress toward the successful writing of a major research paper. Multiple power points and pod casts will be available on Blackboard to assist the process of teaching and learning.
RLPC 720GPastoral Theology
Blevins Thursday 2:30-5:30 Max: 12
Content: Pastoral theology-like all practical theologies-seeks to discover the
common ground between our theologies and our practices. And yet, this ground has become unstable in light of important cultural critiques arising from various communities that point to inadequacies in earlier psychological and theological models of pastoral theological reflection and practice. The question before us in the course, then, is this: how do we articulate our own pastoral theology and practices when multiple
perspectives claim authority and raise critiques? This course is designed to introduce students to various forms of scholarship in theology and cultural theory that will help them explore that question.
In the course we will utilize readings in pastoral theological method and in various contextual theologies that both critique earlier models of pastoral care and faith communities and endeavor to lay out alternatives. In addition, we will explore Michel Foucault's concept of the role of pastoral power in Western culture in order to think
about pastoral theology in light of postmodern perspectives. In the course, we will endeavor to name and enter into these new perspectives and allow them to unsettle our predominant pastoral theologies in order that we might find a way to articulate constructive alternatives.
RLR 700R: Introduction to the Interdisciplinary Study of Religious Practices
Bounds and Seeman: Monday 12:00-3:00 MAX: 12
Content: This course serves as an introduction to the study of religion through an examination of religious practices. We will look comparatively at a variety of approaches and lenses, within religious and theological studies, reading both work describing theory and method and works studying religious practices. Throughout we will keep trying to be attentive to how religions are lived and practiced and how best we can understand these practices. As their major project, students will study one religious practice, drawing upon one or more of the theoretical and methodological frameworks presented
Texts:
- Dorothy Bass and Miroslav Volf, Practicing Theology
- Courtney Bender, Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love, We Deliver
- Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice
- Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice or The Logic of Practice
- Thomas Csordas, The Sacred Self
- Marie Griffith, God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission
- Laurel Kendall, The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman
- Saba Mahmood, The Politics of Piety
- Dianne Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey
Particulars: The course will be in seminar format. Students will be expected to participate in seminar discussions, be co-presenters of the weekly topics, and prepare a research project.
RLSR 700J: On the Very Idea of Comparing Religion: "Theoretical" Approaches
Patton Wednesday 7:00 - 10:00 MAX: 12
Content: What does it mean--intellectually, socially, morally, to compare
religions? Recent theoretical critiques of comparison have argued that it
emerges from an exclusive Christian basis, and that its history is
grounded in both colonialism and missionizing.
This course will engage
that critique, and begin to explore theories that offer constructive
alternatives to the earlier forms of comparison.
We will begin with basic
reading inthe philosophy of comparative thought.
We will then read the
earlier comparative theorists of religion and consider the epistemological
bases upon which they compare. In addition, we will be engaging the
critiques of comparative work, particularly those who work with
historical, ethnographic, postcolonial approaches to religious phenomena.
Finally, we will read those who wish to defend comparison upon new and
entirely different political and epistemological grounds--ranging from
cognitive, textual, ethnographic, aesthetic, and philosophical defenses of
the comparative enterprise. We will also focus on particular case studies
of the comparative method .
Texts (along with several relevant essays)
- Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth
- Jonathan Z Smith, Imagining Religion, Charles Taylor, Mulitculturalism and the Politics of Recognition
- Van Der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, Barbara Holdrege, Between Jeruslaem and Banaras
- Benson Saler, Conceptualizing Religion, Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained
- Thomas Csordas, The Sacred SelfPatton and Ray, Eds. A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in
the
Postmodern AgePatton and Ray, Eds. A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the
Postmodern Age
Francis Clooney, Theology After Vedanta, An Experiment in Comparative Theology - Jose Cabezon, Scholasticism: Cross Cultural and Comparative Perspectives
RLSR 790R: Classical and Contemporary Theoretical Orientation in the Sociology of Religion.
Eiesland Wednesday 9:00-12:00 MAX: 12
Content: This seminar is an advanced social theory course for graduate students. The course will focus on five theorists who constitute part of the "classical" tradition of modern social theory, in particular, the pioneering work of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Max Weber (1864-1920), Emile Durkheim 1858-1917), George Simmel (1858-1918), and George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Each classical theorist is paired with contemporary theorists ho work primarily within each theoretical tradition. This course focuses throughout the classical and contemporary theoretical underpinnings of "social and religious practice."
