Class Schedules

This course examines the diversity of Muslims in America from a historical and lived religion perspective. We will examine how race, ethnic, class, gender, and theological differences matter in the construction of Muslim American identities. We will pay particular attention to issues of representation as they relate to Orientalist discourses and the phenomenon of Islamophobia. The class will begin with the history of Muslims in the United States, discussing such figures as Omar ibn Said and early Black American Muslim movements like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam. The latter half of the course turns to the lived experiences of American Muslims, including how American Muslims engage in sacred texts and rituals today. The final project will use oral histories to explore geographies of Islam in the Twin Cities through a digital humanities story mapping project.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Buddhism is increasingly well-known in the USA, but what is it, and how does Buddhism encourage people to organize and think about their lives? Organized on the basis of the Eightfold Noble Path, with a focus of 'morals, the Buddhist psychology of mind, and meditation,'  this course offers an introduction to the personalities, teachings, and institutions of Buddhism. Beginning in India at the time of the Buddha, this course focuses on Theravada Buddhism, asking students to think historically, philosophically, and anthropologically. Many Friday sessions will be dedicated to an exploration of the variety of Buddhist meditative techniques.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An introduction to the study of Asian religious traditions in South and East Asia (India, China and Japan). Open to everyone but especially appropriate for first and second year students.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is taught jointly between the department of Religious Studies and the department of Classics, by a specialist in the Roman East and a specialist in classical India. We will start on either side of this world, with Alexander the Great and Ashoka, exploring the relationship between empire and religion from Rome to India in the world's crossroads for the thousand years between Alexander and the rise of Islam.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Our goal will be to make an effort to comprehend just what cultural literacy would mean when studying the major religious traditions of the world, while at the same time developing an appreciation of some of the blind spots and problems in this enterprise. To a large extent, we will do some serious construction before we feel ready for de-construction. Every couple of weeks, we will cover one of five major areas (South Asia, East Asia, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and each student will read a different author's treatment of this material.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course investigates the ways in which gender identities and relationships between “men” and “women” have been articulated, constructed, and refashioned throughout the Muslim World. Starting with problematizing fixed notions of gender and sexuality, we map prominent attitudes through visiting a diverse array of sources from the Qur’an, Sunna, and legal documents to historical and anthropological case studies, literature, and film from across the region. Exploring notions of femininity and masculinity, as well as attitudes towards same-sex relations and transgendered populations, we witness their implications in case studies and stories, from a divorce court in Iran to a matriarchal utopia in India.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Many religious texts and traditions have attempted to tackle the question of life after death. In Judaism, views of post-mortem existence develop gradually over centuries, and they include phenomena like heaven, hell, resurrection, messianism, apocalypticism, and more. This course provides an overview of the varied presentations of the afterlife throughout Jewish history. Students will explore the Jewish Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient apocalyptic visions, and rabbinic discussions as avenues for understanding these concepts and their impact in Judaism. We will also dedicate time to comparative study of the afterlife and eschatology in Judaism and Christianity, as well as the reception of these ideas in popular culture, cinema, podcasts, and contemporary theological discourses.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course you will explore the diverse understandings of Christian sexual renunciation from the first century, C.E. to today. From the veneration of the Virgin Mary in early and medieval Christianity to the more recent celebration of virgins and born-again virgins in U.S. pop culture, many Christians have understood the practice of virginity as a mark of spiritual progress or perfection. You will examine the rise of Christian sexual renunciation in the first through fourth centuries, C.E., the veneration of virgin saints in the Middle Ages, the shifting attitudes toward virginity in the Reformation era, the recent development of Christian chastity movements in the U.S. (True Love Waits, Silver Ring Thing), and the proliferation of Christian chastity advice literature. In written assignments and class discussions, you will explore how Christian practices of renunciation draw upon and contribute to cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, race, and the body. In three short reflection papers and one final project, you will use your own writing as an occasion to come to terms with the cultures of virginity and how they relate to the history of Christianity. In-class writing workshops will provide you an opportunity to discuss your and your peers’ writing and hone skills in argumentation, organization, style, and revision.