Department of Religion | Fall 2008 Course Atlas

Content: This course is an introduction to the study of religion through the exploration of Buddhist and Christian traditions. The first part of the course will include basic overviews of the two traditions with attention to the role of texts, practices, beliefs, and context. The second part of the course will explore comparative ethics. In the process of critically studying both Buddhist and Christian ethics, we will survey the various norms held and the various methods employed by traditions within these two religions.

***Although content is different in REL 100 courses, you may not repeat for credit.***

Content: This course will introduce African Religions and Buddhism using approaches within the academic study of religion. We will begin historically and culturally with the origins and early development of each tradition/orientation, comparing narratives about founding communities and persons as well as grounding mythologies and customs with emphasis upon the transition from local to regional and transnational traditions. Examining how each tradition/orientation views the human condition, course materials will explore sources and obstacles to thriving and meaning-making as well as their understandings of suffering and purposeful life. Comparing particular religious practices from each context, we will explore why and how rituals, religious performances of sacred narratives and philosophies, and ethical decision-making shape ordinary and extra-ordinary life.

Our study of African religions examines the foundations of African thought, ethics, religious customs and practices via the indigenous religious traditions of select sub-Saharan African peoples, including the Yoruba, Fon and Kongo. We will also trace the appearance of these religious traditions as a transnational phenomenon that characterizes a central feature of African diasporic religions in the Caribbean and the Americas. In so doing, we will engage important theoretical and methodological issues that have emerged in the study of African and African diasporic religions.

Our study of Buddhism examines the cultural, historical, geographical, and religious contexts out of which Buddhism emerged. We will learn how initial teachings became institutionalized doctrines and practices regulated by identified religious leadership, and how and who resisted or inverted institutional norms. Contemporary comparisons of contemplative Buddhist teachings and practices with today’s practices will help us understand how ancient religious traditions reconstruct themselves to survive in new contexts and address religious needs.

***Although content is different in REL 100 courses, you may not repeat for credit.***

Richard C. Martin, TT 8:30-9:45, (same as MESAS 190), Max: 18 (REL 12/MESAS 6)

Content: Students in this freshman seminar will study the encounter of Muslim societies with modernity. The first phase covers an overview of premodern Islamic history and religious beliefs, practices and theological controversies. Next the course takes up the problem of modernity and the West, and Islamic responses, such as Fundamentalism, Modernism, Secularism, and Islamic Feminism. The final phase will focus on postmodern developments in Islam, including modern Islamic theology, law and ethics, the Internet, globalization, the impact of the Gulf War and 9/11, and growth of social movements, such as Salafi/Wahhabi, and Progressive Muslim identities.

Particulars: Each week will be divided roughly between lectures with discussion (usually Tuesdays) and student presentations discussion (usually Thursdays). Students will be asked to write brief responses to the readings before class as a basis for discussion. Three take-home exams during the semester. A written evaluation of student work will be provided at mid term and at the end of the course. Prerequisites: None.

REL 190: Freshman Seminar: Healing Stories and The Body in Early Christianity

Content: Early Christianity was known for its stories about healing and for its care of needy people. All four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament contain many healing stories, some of which include exorcism of unclean spirits and demons. During the first century, many Christians saw the miracles of Elijah and Elisha during the time of Israel as a beginning of this kind of focus on healing. In addition, many of their healings were like healings that occurred through the presence of the Greek God Asklepios. During the second and third centuries, Christians expanded their stories of healing to include miraculous events that occurred in contexts of martyrdom. This course will explore healing stories in the New Testament and early Christian literature in the context of healings in Jewish, Greek, and Roman literature.

Particulars: The syllabus and special materials will be available on LearnLink. The course will emphasize analysis and interpretation of texts through writing of shorter and longer papers, with some quizzes to develop a memory base for understanding the texts.

Particulars: Weekly reports (35%), 2 papers (25%+15%); oral reports (25%). This course fulfills the methodology requirements for a Minor in Mediterranean Archaeology.

REL 200S: Religion & Contemporary Experience: Religion & Politics in 21st C. America: Election 2008

Content: In the run-up to the 2000 Presidential elections, then Governor George W. Bush declared Jesus Christ to be his favorite political philosopher. For many Americans this was encouraging, for many others it raised concerns about the cherished institutional separation of church and state in the American experiment. Bushs declaration and, perhaps more importantly, reactions to it, highlight persistent questions about the appropriate role of religion in American public life.