RLTS 753: Encountering God? Case Studies in the Mediation of the Divine
McFarland Thursday: 9:30-12:30 MAX: 12
encounter with God by examining four debates from the history of the Christian churches: the doctrine of the Trinity (3rd-4th c.), the
veneration of icons (7th-8th c.), the Eucharist (13th-16th c.), and the problem of evil (17th-20th c.). Readings from primary texts will be
used to shed light on various perspectives informing these debates, as well as the ways in which various doctrinal resolutions were
constructed so as to do equal justice to broadly shared Christian convictions regarding the transcendence and immanence of God."
RLTS 753G Phenomenology of Black Religion
Thee Smith Tuesday: 2:00-5:00 Max 12
Content: This graduate seminar introduces phenomenology of religion as a discipline, relates it to theology and other fields of religious studies, and applies it to salient features of black North American religion and culture, specifically:
(1) ritual-transformative dynamics, such as ecstatic worship and spirit possession; conjuration or folk magical and healing practices;
(2) ritual-aesthetic dynamics, in music, speech, literature and drama; and
(3) ritual-political dynamics, for example social change and freedom movements based on biblical figures like Exodus and Diaspora, the ritual leadership of black women, Afro-Islam vs. Afro-Christianity, and other cultural and spiritual developments in response to student interest.
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 present a summary term paper.
RLTS 770 Psychology and Religion: Theology and Sexuality
Mark Jordan Tuesday 2:30-5:30 MAX: 12
Content: Michel Foucault makes two strong claims about Christian theology. The first is that Christian pastoral practice played a central role in creating modern regimes of sexuality. The second is that those regimes gained their present power only after the “death of God.” Queer theologians (among others) have added a third claim: contemporary Christian thinking has capitulated to the modern regime of sexuality by making sexual identity an emblem of orthodoxy. This seminar will explore all three claims as questions for a variety of texts. It will then ask whether recent theories, especially of performativity or performance, offer a way of thinking embodied desire beyond sexuality.
Texts: The seminar will juxtapose works by Bataille, Butler, Foucault, Irigaray, and Sedgwick with theological pieces by such writers as Marcella Althaus-Reid, Grace Jantzen, Gerard Loughlin, Elizabeth Stuart, and Graham Ward. It may also constellate these theoretical discussions with modern literary texts at the boundary of Christianity and sexuality.
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 three short exercises and a term paper. The topics for the exercises will be both interpretive and constructive. There will be no examinations.
RLTS 771 Theology and Literature Seminar
Carol Lakey Hess Thur 2-5:00 MAX: 12
Content : This course places novels and short stories in “mutually critical correlation” with theological materials. We will also use the tools of critical theory to examine sub-dominant themes in both theology and literature. We will read theologies that focus on theodicy and justice; and the novels chosen will introduce us to lives that pose questions of theodicy. We will examine and employ methods in practical theology to structure the conversation between theology and literature. Course participants will be asked to read and discuss one of the course novels with a group of persons outside the course. It will be a goal of the course to produce (and perhaps publish) a collection of substantive essays that will serve as exemplars for a conversation between theology and literature.
Texts:
- Will be along the lines of: Lois Tyson, CRITICAL THEORY TODAY; Graham Ward, THEOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY; Jane Tomkins, READER RESPONSE (includes readings from David Bleich and Stanley Fish); Martha Nussbaum, POETIC JUSTICE: THE LITERARY IMAGINATION AND PUBLIC LIFE; Wendy Farley, A CONTEMPORARY THEODICY; Douglas Hall, THINKING THE FAITH; Sharon Welch, A FEMINIST ETHIC OF RISK; Stephen Davies, LIVE OPTIONS IN THEODICY; Seyla Benhabib, “The Generalized and the Concrete Other”; Charles Dickens, HARD TIMES; F.Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY; Toni Morrison, BLUEST EYE and PLAYING IN THE DARK; Elie Wiesel, TRIAL OF GOD; Dai Sijie, BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE PRINCESS; Velma Wallis, TWO OLD WOMEN: AN ALASKA LEGEND; short stories by ZZ Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri.
Particulars: The course will be in seminar format. Students will be expected to participate in seminar discussions, be co-presenters of the weekly topics, and prepare a research project.
Other Courses of Interest:
CPLT 751: The Limit Experience in Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille
Robbins Wednesday: 1:00-4:00 Max 12
.