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The critical study of ancient Christian texts involves making strange texts familiar and familiar texts strange. In this course, we will consider non-canonical texts alongside canonical texts in order to develop insight into the formation of Christian identity in the first through fourth centuries. Special emphasis will be given to the development of the discourses of orthodoxy and heresy, the diversity of Christian beliefs and practices, and the examination of early Christian writings within their social and political contexts. Instead of investigating the material in strict chronological order, we will consider how different people (Jesus, Mary Magdalene, James, Paul, etc) serve as authorizing figures for the texts. Using this organization, we will investigate issues at stake in the development of Christian "canon," including theology, Christology, apostolic authority, women's roles, and the relation of Christianity to the state and to other religious traditions.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will examine the roles, identities, and representations of women in the Tanakh/ Old Testament, New Testament, and Jewish and Christian apocrypha.  We will explore how biblical writers used women "to think with," and we will consider how gender is co-constructed alongside religious, social, and sexual identities.  We will ask the following sorts of questions: What opportunities for social advancement and leadership were open to women in ancient Israelite, early Jewish, and early Christian communities, and how did these opportunities differ from those open to women in other religious formations in the ancient Mediterranean?  How did biblical regulations of bodies, sexuality, marriage, and family life shape women's lives? What are the social and material effects of biblical representations of women? And how might current feminist theories inform our interpretation of biblical texts about women?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The course is an introduction to some of the important theoretical and methodological work conducted by scholars in various disciplines who hope to better define and understand religious phenomena. This seminar begins with some of the early twentieth century texts that are often cited and discussed by contemporary scholars of religion (e.g., Durkheim, Weber, Freud) and then turns to a number of investigations stemming from engagement with earlier theorists or refracting new concerns. The course inquires into the problems of defining and analyzing religious cultures, and the researcher's position or positions in this analysis, as this has been approached from anthropological, sociological, and religious studies perspectives.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

All readings and class taught in English; no pre-knowledge required. A widespread tendency in contemporary Western societies is to associate metaphysics with religion, if not with what is often dismissively called the "irrational." This course will dismantle this myth by reading closely European philosophy and political theory, mostly since the seventeenth century, in their relation to theology and their reception by twentieth-century critical theory. This will allow us to examine the ways in which secular thought emerges not as an alternative to metaphysics-something which thought cannot supersede anyway-but rather as a different way of dealing with the very same metaphysical questions and issues that concern religion, from the meaning of life to the imminence of death, and from (actual or imagined) guilt to the hope for redemption. We shall endeavor to identify the similarities and differences between the 'secular' and the 'religious' ways, including their respective relations to rationality and their functions in ideology. Readings may include: Aristotle, Talal Asad, George Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke, Richard Dienst, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Peter Harrison, Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Carl Schmitt, Baruch Spinoza, Alberto Toscano, Max Weber, Slavoj Zizek.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the ancient history and sacred texts of Judaism’s Second Temple period (6th century BCE to 70 CE). After Jews return home from exile in Babylon, they rebuild the Jerusalem Temple (the "Second Temple") and spend centuries living under the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome. In this class, students will encounter Jewish military records in the books of the Maccabees and Josephus; approach ancient views of women and gender in the books of Esther and Judith; ponder Jewish philosophy in the books of Sirach and Wisdom; and decode the apocalyptic imagery of Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Our study of these texts will provide political and socio-cultural insight into how Second Temple Jews expressed identity, engaged in worship, and negotiated conflict amidst uncertain times in the ancient Mediterranean world.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course engages with the pleasures and pains of love, for the Divine and human, as imagined by authors under the influence of “Persianate” culture. We will start by defining the “Persianate” and its sphere as well as conceptualizations of “love.” We will look at an array of sources in different poetic genres and forms, produced in Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent from the 10th century to present day. We will read the texts in English translation and will focus on themes such as forbidden love, celebration of carnal pleasures of love and lust, homo-eroticism, mystical love, as well as love for the Divine, religious figures, and the nation. When possible, we will juxtapose the poems to their visual representations or musical renditions. The texts are accompanied by secondary sources that expand on some theoretical, historiographical, literary, and philosophical issues related to the concept of love.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will examine the relationship between fascism and religion in a variety of historical settings. We will read and analyze primary and secondary source texts to identify how and to what extent fascist movements root themselves in traditions of faith. We will explore the formal relationship between fascist leaders and clergy as well as how religious and fascist practices inform one another. By comparing how fascism and faith relate in different historical contexts, students will be challenged to determine what makes religious beliefs and institutions predisposed to authoritarianism and violence.