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Religion (REL) 1 Religion (REL) 1 REL 1014 (c) Heretics: Dissent and Debate in the History of Religion RELIGION (REL) Todd Berzon. Non-Standard Rotation. Fall 2021. Enrollment limit: 16. REL 1008 (c, FYS) Believers, Converts, and Apostates Non-Standard Rotation. Enrollment limit: 16. Writing-intensive, focuses on readings in heretical texts, orthodox creeds, and scholarly treatments of the religious-ideological construction of Examines conversion in various religions, including Islam, Christianity, heresy and orthodoxy. Fundamentally, heresy is dangerous precisely Judaism, and Hinduism. Through primary and secondary source because of its proximity to orthodoxy. Examples focus on Jewish, materials, students will explore historical and modern understandings Christian, and Islamic traditions; attention given to categories such as and practices of conversion as a signifier, rite, or ritual of entrance dogma vs. freedom, pure vs. impure, society vs. individual. Facets of or immersion into a religious tradition and its community. Students present-day debates on fundamentalism included. will read firsthand accounts of conversions, secondhand conversion narratives, attempts to define conversion, religious guidelines for REL 1044 (c) Religion, Nature, and the Environment conversion, and texts examining the implications of converting away Every Other Fall. Enrollment limit: 16. from one community and into another. Among others, accounts of Environmental degradation and climate change have become matters apostasy, coerced conversion, conversion for the purposes of marriage of deep concern to the leaders, institutions, and practitioners of many or inheritance, and conversions described as spiritual epiphanies will religious traditions. Practitioners and leaders' words and actions have a be examined. Students will also complete a writing-focused research history in how nature has been understood as a space in which humans project on conversion over the course of the semester. The project will might learn about themselves, about the divine, and about their ethical incorporate a series of guided assignments for each step of the research responsibilities. Sometimes nature has been understood as divine, project (proposal, annotated bibliography, draft, and presentation). This sometimes independent of divine control, and sometimes just as God’s managed, writing-intensive research project will allow first-year students creation. With case studies taken from a variety of religious traditions, to develop their research and writing skills at the college level while this course surveys changes in religions’ views of nature and humanity’s familiarizing them with the resources Bowdoin has to offer for their responsibilities to nature and, more recently, the environment. This course research. This course questions how to define conversion and whether pays special attention to groups on the racial, socio-economic, and it is possible to formulate a universal definition for conversion across political margins. religions and cultures. Previous terms offered: Fall 2020. Previous terms offered: Fall 2019. REL 1101 (c, ESD) Introduction to the Study of Religion REL 1010 (c, FYS) Religion and Identity in Modern India Joshua Urich. Non-Standard Rotation. Enrollment limit: 16. Every Semester. Fall 2021. Enrollment limit: 50. Examines dynamic interrelationships between religious beliefs, practices, Basic concepts, methods, and issues in the study of religion, with special codes of behavior, organizations, and places and identity in India. Surveys reference to examples comparing and contrasting Asian and Western religious texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Qur’an, which have religions. Lectures, films, discussions, and readings in a variety of texts shaped India’s competing political identities, and studies nationalist and such as scriptures, novels, and autobiographies, along with modern revivalist movements leading up to India’s independence. Culminates in a interpretations of religion in ancient and contemporary Asian and role-playing game set in 1945 India, which uses innovative methodology Western contexts.. called Reacting to the Past. Students argue in character adhering to religious and political views of historical figures to improve their skills Previous terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, in speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and Spring 2018, Fall 2017. teamwork. (Same as: ASNS 1026) REL 1104 (b, ESD, IP) Introduction to African Religions and Cultures Previous terms offered: Fall 2017. Every Other Fall. Enrollment limit: 50. REL 1013 (c, FYS) God and Money By 2050, more than one-quarter of the world’s population will live Non-Standard Rotation. Enrollment limit: 16. in Africa, and yet African people, cultures, and religions are more misunderstood than any other. This course provides an introduction to Money is frequently assumed to be antithetical to religion even as the the varied and diverse peoples and cultures of Africa, taking religion as two are utterly inseparable. This is what makes it a particularly useful the starting point for their ways of life. Rather than providing a survey of category for exploring what counts as religion—concerns that are integral specific regions and populations, we will focus on broader categories, to the discipline of religious studies and central to humanistic inquiry such as cosmology, family and social structure, history, arts, gender and more broadly. Considers money as a measure of time, as a way human sexuality, and economics. We will examine the ways traditional forms of communities construct relationships, as well as how it interacts with religion, Christianity, and Islam have played a fundamental role in shaping moral categories such as value, guilt, and obligation, and theological the realities of African societies as well as African diaspora traditions. understandings of sin, debt, poverty, charity, and prosperity. Course This course is open to all students of all backgrounds and levels of readings and visual media consist of predominantly Christian sources knowledge about Africa. (Same as: AFRS 1104) with some comparison to other traditions and focus on the significance of money in modern life. Previous terms offered: Fall 2019. Previous terms offered: Fall 2018. 2 Religion (REL) REL 1115 (c) Religion, Violence, and Secularization REL 2201 (c, ESD, VPA) Black Women, Politics, Music, and the Divine Non-Standard Rotation. Enrollment limit: 50. Judith Casselberry. Every Fall. Fall 2021. Enrollment limit: 16. Certainly one of the most pressing challenges of the contemporary world is the issue of religious violence on a global scale. This course Seminar. Examines the convergence of politics and spirituality in the introduces students to the rationales and repercussions of the rise of musical work of contemporary black women singer-songwriters in the the modern secular nation state as a solution to “religious violence.” United States. Analyzes material that interrogates and articulates the In doing so, the course complicates the association of violence and intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality generated across backwardness with “religion” and peace and progress with “secularism.” a range of religious and spiritual terrains with African diasporic/ Topics include the demarcations of state and church and public and black Atlantic spiritual moorings, including Christianity, Islam, and private, the relationship between skepticism and toleration, the rise of so- Yoruba. Focuses on material that reveals a womanist (black feminist) called “fundamentalism,” the shifting assessments of the injuriousness of perspective by considering the ways resistant identities shape and are religious belief, speech and act, and the assumptions surrounding what it shaped by artistic production. Employs an interdisciplinary approach is that constitutes “real religion.” by incorporating ethnomusicology, anthropology, literature, history, and performance and social theory. Explores the work of Shirley Caesar, Previous terms offered: Fall 2017. the Clark Sisters, Meshell Ndegeocello, Abby Lincoln, Sweet Honey in REL 1142 (c) Philosophy of Religion the Rock, and Dianne Reeves, among others. (Same as: AFRS 2201, Every Other Year. Enrollment limit: 50. GSWS 2207, MUS 2291) Does God exist? Can the existence of God be proven? Can it be Previous terms offered: Fall 2018. disproven? Is it rational to believe in God? What does it mean to say REL 2204 (c) Science, Magic, and Religion that God exists (or does not exist)? What distinguishes religious beliefs Every Other Year. Enrollment limit: 35. from non-religious beliefs? What is the relation between religion and science? Approaches these and related questions through a variety of Traces the origins of the scientific revolution through the interplay historical and contemporary sources, including philosophers, scientists, between late-antique and medieval religion, magic, and natural and theologians. (Same as: PHIL 1442) philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the conflict between paganism and Christianity, the meaning and function of religious miracles, the rise Previous terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2018. and persecution of witchcraft, and Renaissance hermeticism. Note: This REL 1150 (c, IP) Introduction to the Religions of the Middle East course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for history majors. Note: This Non-Standard Rotation. Enrollment limit: 50. course is part of the following field(s) of study: Europe. It also meets the pre-modern
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