Religion

When we hear “pop culture,” we often think of it in comparison to a “high culture.” In reality, popular culture is something that everyone has easy access to, and represents a common language of the people. Religion permeates American popular culture in surprising ways, and is part of national vocabulary. In addition, religious communities turn to popular culture as a way to preserve their own identities and uniqueness in the face of homogenization and assimilation. The course will attempt to cover a diversity of voices and perspectives. It is important to understand how context plays a role in the interpretation and practice of faith, as well as to witness the tension between the theology and the manifestation of belief.

We are not interested in determining if a particular understanding is right or wrong. Rather, we want to understand the role religion plays in society and for the individual. You will be expected to be critical and engaged. My hope is that you will also be creative and daring, and push us all into a better understanding of the material.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is an undergraduate lecture course introducing students to the study of religion through an engagement with the history of hip hop music. More specifically, this course is organized chronologically to narrate a history of religion in the United States (circa 1970 to the present day) by mapping the ways that a variety of religious ideas and practices have animated rap music’s evolution and expansion during this time period. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, prior coursework in religious studies, African American studies, and/or popular music is helpful.

This is a course in the history of an artifact, one that we now call “the Bible,” which has a unique status in many religious communities. This course will explore two aspects of this artifact’s life: 1. How that artifact physically comes into being; and 2. What it meant for different communities to attribute special status to that artifact. The main questions that we will be addressing in this course are: What does it mean to call a text or a book “sacred”? How does the idea of a sacred text or object shape the way that people interact with the Bible, and with religion more broadly?

This course examines the practice of puppetry—animating otherwise inanimate objects and figures in performance. In many cultures this process of animation is closely connected to ideas about gods, the “supernatural,” wonder, the uncanny, and the sublime. In this class we will study some of the major global traditions of puppetry, in the ancient Mediterranean world, in premodern Indonesia, early modern Japan, and in North America. We will also learn about the connection between puppets and theories of animacy and wonder through hands-on classes and practical training in the basics of puppetry. We will find and analyze shows in New York’s thriving puppetry culture, and students will have the opportunity to prepare their own show in the final weeks of the semester.

A historical overview of Jewish belief and practice as these have crystallized and changed over the centuries. Special attention to ritual and worship, the forms of religious literature, central concepts, religious leadership and institutions, Israel among the nations.

Considers efforts since 1900 to synthesize a coherent understanding of what Hinduism entails, sometimes under the heading of sanatana dharma. Using a rubric provided by the Bhagavad Gita, explores philosophical/theological (jnana), ritual (karma), and devotional (bhakti) aspects of Hindu life and thought.

A historical overview of Jewish belief and practice as these have crystallized and changed over the centuries. Special attention to ritual and worship, the forms of religious literature, central concepts, religious leadership and institutions, Israel among the nations.

A historical overview of Jewish belief and practice as these have crystallized and changed over the centuries. Special attention to ritual and worship, the forms of religious literature, central concepts, religious leadership and institutions, Israel among the nations.

There are over 800 distinct Native American nations currently within the borders of the United States. This course offers a broad introduction to the diversity of American Indian religious systems and their larger functions in communities and in history. We will explore general themes in the study of Native American religious traditions as well as look at some specific examples of practices, ideas, and beliefs. Of particular importance are the history and effects of colonialism and missionization on Native peoples, their continuing struggles for religious freedom and cultural and linguistic survival, and the ways in which American Indians engage with religion and spirituality, both past and present, to respond to social, cultural, political, and geographical change.

REQUIRED DISCUSSION SECTION FOR RELI UN2779

REQUIRED DISCUSSION SECTION FOR RELI UN2779

Looking at both historical and lived realities of Muslims in the US, we will cover sites from the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan to the Women’s Mosque in California. The course will engage both with cultural production, such as music, plays, and street art, and living communities around the country. The course will attempt to cover a diversity of voices and perspectives. It is important to understand how context plays a role in the interpretation and practice of religion, as well as to witness the tension between theology and manifestation of belief.

We are not interested in determining if a particular understanding is right or wrong. Rather, we want to understand the roles religion plays in society and for the individual. You will be expected to be critical and engaged. My hope is that you will also be creative and daring, and push us all into a better understanding of the material.  

This class examines the history of American missionaries from the early 1800s to explore the role of religion and US (and other) imperial projects. Even though missionaries often facilitated and defended the “civilizing” aims of western empires, they also developed a Christian imperialism that served to critique some aspects of colonialism. The class begins with the origins of the US Protestant foreign missionary movement in the 1810s, and then tracks the expansion of Protestant “foreign” and “home” missions with a focus on places like Hawai’i, Cherokee Nation, Liberia, India, as well as the western United States. We will compare the established Protestant missionary movement’s practices and goals with the growth of the Latter-day Saints’ missionary movement, American Catholic missions, and “faith” missions operated by Pentecostals and holiness groups as well. Through working with archival collections at the Burke Library, we will examine case studies of the role of missionaries in humanitarianism and education in the early twentieth century in Congo and China. The final part of the class turns to how Protestant and Catholic missionaries related to US foreign policy during and after the Cold War. We conclude by examining how the missionary movement forged strong ties among “global Christians” that is both a legacy and a challenge to the nineteenth-century missionary movement’s Christian imperialism.

This is the discussion section for RELI UN3314: QURAN

This is the discussion section for RELI UN3314: QURAN

This course conceives of the Qur’ān as a living text in constant flux through interactions with other religious traditions.  It focuses on developing an understanding of the Qur’ān’s form, style, and content through a  close reading of comparable religious texts.  Major topics covered include the Qur’ānic theory of prophecy, its treatment of the Biblical tradition (both that of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), and its perspective on pre-Islamic pagan religion.  The central goals of the course include the ability to (a) analyze primary religious sources in a critical and objective manner and (b) construct coherent arguments based on concrete evidence.   In a class of this nature, class members will naturally hold or develop a wide variety of opinions about the topics covered.  The goal is not to adopt a single opinion concerning the interpretation of a particular text, but rather to support personal conclusions in a clear logical manner. 

In this course, students will come to see the imbrication of religion, power, and mental illness across South Asia by examining experiences of suffering and its management; the history of psychiatry in the British colonial era and its afterlives; and the relationship of religion to concepts of mental and emotional disorder. Students will identify models for medical structures of care, healing, and treatments in the context of religion, ritual, and quotidian life. Topics include diagnostic processes and the creation of categories, stigma and models of clinical care, hysteria, spirit possession, pharmaceuticals, and the relationship of trauma to political structures. This course has three sections: 1) the first portion undertakes a brief historical survey of medical disciplines and institutions in South Asia (such as the development of Ayurveda, Yunānī Ṭibb, and the rise of the bīmāristān); 2) the second portion of the course focuses on the rise of the asylum (sometimes called the pāgal khāna) in tandem with psychiatry and its twinned consequence: the pathologization of asceticism by British colonial technologies of discipline; 3) the final portion examines the relationship between British colonialism and psychoanalysis with the introduction of this western discipline to the subcontinent. 

This course will take critical stock of historical structures throughout South Asia claiming to provide care (such as family, caste, healthcare, mental asylums, colonialism, educational systems, pensions, and much more). As a result, students come to consider concepts of social suffering, biopolitics, biosociality, political subjectivity, and postcolonial disorder. 

Primary source material will include the following: śāstra, ethnography, clinical studies, poetry, scripture, ritual texts across Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. 

From Salem witches to QAnon conspiracy theories, deviant and heretical behaviors take various forms. But who holds the power to label someone a heretic, a heathen, or a deviant? For what purposes? And with what consequences? Heretics and Heathens: The Politics of Deviance in America explores these questions by analyzing the social dynamics that position outsiders and insiders and the underlying logics that inform and justify social positioning. Through case studies in U.S. history, including the Salem witch trials, the Red Scare, and the People’s Temple, we will examine how categories of deviance are socially constructed and used to stigmatize beliefs, practices, and individuals, and the material consequences of casting individuals and groups into these social roles. Students will analyze media and discourse to evaluate how these roles function, and to understand why and when they are deployed. The course will conclude with students developing their own case studies examining how categories of deviance are used to position an individual or group as beyond the threshold of cultural acceptability.