In what ways do answers to these persistent questions emerge in the twenty-first century? This class will focus on the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections as a way into the complex and contentious debates about the relationship of religion and politics in the U.S. Students will draw on a variety of disciplines (e.g., sociology of religion, political science, history, cultural studies, American studies) to interpret and analyze the real-time events taking place around them in the 2008 campaigns.

Content: The Hebrew Bible (=Tanakh) is full of quotations. It is also brimming with stories and characters whose names have become legends in western culture. The purpose of this course is not to study passages in depth, but to study a good part of the Tanakh in order to learn who is who, what happened where, and who said what to whom. We will, accordingly, read our way through a sizeable section of the Tanakh, identify and memorize the quotations, and learn the key figures and moments in this literature.

Particulars: There is a lot of reading for this course, and a lot of memorizing. The final exam is short-answer identifications.

Students will be responsible to hand in seven selected quotations each week and to keep a personal file. Professor Blumenthal will keep a running class file and distribute it periodically.

Content: American religious history contains the stories of the many religious traditions that exist on American soil but it is also about many cultural topics including gender, sex, politics, wealth and poverty, immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. It is the stories of the solitary thinker, the congregation, and the commune as well as of tradition and social experimentation. Moving through history both chronologically and thematically, we will learn how scholars go about investigating the incredibly complex and diverse history of religions in the United States. One of our key strategies will be to use primary source documents to ask questions like: What has separation of church and state meant at different moments in US history? Where are the boundaries between religion and culture? What counts as a religious practice? What counts a religion? How have the different religious traditions in the United States affected each other?

Particulars: Students should come to class prepared to discuss the readings. There will be a midterm and a final. Writing assignments are to be determined.

Sara McClintock, TT 1:00-2:15, (same as ASIA 210WRS), Max:18 (14 REL/4 ASIA)

Content: This course is a writing intensive seminar that takes as its focus the Buddhist narrative literature of South Asia. Our goal is to engage in a sustained encounter with the many worlds of this literature. These worlds include the worlds behind the texts (the historical and cultural settings in which the narratives were produced); the worlds inside the texts (the worlds envisioned or created by the narratives themselves); and the worlds before the texts (the audiences for whom the narratives have been, could have been, and may still be meaningful). Such worlds can be explored for any text, and we will also ask and think about the worlds of the student papers produced in this course.

The methods we will use to penetrate the worlds of Buddhist narrative literature include reading, thinking, discussing, and writing. Since this is a writing intensive course, it is natural that we will place a lot of our attention on this form of inquiry and expression. At the same time, it is important to recognize that this course is just as much about becoming a more accomplished reader as it is about becoming a better writer. Likewise, the course is also about learning how to think more clearly about what we read, as well as how to hone our ideas through discussion with colleagues. Deep and nuanced understanding of literary texts requires the development of all four of these skills: writing is simply the most public face of a much larger intellectual process of inquiry, discovery, and communication.

Particulars: The course will be conducted as a seminar, apart from a small number of lectures (marked in the syllabus). Starting in October, we will have a number of student led sessions. Exploring and communicating your ideas with colleagues is an important part of the learning experience. Please note that this is a course on South Asian Buddhist narrative texts. It is not a survey course or an introduction to Buddhism. Students interested in such overviews may choose from a number of courses offered through the Religion Department and the Asian Studies Program. Previous study of Buddhism is helpful but not required.

Content: The Five Books of Moses; Torah (“Teaching”); Pentateuch (“Five Scrolls”). These are three designations for the collection of biblical books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—that will be studied in this course. The course will focus on the meaning of these writings in their first setting, ancient Israel, the cultural soil out of which Judaism and Christianity grew. A basic working assumption of the course is that these ancient Israelite writings are open to the normal scholarly methods of literary, historical, social, cultural, rhetorical, and ideological investigation. Thus, we will explore the historical background and social context of the books, asking questions about when, where, why, how, and by whom they came to be written and collected together. We will also investigate their literary forms, structures and themes. Prior study of the Bible is not a requirement for taking this course, and no particular religious commitments or beliefs are assumed or required. What is required is openness to exploring new and different ideas, and a willingness to engage in careful, disciplined reading of the biblical documents.

Particulars: Graded course work will consist of three short papers (approx. 1500 words each), a midterm test, a final examination, and several short quizzes (announced and “pop”).