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What causes people to change their religious beliefs? How have societies handled those who do alter their spiritual attitudes? This course focuses on several dramatic case studies of men and women who self-consciously changed their religion during the turbulent period of imperial encounters between the mid-1500s and the 1700s. Among others, we will examine and interrogate reports of converts to Christianity including Jewish and Muslim prisoners of the Inquisition, captives of Mediterranean pirates, and the nearly canonized Mohawk convert Catherine Tekakwitha. We will consider how violence, national loyalties, gender, charisma, local power dynamics, environmental upheaval, and serendipity affected the choices and fates of these converts. This course fulfills both the global/comparative and pre-1800 requirements for the major. Meets the pre-1800, and the global and/or comparative history requirements, and can count towards "Law and Social Justice," or "Global/Comparative" fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course charts the formation of Islam and the expansion of Muslim peoples, from the life of the Prophet Muhammad to the Mongol conquest of Baghdad. It will examine Muslim institutions, beliefs, and ritual practices in their historical contexts. In addition to the basics of Muslim practice and belief, the class will introduce students to mystic traditions (Sufism), Islamicate statecraft, and intellectual/legal traditions as well as cultural trends including art, architecture, and literature.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Buddhism is increasingly well-known in the USA, but what is it, and how does Buddhism encourage people to organize and think about their lives? Organized on the basis of the Eightfold Noble Path, with a focus of 'morals, the Buddhist psychology of mind, and meditation,'  this course offers an introduction to the personalities, teachings, and institutions of Buddhism. Beginning in India at the time of the Buddha, this course focuses on Theravada Buddhism, asking students to think historically, philosophically, and anthropologically. Many Friday sessions will be dedicated to an exploration of the variety of Buddhist meditative techniques.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

For thousands of years, the Bible has been the subject of some of the most enduring pieces of art. From the ancient synagogue mosaics of Dura-Europos to the paintings of Rembrandt and Caravaggio, Jewish and Christian Scripture has animated the artistic imagination for centuries. Today, the medium of film is among the most prominent vehicles for presenting biblical ideas and reimagining the narrative of the Bible in contemporary contexts. This course explores the various ways that modern filmmakers draw on the Bible for their messaging and infuse their cinematic art with ancient theology, ethics, and ideology. Students will analyze films alongside biblical texts, and supplement their analyses with interdisciplinary materials (e.g., readings, videos, and podcasts) from the fields of critical theory, gender and queer theory, feminist interpretation, the philosophy of religion, popular criticism, classical literature, and more.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will introduce students to the study of folklore, belief, and religious folklife of the Maya people at different points in history. We will consider examples of folktales, myths, foodways, material arts, paranormal experience narratives, magic, healing, and other traditions as they relate to religion. We will pay particular attention to the complex and sometimes problematic relationships between missionaries and Maya people in the construction of official and unofficial religions. By examining folklore that emerges within, between, and in reaction to religious traditions, students will be challenged to move beyond simple notions of culture, religious authority, and doctrine.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Like Latin and Greek in Europe, Sanskrit is a highly inflected language of scholarship and revered as the perfect medium for discourse on everything from science and sex to philosophy and religion. It flourished in its classical form after the age of the Buddha (5th century BC) and served as a scholarly lingua franca in India until the Islamic period. This course serves as an introduction to the grammar an script of Sanskrit, and we will advance to a point of reading simplified texts from the classical epic Ramayana.Students will be expected to attend class regularly and spend at least ten hours a week outside class studying the grammar and vocabulary. Without this sort of effort, no progress is possible in such a complex language. In addition to the rigorous study of the language, we will consider both the role of the language in classical Indian culture and religion, and some texts from the Ramayana, looking at both English translation and Sanskrit originals.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A study of the religious tradition of Roman Catholicism. Some attention will be given to the theology and historical development of the Roman Catholic Church, but major emphasis will fall on the relationship of the Catholic religion to various Catholic cultures, including Ireland, Mexico, Poland and the United States.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Asian Americans are often overlooked in the study of religion in the U.S., and yet the impact of Asian religious practices can be seen at every turn: yoga studios, mindfulness meditation, "zen" aesthetics of minimalism, and so on. What do we make of the gap between how Asian religions are practiced in Asian American communities and how these traditions have been reinterpreted by predominantly white, educated, middle class adherents? How do Asian American Christians negotiate their identities in the context of non-Asian Christian churches or the intergenerational tensions within their own ethnic churches? The approach of this course is interdisciplinary (and sometimes counterdisciplinary); it draws on theoretical and methodological insights from ethnic studies, religious studies, history, and sociology. Topics include: race and the racialization of Asian Americans; the politics of cultural and religious exchange; the commodification of Asian religious practices; and issues of assimilation and hybridity within Asian American Christian traditions.