This course traces interconnections between the secular study of magic and the rise of the occult, especially from the Victorian era up through the 1920s. In such emergent fields as anthropology and folklore, alongside more established ones such as Classics, magic became a subject of fascination as scholars sought to understand the roots and rationalities of enchantment. At the same time, and sometimes in response to these trends, interest in occult practices grew, often blurring the lines between science and magic (or magick). Throughout the semester, we will consider key texts in both traditions: those that claim the position of scholarly outsider and those that develop models of practice and occult revival. This course will appeal to students with interests not only in magic and science, but also the importance of several historical trends and dynamics that have shaped the world in and after the Victorian era, including industrialization, secularization, colonialism, and modernism.  

The Religion Salon is a one-point course in the Religion department, designed to offer students an introduction to new areas of the academic study of religion and/or new approaches to the field. The Religion Salon will be offered as a supplement to an existing course offered in the same semester and will be open to (but not required of) the students in that existing course as well as to students who wish to take the Salon as a stand-alone one-point course. The Religion Salon will feature guest scholars whose research and teaching extend into new areas and/or engage in new approaches to the academic study of religion.

This course focuses on the ways in which museums conceptualize, contextualize, curate and display Islamic art.  In the process, it interrogates the degree to which the orientalist past and the secular present shapes our understanding of the Muslim world.  Students will not just engage with material objects from Muslim societies but also consider the choices museums make about their display and presentation.  These choices, in turn, speak to the role of museums in defining a specific understanding of the “sacred.” Finally, students will learn to thoughtfully and critically pose questions about the roles that museums as public institutions play in sharping public and private understandings of Islam.

The course begins with a general discussion of material objects in the study of religion.  This is followed by a broad survey of Islamic Art which both describes and critiques the category as it has been framed in the Academy.  Students then visit a number of museums to learn about the style and content of their Islamic collections.  The course concludes by engaging a different kind of curation, namely oral histories in the Brooklyn Museum.

African Americans and Native Americans have a shared history of racial oppression in America. However, the prevailing lenses through which scholars understand settler colonialism, religion, and black and indigenous histories focus overwhelmingly on the dynamics between Europeans and these respective groups. How might our understanding of these subjects change when viewed from a different point of departure, if we center the history of entanglements between black and native lives? How does religion structure the overlapping experiences of Afro-Native peoples in North America?

From political movements in Minneapolis, Oakland, and New York City to enslavement from the Cotton Belt to the Rio Grande, this class will explore how Africans, Native Americans, and their descendants adapted to shifting contexts of race and religion in America. The course will proceed thematically by examining experiences of war, dislocation, survival, and diaspora.

This survey aims to reflect on the specific dialogue between faith and theories of the mind. After an overview of pre-Freudian notions of the unconscious, the course will examine Freuds 1896 Theory of the unconscious mind and the key analytical concepts which display similarities between psychoanalysis and Jewish thought, from Talmudic hermeneutics to Kabbalah studies. We will explore the unconscious through readings from Leibnitz, Schelling, Goethe, von Hartmann, Freud, Jung, as well as its preludes and echoes in the Talmud and in the writings of Azriel of Gerona, the Magid of Mezrich, Krochmal, Leiner, Lou Andreas Salome, Scholem, Idel, Wolfson.

This course considers the specific contribution that religious studies can make to understandings of ecological ethics. Beginning with a study of religions as practicing
communities that can provide understandings of nature, sociality, the world, and the cosmos, the course considers different ethical methods and modes of living. Students will develop their own understandings through a research project that can contribute to class discussions throughout the second half of the course.

This course is a comprehensive engagement with Islamic perspectives on women with a specific focus on the debates about woman’s role and status in Muslim societies. Students will learn how historical, religious, socio-economic and political factors influence the lives and experiences of Muslim women. A variety of source materials (the foundational texts of Islam, historical and ethnographic accounts, women’s and gender studies scholarship) will serve as the framework for lectures. Students will be introduced to women’s religious lives and a variety of women’s issues as they are reported and represented in the works written by women themselves and scholars chronicling women’s religious experiences.

We will begin with an overview of the history and context of the emergence of Islam from a gendered perspective. We will explore differing interpretations of the core Islamic texts concerning women, and the relationship between men and women: who speaks about and for women in Islam? In the second part of the course we will discuss women’s religious experiences in different parts of the Muslim world. Students will examine the interrelationship between women and religion with special emphasis on the ways in which the practices of religion in women’s daily lives impact contemporary societies.  

All readings will be in English. Prior course work in Islam or women’s studies is recommended, but not required.   
 

While conversations about social life and social death are endemic to contemporary black studies, the work of black scholars of religion often encourages us to consider the textures of everyday life in terms that are not reducible to “social life” and “social death.” At the same time, theories of everyday life and social reproduction tend to leave out the singularity of antiblackness and racial slavery as they constitute the material shape of the everyday in the aftermath of 1492. This course aims to illuminate and approach various gaps in theorizations of religion and blackness in the social reproduction of everyday life by reading between black and Marxist feminism, history and anthropology, religious and cultural studies. The class will consider how racial slavery, racial blackness, and antiblackness shape the constitution of everyday life in and through the erotics and economies of religious sense and signifying.

This reading-intensive course will engage, over time with essential texts of the current critical canon. Offered over a series of semesters, it is aimed at developing a practice of reading: close or distant, and always attentive. Let us say: slow reading. What does it mean to read? Where and when does reading start? Where does it founder? What does reading this author (Freud, for example) or that author (say, Foucault) do to the practice of reading? Can we read without misreading? Can we read for content or information without missing the essential? Is there such a thing as essential reading? Favoring a demanding and strenuous exposure to the text at hand, this course promises just that: a demanding and strenuous exposure to reading. The course can be repeated for credit.

The Proseminar in Religion is designed to support PhD students within the department as they work on various aspects of professional development. Meeting three times per semester, the sessions will focus on both academic and non-academic career paths, coordinated by a member of the faculty and with guest speakers from both within and beyond the department. The emphasis will be on concrete outputs and skills training. The proseminar will require preparation and active participation from enrolled students, including background reading and writing assignments connected to the monthly topic. After each session focused on a piece of writing (fellowship applications; CVs and cover letters; publishing), students should come away from the proseminar with strong drafts of the relevant texts.
 

The proseminar is required for all ABD students in year 5 or 6 and can be taken sequentially or not. ABD students are encouraged to speak about the timing of enrollment with the DGS and their dissertation sponsor.

This course is intended for MA students in Religion who are writing and completing a thesis or other paper of similar length and scope. Enrolled students will work with the instructor to develop, research, and write a thesis. Preparation and prerequisites: Instructor’s permission is required to enroll. Students are strongly encouraged to discuss the feasibility of potential thesis topics with a faculty member in Religion (preferably their advisor or other suitable faculty member), and if relevant, also strive to identify key primary texts or sources, in advance of the semester. 

There is no shortage of spilled ink, popular media coverage, scholarly inquiry, and academic institutes—including right here at Columbia University—dedicated to examining the intersection of religion and public life. From narratives of religion’s predicted decline during the twentieth century to its much-discussed global resurgence at the turn of the twenty-first, the concept of public religion continues to occupy popular imagination. Through the lens of public religion, we are able to examine pressing issues such as the revitalization of, or disillusionment toward, institutional forms and political establishments in our questionably secular age. What happens when religion “goes public”? Correspondingly, what assumptions about the category of religion and its role in public places do discussions of public religion promote?  Over the course of the semester, we will investigate the possibilities, pitfalls, and practicalities of understanding religion in terms of public life.  

The coursework will draw from scholarship, policy documents, and real-world case studies on issues ranging from climate crisis to conspiracy. Focusing on examples of advocacy, considerations of democratic renewal and decline, and competing claims of power and authority, this seminar considers the ways in which our definitions of religion impact lived, embodied, and practiced forms of religion and secularism in our current moment. 

Emplacement is often taken as the unspoken background of the study of religious phenomena. This seminar considers how problematizations of space, place, locality, and geography may cast religious phenomena in a new light. Approaches to theorizing space and place from various disciplines such as geography, cultural anthropology, philosophy, literature, art history, and history of cartography will be brought into conversation with questions emerging within the study of specific religion traditions. 

While this seminar is open to interested students from all disciplines, our work in this course specifically falls into the “zone of inquiry” of “space and place” of the Religion Department’s graduate programs. “Zones of inquiry” seek to introduce students to a particular cluster of key concepts and various theoretical elaborations of those concepts, in order to aid students in honing their ability to reflect critically on and develop further the central concepts that they derive from and bring to the specific traditions and phenomena that they study in their own research. A main goal of this course will therefore be to deepen our conceptual and analytical acumen and expand our theoretical resources at the intersection of religious studies and theories of space, place, and geography.