Content: The approach to the New Testament and early Christian texts in this class is based on 21 st century methods of the study of religion. The emphasis is on the meaning of biblical and other sacred texts in their first setting, but there is also an examination of their relation to the life of religious communities today. The course includes materials on Jewish and Hellenistic developments at the time of New Testament and early Christian texts which are considered essential for understanding earliest Christianity. The assumption is that the New Testament came into being as a collection of literature that is open to the normal methods of literary, historical, social, cultural, rhetorical, and theological investigation. In particular, there is an assumption that the story about Jesus in the gospels is the product of a believing and worshipping community of religious people.

Tara Doyle, TT 11:30-12:45, (same as ASIA 212), Max: 20 (15 REL/5 ASIA)

Content: This “theory-practice-learning” (TPL) class is an introduction to a number of prominent texts and associated religious practices found within the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of South Asia. Texts will include Vedic hymns, selections from the Upanishads, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, the Devi-mahatmya, medieval bhakti poetry, Ashvaghosa’s Buddha-carita, the Satipatthana Sutta, Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara, and selections from Buddhist tantras. In line with the TPL nature of this course, students will also witness important rituals and/or festivals at the Hindu Temple of Atlanta and Wat Buddha Bucha, study about and practice Hindu yoga and Buddhist meditation, and watch performances of Carnatic devotional music and Tibetan chanting. All these will be studied within historical and contemporary contexts, thus revealing both the continuity and innovativeness of these two major religious traditions.

Texts:

Particulars: Class participation (15%), three 2 page reflection papers (30%), mid-term exam (25%), and final exam (30%).

Particulars: Written weekly reports (35%), LearnLink communications (20%), final paper (35%), book review (10%). Graduate students will have additional assignments. This course fulfills the Minor in Mediterranean Archaeology.

Bobbi Patterson, Mon 2:00-3:40 and Wed 2:00-2:50, Max: 30, For Religion Majors/Minors, Permission only

Content: How do we think about religion? Is there a common way to talk about religion across cultural divides, or, should we simply concur that religion is like art, where "We can't define it, but we know it when we see it"? This course will take us through the basic theories in the study of religion as "ways of perceiving" this most elusive of phenomena: anthropology, history, text, politics, philosophy, theology, experience, literature, and gender studies. All of these "ways of perceiving" play a crucial role in the way we think "across boundaries" in the study of religion. In this class, students will develope "case" studies they choose that relate particular methods to their central questions.

We will consider a variety of theoretical voices, asking which are most sympathetic to approach we find useful, which are more distant, and how our preconceptions about religion affect real life attitudes in our work in the field and our daily lives. Do we think religion is primarily politicallly motivated? Experientially based? Does that view affect how we think about members of religious traditions other than our own? In answering these questions, this course will assume that theory is a form of practice: Particularly through working on case studies. Students will develop skills that will allow them to be practitioners of an art--the art of interpreting religion.

Texts: Primary texts will include works by Rudolph Otto, JZ Smith, WC Smith, Mark C. Taylor, Katie Cannon, and Karen McCarthy Brown, among many others.

REL 301SWR: Early & Medieval Hinduism

Laurie Patton, TT 2:30-3:45, (same as ASIA 301SWR), Max: 18 (9 REL/9 ASIA)

Content: The purpose of this course is to provide an historical overview of the origins of the religious movements in India we now call "Hinduism." Through the reading of mythological, philosophical and poetic primary texts, as well as historical and anthropological studies, we will show how such a tradition was constructed through a set of ongoing tensions: between ascetic and sacrificer, between villager and city-dweller, between outcaste and brahmin, between poet and philosopher. In tracing these tensions throughout Indian history, we will: 1) examine the roots of Indian tradition; 2) master the basic terminology of Indian thought; 3) use that terminology to study the development of Indian philosophy and popular religious movements. We will focus in particular on the mediation of religious conflict, and how Hindus have served as intriguing figures in this regard.

Texts:

Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989
O'Flaherty, Wendy The Rg Veda. New York: Penguin, 1981
O'Flaherty, Wendy. Hindu Myths. New York: Penguin, 1977
Olivelle, Patrick. The Upanisads. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996
Ramanujan, A.K. Speaking of Siva. New York: Penguin, 1973
Dimock, Edward and Levertov, Denise. In Praise of Krishna. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967
Radhakrishnan and Moore. A Sourcebook for Indian Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957
Stoller Miller, Barbara. The Bhagavad Gita. New York: Bantam, 1986
Patton, Laurie. Authority, Anxiety, and Canon. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994
Hawley, Jack and Jurgensmeyer, Mark, eds. Songs of the Saints of India
Selections from Mittal and Thursby, Eds. The HIndu World, 2004

Particulars: Two short answer exams, One mid-term paper (5-8 pp), One final research paper (15-20 pp).

REL 309S: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times

Don Seeman, T Th 10:00-11:15, (same as JS 309S), MAX: 18 (9 REL/9 JS)

Content: How have Jewish communities faced the challenges posed by modernity? This class uses literary, historical, philosophical and sociological material to explore this question. What is the origin of the split between different Jewish religious movements (i.e., Orthodoxy and Reform)? What is the relationship between Zionism, good citizenship in America or in Europe and traditional Jewish religion? What are the special challenges facing Israeli Jewry? How has Jewish thought been influenced by the Holocaust? By feminism? This class focuses on Jewish religious and intellectual life, but always tries to relate those to the larger existential dilemmas that Jewish people have faced in modern times.

Texts: TBA

Particulars: Students are expected to attend class each week prepared to discuss that week's readings, and will be evaluated on the basis of attendance and participation (20%). There will be an in-class mid-term exam (30%) and a final essay (50%) in which students write a critical essay analyzing one topic on the basis of class readings and discussions plus related newspaper articles. There will be a mandatory film and discussion night, approximately four times during the semester. May be taken for graduate credit in consultation with the professor.

REL 310S: Modern Buddhism: Becoming the Buddha in America

Content: This seminar investigates the complex historical and sociological processes by which Buddhism has been transplanted in American soil during the last two centuries, focusing particularly on Buddhist groups and institutions within easy reach of Emory. Discussions, films, and fieldtrips to temples are integral to this course. Throughout, we will also investigate such issues as Orientalism, cultural accommodation, identity formation, immigration, conversion, and religious pluralism in our attempts to understand the various Buddhisms that exist today in the U.S.A.

Particulars: requirements include 1) a short presentation on a late 19 th-century person involved in the transplanting of Buddhism in American soil, 2) a short paper on some aspect of the early history of Asian Buddhism in North America, 3) a group presentation on a local Buddhist temple or center, and 4) a research paper on some aspect of Socially Engaged Buddhism.

Content: Christianity might be understood as a long, sometimes violent, argument about how to interpret who God is, what the human condition is, the sense in which redemption comes through Christ, and how authority should function. Early Christianity emerges out of a cacophony of voices, including those that became canonical and those that were repressed by later generations. Medieval Christianity is a mixture of voices that range from the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas to the visionary theology of Julian of Norwich.

This class will focus on the evolution of Christian thought with particular emphasis on the plurality of voices that have shaped it.

Particulars: The class will be organized as a lecture-discussion of assigned readings, with the possibility of breaking into smaller groups for more sustained discussion. Students will write 2-3 short, analytical papers and one longer paper.

Content: This course will trace the history of Protestantism but more importantly explore its intellectual and spiritual temperament. Its “dangerous idea,” according to course author Alister McGrath, began as a passionate belief in the freedom and authority of individuals to discover and determine for themselves what God intends them to believe and do based on their own reading of the words of the Bible—with or without the intermediary of church or tradition. However, one commentator remarks, “this idea is both an amazing blessing and a Pandora’s box not only for the development of most of Christianity, but also for the Western world as a whole” (M.J. Keel, amazon.com review accessed 2/08). In that vein we will explore the dis-establishing impact of Protestant passion as a Protestant principle: What began as passionate protest against the absolutist claims of medieval Catholicism has now evolved at-large into the principle of a “divine and human protest against any absolute claim made for a relative reality, even if this claim is made by a Protestant church” (Tillich, 1957:163).

(2) midterm media project (e.g. video collage, powerpoint presentation, photo-journal) or site visits (ethnographic fieldwork);

(3) a final term paper that addresses the central themes and issues of the course.

Content: In this course we will examine the text of the Qur'an, the sacred text of Islam and one of the most widely read books in the world, in English translation. Particular attention will be paid to the various genres and literary forms which ppear in the Qur'an, the style and structure of the text, and the relationship of Qur'anic texts with those of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and pre-Islamic Arabian religious traditions.

Particulars: There will be three assigned papers (5-7 pages), and regular short written assignments.

Prerequisites: No particular background in Arabic or Islam is required; experience in close reading or textual analysis will be helpful.

Content: The rapid rise of Islamic civilization at the end of the ancient world is one of the major events in world religious and political history. Historians and theologians have debated the rapid rise of Islam and its successful overtaking of major portions of the empires that formed the ancient world. In a little over a century, Muslims spread their religious and political culture to cover the area from the Pillars of Hercules to the Indian Sub-Continent, and soon well beyond that. In this course, we will explore the theories that have been advanced for this expansion as well as the historical events themselves. We will look at primary as well as secondary sources to understand this fascinating period in world civilization. We will also explore the relationship of Islam’s foundational events to our own religious, civilizational and cultural discussions and experiences.

Particulars: Class attendance and participation (20%); weekly writing assignments (30%); a term-end research paper on a topic approved by the instructor (50%).

Iman Roushdy Hammady, W 2:00-5:00, (same as MESAS 317S), Max: 18 (12 REL/6 MESAS)

Content: Combining film, film criticism, literary works, sociology of literature, and ethnography, this course aims to examine and understand contemporary Islam. Films from the Arab World, especially Egypt, contrasted with Hollywood, are seen situated within their historical periods. Through a dialectical approach, these feature films become magnifying glasses to reveal the complex web of historical, societal, political, economic, and institutional aspects of Islam in contemporary societies. The resulting manifestations and responses of Islam to colonialism, neo-colonialism, and nationalism range from fundamentalism, modernism, secularism, feminism, progressive Muslim identities, and Islamic revival movements. These several movements must be placed in the context of a global framework considering the impact of technologies such as the internet and television, and events such as the Gulf War and 09/11. This many prismed examination of cinematic art reveals the many voices engaged in the discourse on Muslims and Islam locally as well as in Europe and North America.

Particulars: Class discussion, active participation, and class presentations are requirements of this course. Films will be supplemented with literary works, text readings, and lectures. Students will engage in group projects that involve dealing with primary sources and multi-media material.

Content: Death is a universal fact of human life. Yet throughout history different cultures have responded to death, and the dead body, in a variety of ways. In this course we will explore human responses to mortality in a number of cultural settings, including the United States, examining the symbols, rituals, and meaning-systems people have used to make sense of the end of life.

Kyle Van Houtan, TTH 4:00-5:15, (same as ENVS 329 and ES___), MAX : 20 (10 REL/5 ENVS/5 ES)

Content: This course explores the various ways Christianity and Science describe the environmental crisis, how the two might abet or resist this crisis, and how they narrate citizenship and the good life. (What is good work, for example?) The primary aim is to learn the travail of the earth and see how animals, plants, mountains, oceans – even the atmosphere – has not escaped human domination. We will discern how the Biblical narratives of community, covenant, and creation may shape human relations with the larger world. Our discussions will alternate between theory and practice, at times focusing on histories of ideas (like dominion) and other times on natural histories of places (like Hawaii).

Particulars: This course counts for the undergraduate ethics minor. Grading will be based on active participation (15%), oral presentations (15%), a reflective journal (15%), and two papers (25%, 30%). There will be two local field trips. The first will be to observe the fall bird migration and second will be a comparative visit to industrial and organic autumn harvests. Please note Candler students have additional readings.

Michael Berger, MWF 10:40-11:30, (same as JS 354RSWR), Max: 18 (10 REL/8 JS)

Content: As a discipline, ethics is the way one analyzes a situation and reaches a conclusion as to what one should do. As such, ethics must be done from within a particular tradition, maintaining certain assumptions and following unique patterns of thought. This course is meant to introduce the student to what ethical discourse is like in the Jewish tradition: what sources are used, how arguments are constructed, and how one weighs competing arguments. Through the analysis done largely in class, students will learn the skills involved in doing Jewish ethics, and actively participate in the process. Topics to be discussed are social ethics, such
as lying and self-sacrifice, and sexual ethics, such as pre-marital sex and homosexuality. A final paper on medical ethics is the student's own attempt at writing Jewish responsum.

Content: This seminar will explore a single (though not simple) topic: what is human goodness? How should we best describe it? How best represent it? What sorts of lives are good lives? My approach is broadly philosophical. We will study together a range of texts in order to consider our questions about goodness, ethics, and forms of life. Some texts will be philosophical and theological, some literary, some cinematic.

Tentative list of texts: We will read selections from thinkers past and present considering good and beautiful lives. We will read Plato’s dialogue Phaedo on the death of Socrates, Augustine’s Confessions, Dorothy Day’s autobiographical writing, and Tracy Kidder’s biography of physician Paul Farmer. We will examine philosophical discussions of saints and goodness, including Iris Murdoch and Lawrence Blum. We will give time as well to artists’ visions of human goodness, including the novel Gilead and the films Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and The Painted Veil.

Particulars: Requirements include a weekly journal and one essay of 7-8 pages.

REL 358R: Religion and Healing:"Health and Healing: Understanding the Role of Religion"

Content: The goal of this new course is to introduce terminologies, analytic frameworks, and resources for cultural and religious literacy to students interested in the intersection of religion, health and healing - including those training to be in health-related fields. Studying this intersection through the framework of the academic study of religion will help students to recognize cues for where religion "matters" and how it functions in health contexts of the individual, family, and community, and to develop a critical empathy, a way of thinking, which identifies and takes religion seriously. We will be learning many specifics of particular religious traditions, but the emphasis will be on learning to recognize where and how religion plays itself out in contexts of healing/health. Topics will include, among others: indigenous categories of illness and health; sources of religious authority affecting health/healing/health policy decision-making; impact of gender on healing/health; religious frameworks and rituals at beginning and end of life. We will also read two or three full-length ethnographies based in particular religious/cultural communities. Students will pursue their own interests through a research project, based either on fieldwork in Atlanta or on secondary materials.

This interdisciplinary offering was developed as part of the Religion & Health Collaborative. It will be an undergraduate course in the College and also listed in Public Health, School of Theology, and School of Nursing. Each discipline will contribute unique perspectives to the study. Overload may be possible upon contacting the instructor.

Particulars: Requirements: Class participation and in-class exercises. Four 3-4 page response papers. 12-15 page research paper and oral presentation.

Lobsang Negi, Thurs 2:30-5:15, (same as ASIA 365), Max: 35 (20 REL, 15 ASIA)

Content: This course is an opportunity to study the Tibetan Buddhist contemplative tradition of Mahamudra, meaning "The Great Seal," a highly respected meditative tradition that involves meditation on the nature of the mind itself. Each year Emory University invites a Distinguished Visiting Tibetan Scholar for a one-semester long residency to teach a course and give lectures. This Fall's distinguished scholar, Khenpo Losal Zangpo, is a highly regarded scholar and meditation master, and will present the tradition of Mahamudra in a traditional pedagogical style. Opportunities to engage in the meditation practice will also be possible given student interest. Preliminary readings and lectures will place Mahamudra in the wider context of Buddhist contemplative theory and practice.

Content: Memoirs are both documents of a history lived and textual (re)constructions of that experience remembered. Taking Holocaust memoirs as the focus of our inquiry, we will examine what it means for a text about the Holocaust to be both an historical document and a personal narrative. Within the scope of this inquiry, we will consider questions of evidence and truth; the relationship between experience, historical fact, and memory; the distinctions among ”truth,” ”reality,” and ”realism.” The readings for this course will include memoirs of the first generation, who experienced the Holocaust directly; the second generation who were born during or directly after the Holocaust; and those who, at an additional remove, live with its ”post-memory.”

Issues to be examined will include: Who wrote memoirs and under what circumstances? For whom did they write and how do we read them? (For example, does it make a difference if we read a particular text as “history” or as ”literature”?) How do these memoirs record the events of a catastrophic history at the same time as they record the ordinary events of people’s daily lives continuing? What formal choices did these memoir writers make? How did they structure their narrative? What textual traditions did they invoke, change, or disrupt? Are the forms they chose appropriate to the experience they describe and are they effective as writing?

Particulars: Course requirements: Each student will give an oral presentation(in collaboration with a class-mate) on one of the assigned texts and write two papers of 7-10 pp. Active participation is expected and will include informal written responses to the weekly readings.

Content: This course examines the extent to which reason is applicable to religious questions such as the existence of God, the divine attributes, the problem of evil, the relationship of faith to reason, religion and ethics, and personal immortality. We will pay special attention to religious language, asking ourselves what significance should be attached to the various ways we have of speaking about God. How are we acquainted with divinity? What kind of evidential value should be attached to scriptural authority and religious experience? When should reason and ordinary considerations of evidence be rejected as inappropriate?