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This broadly anthropological class introduces issues in the social study of death and the dead generally, focusing on the diverse ways in which different societies treat the dead as a social group, and the social powers that emerge from the practices of dealing with the dead. The class uses comparative examples to explore general themes, rooting these discussions in concrete cases.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In this class you will examine ideas about love among ancients in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa. Topics include love of friends, love of family, love of God/gods, erotic love, love magic, myth, and poetry. Alongside your classmates, professor, and occasional guest speakers, you will pay special attention to diverse constructions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, bodies, reproduction, and power and how these intersected with ancient conceptions of love. You will learn to engage theories from the last forty years (i.e. Foucault, feminist theory, queer historical theory, radiant historiography) as you explore ancient texts, sculpture, paintings, and mosaic (from Homeric myth to Augustine’s Confessions, from the poetry of Sappho to the Song of Songs, from ancient Greek vase painting to portraits on sarcophagi). This class will be taught in a seminar style, with large and small group discussion, student presentations, short lecture formats, low-stakes writing assignments, reflections that build to a larger project, and attention to creative works such as poetry and art.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

According to some trends in Islamic thought, the Imaginal Realm, not bound to the physical world, yet not completelyabstract, gives access to the faculty of imagination to catch glimpses of the Truth. This course is a wide rangingengagement with the imaginative discourses of Muslims. We will look at autobiographical, epistolary, and literary sourcesas well as music, painting, and movies spanning Islamic history in order to discuss the worldview of different Muslims on being, life and death, love, skepticism about religious claims, mystical journeys, and immigration. Besides reading original texts (in English translation), we will look at secondary sources that contextualize the historical and theoreticalissues under study.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Do men have gender? How does the performance of masculinity intersect with patriarchy? In what ways do patriarchy and masculinity relate to religious traditions, practices, and expressions? In this course, we consider how religious discourses have shaped and been shaped by different understandings of masculinity. We will take as our starting point contemporary discussions of “muscular Christianity” or “getting buff for Jesus” in the U.S. today before shifting into a theoretical discussion of gender, power, and the construction of masculinity through Raewyn Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity and Jack Halberstam’s work on female masculinity. In the latter half of the course, we will take a comparative approach, examining how differing understandings, ideals, and embodiments of masculinity are negotiated across religious traditions.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will explore white Christian nationalism, the confluence of white supremacy and the idea that the US is a Christian nation whose laws should conform to Christian values and principles. Although public consciousness of white Christian nationalism has increased since the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, it has a centuries-long history and continues to influence US politics, culture and religious life. Topics in this course include nationalism, racial liberalism, whiteness, and civil religion.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Religion and Law in Africa is an intermediate cross-listed history and religion course designed to teach students how to think like historians and assess how the legal systems of indigenous African societies have been shaped by their respective religions and cosmologies. This course also explores how Arab migration and European colonization in different parts of Africa imposed new legal systems that were influenced by either Islam or Christianity. The major themes of this class include African agency, indigenous African forms of knowledge and periodization, the interconnectedness of religious, legislative, and judicial facets of African societies, and diversity among African regions, societies, ethnic groups, religions, and languages. It counts toward the Legal Studies and African Studies concentrations. For history, it meets either the pre-1800 or post-1800 requirement and can count towards the “Law & Social Justice,” or “Race and Indigeneity,” or “Africa & Atlantic World” fields.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What is meant by nation and national identity? Is nation a primordial concept or a byproduct of Modernity? What social, economic, sexual, religious, and racial factors are at work in creating a nation? This course looks at these questions in the context of the Modern Middle East, when competing nation-building enterprises were at work to establish an “authentic national identity” with a focus on religious identity. We will look at political essays, literary creations, images, and songs to study the diverse ways in which the nation is imagined and critiqued in the region, along with sources on Modern political thought.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An advanced seminar required for religious studies majors, open to minors. Both classic and contemporary theories on the nature of religion and critical methods for the study of religion will be considered. Prerequisite(s): Two courses in Religious Studies and permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials