RELIGION COURSES - FALL 2010

RE 103-001     Religion & Culture     M     1:25 - 2:20      T/TH     2:10 - 3:30	4 Cr. G. Spinner
RE 103-002     Religion & Culture      T/TH     3:40 - 5:30	4 Cr. M. Segol
RE 215     Islam      T/TH     9:40 - 11:00	3 Cr. G. Spinner
RE 230-001      Ritual     M/W     4:00 - 5:20 (course description below)	3 Cr. G. Spinner
RE 303 Rel. in Cont.Amer. Soc.   T/TH     3:40 - 5:30       (Updated course discription below)	4 Cr. M. Stange
PR 324   Philosophy of Religion    W/F     12:20 - 2:10	4 Cr. J. Smith

RE 230 -001   Ritual
Course description coming..How could seemingly simple gestures -- lighting a candle, folding a flag, eating bread, sprinkling water, or wearing a mask -- be deeply meaningful actions? How can a wedding ceremony, a graduation procession, a royal coronation and a beauty pageant all be placed in a single category, that of “ritual,” there to keep company with pilgrimages, prayers, fasts, sacrifices, hunts, and dances? How might ritual behavior relate to theater, or to sports? What connections exist between religion and healing, or between religion and violence? We will explore these topics and more, underscoring the human proclivity for play, contest, symbolic performance and spectacle. Adopting a global perspective, examples from all over the world will be marshaled as we develop a comparative and critical view of ritual.

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RE 303 Religion in Contemporary American Society
The challenge of multiple, competing religious absolutes is the Gordian knot of the next century.  As the United States grows more diverse, questions that have always challenged us will become unavoidable: How do we live with and learn from people who think, believe, and behave differently from us?      --Diane Winston, Chronicle of Higher  Education, Jan.16, 1998

Lone Ranger (aware that he is surrounded by hostile Indians): “Old friend, it  looks like we’re in for trouble.”
 Tonto: “What you mean ‘we,’ Kemo Sabe?”    --Mad Magazine,date unknown

 This course interrogates conventional understandings of what constitutes “religion in America,” via consideration of several case studies, each of which is a) distinctly and intrinsically “American,” and b) more or less divergent from institutional, liturgical, and doctrinal norms.  Case studies for Fall, 2010 will fall into the following areas:

• Politics and “transreligiosity” in the contemporary Native American community  
• Pentecostalism and Evangelical Christianity
• Religion in popular culture
• Cults and alternative religious movements 
• “Good Catholic girls,” i.e. feminists working for change within the Roman Catholic Church.
• The “New Atheism” 

Additionally, each student will spend the semester researching a particular religious issue, group or movement, and present her/his research findings to the class.