Particulars: A short paper, a term paper written in two drafts, a final examination, and class participation

Content: This course is a historical and cultural survey of the medieval Islamic West (the Maghrib) as a single cultural unit, comprising Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), North Africa, and Sicily. A major theme of the course will be cultural and religious interactions between indigenous peoples and Arab Muslims, critically examining the notion of Convivencia (coexistence) as theorized by modern Spanish and North African historians. The course will also include discussions of material culture, music, and poetry.

Particulars: Two take-home midterm exams (60%: 30% each) and a take-home final exam (40%). Students may write a research paper (15 pages in length) that will count the same as one midterm exam. This paper may be written for extra credit, or to replace a midterm grade.

REL 380R: Internship in Religion: “Emory as Place: Living an Ethic of Sustainability”

Bobbi Patterson, Tentative: Wed 4:00-4:50 (day/time may change depending on student needs), (Same as ENVS 497R 01P) NOTE: 2 credit hours (more hrs negotiable), Non-Majors Welcome, Max: 12

Content: This Fall’s Internship Course offers students a two-credit option (additional credits may be requested) to create an experiential learning program with field activities for first year students living in the New Sustainability-Themed Residence Halls (by McDonough Field).

Teaching new students at Emory what it means to belong to the Emory bioscape and our responsibilities to live sustainably, interns will begin a new venture in integrated learning at Emory.

Serving as peer mentors, students will study and introduce first year students to the following topics: water, power/electricity, biodiversity in the Piedmont (human, biotic, and abiotic), and recycling. Approaching these topics through the academic study of sustainability, ethics, and religion, interns will create and implement intellectual content modules, experience-based exercises, and service opportunities.

Classroom content also will address mentoring through educational sharing and service and skills development for designing effective learning modules including information-sharing projects, hikes, field identification, campus service, and community outreach. Projects could include woods walks in Emory’s forests, invasive species removal, visiting sites like The Chattahoochee River Trails and the Atlanta Water Works Plant, creating and maintaining a contemplative garden, and learning basic mindfulness practices while engaged in natural settings. Service partnerships will involve organizations such as Volunteer Emory, the Office of Sustainability and Emory as Place, and the Office of University Community Partnerships, emphasizing environmental education and action.

Content: In this seminar we will read closely Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, following out the themes of alienation, family conflict, parricide and the eclipse of God. We will attend especially to Mikhail Bakhtin’s description of the radical dialogism or “polyphony” at the heart of Dostoesky’s novelistic work and we will explore this dialogism both as a formal principle of composition and as an ethical theme of the self’s recognition of otherness.

Content: Like Western Europe and other parts of the world, government’s use of religious organizations to provide social welfare programs is not new to the United States. Depending upon the issue, the practice of church-state collaboration has existed at least since the War on Poverty and as early as the founding of the nation. Nevertheless, contemporary efforts by the federal and state governments to reform or manage collective problems, particularly in urban neighborhoods, through religious organizations (i.e., congregations and faith-related agencies) and with public funding are hotly debated in political and policy venues in Washington D.C. and the capitals of the fifty states. The Bush Administration’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative is but one of the reasons. The core policy proposal of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative, which began in 2001 with the creation of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is the transfer of public funds to religious organizations to provide social welfare services to the afflicted and the addicted. Our seminar will use the faith-based and community initiative to frame our consideration of a set of issues related to religion and social welfare policy: the ideology of church-state separation; the “failures” of government programs; the proper role of government in the lives of adults and youth; public funding of religious organizations; “faith,” expressed as a belief in particular moral values, as a factor in reducing poverty and problems associated with it; and the range of political actions religious groups may engage in to influence social welfare policy. Illustrations of key ideas will come from examinations of groups such as Prison Fellowship, Teen Challenge, Habitat for Humanity, and the Nation of Islam. Key policy areas are likely to include welfare dependency, juvenile and adult crime, child development, and affordable housing.

Texts: The readings for this course will include books, book chapters, and journal articles. The following books may be required for this course:

Particulars: Course requirements will probably involve a synthetic essay (35%), research paper (40%), and class participation (25%)

Content: Independent research for senior major and joint major students selected to participate in the department's Honors program. Readings on special topics in Religion as arranged between individual students and a specific member of the Department who consents to guide the student in her/his study, arrange requirements and appointments.

Content: Readings on special topics in Religion as arranged between individual students and a specific member of the Department who consents to guide the student in her/his study, arrange requirements and appointments.