| source Duke (X) |
level |
department Religion (X) |
The Christian Bible is arguably the most influential book in the history of Western civilization  and the most contested. This course explores the history of its interpretation through the lens of a long-standing controversy about two issues: the historical reliability of the Bible, and the relation between historical inquiry and Âtheological or Âspiritual readings of the text.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This course introduces the diverse histories, beliefs, and practices of Jews. The goal of this course is to provide both historical and social contexts for the varieties of Judaism comprising the contemporary tapestry of modern Jewish identities. The course is divided into roughly two parts:
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
By focusing on a number of critical moments and formative periods in the history of Christianity, we will try to understand the major developments in Christian history as well as the challenges which Christianity faces in our day. Much attention will be paid to the diversity within Christianity, the dissenting voices and non-mainstream traditions (often dubbed 'heretical') existing outside the centers of power. For the modem and contemporary periods, we will examine Christianity's interaction with other major religious and intellectual traditions and raise the question of religious pluralism.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This course is designed primarily for undergraduates with little or no prior acquaintance with the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible or the academic study of religion. It involves systematic, careful reading and evaluation of representative portions of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible-sacred literature for approximately one third of all human communities-and introduces methods and techniques for its critical study. The course seeks to dispel ignorance regarding the origins, contents, history and significance of the Hebrew Bible and equips students to make informed reactions to the claims modem readers make concerning its meaning and purpose. In the process, students develop (or heighten) a sensitivity to issues in the study of religion generally, and the religious ideas of ancient Israelites specifically.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
The course is an introductory historical survey of religion in China, from the Neolithic to the present. It covers the development of China's principal religious traditions--archaic, Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, and popular--and their interactions. In addition, emphasis will be placed on the mutual influences of religious change and transformations in Chinese society. While no prior study of Chinese religion or history is assumed, the course should be of value to students with interests in any or all of Chinese religion, society, or history.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
By the end of the course, students will be able to understand, demonstrate and apply in-depth knowledge and critical awareness of issues in Historical Jesus research. Students will become familiar with the historical study of Jesus and the Gospels, including historical context, source materials, methods, and the history of the quest. Special topics will include non-canonical texts, Birth Narratives, miracle accounts, eschatology, the death of Jesus, the resurrection stories.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
The Roman Catholic Tradition, surveys the historical development of Roman Catholicism from the post-New Testament period to the present. Studying the practices and beliefs of early Christians provides background for later developments in the medieval and modern periods. The course concludes with discussion of several issues of importance today: the celibacy of the priesthood, the role of women in the Church, contraception and abortion, American Catholicism, and papal authority.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
The emergence of classical Judaism from its biblical context to its place at the time of early Christianity, with special attention to the world of sectarian Judaism (The Dead Sea Scrolls) and archaeology.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
An historical survey of the main trends in Jewish Mysticism or Kabbalah from rabbinic times down to the Hasidic movement. Direct experience with the classical texts, e.g. the Zohar supplies the raw data for interpretive analysis of how the mystical doctrines and practices grew out of non-mystical Judaism, and how they in turn profoundly shaped the content and intellectual history of Judaism. A central concern will be the correlation of Jewish social history with the mystical developments in belief, ritual, and attitudes toward the societies in which Jews lived. Major emphasis on the Medieval and Renaissance periods is to be noted, as are the methodological application of literary criticism and the psychology of religious experience.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
An exploration of the role of selected West African
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This class is designed to work towards an understanding of the many functions, principles, style variations, and techniques involved in the African dance genre. Dance and music are deeply embedded in the belief patterns of many African societies and what is revealed culturally provides a lens for performing several styles of African dance.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
An exploration of the role of selected West African
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This class is designed to work towards an understanding of the many functions, principles, style variations, and techniques involved in the African dance genre. Dance and music are deeply embedded in the belief patterns of many African societies and what is revealed culturally provides a lens for performing several styles of African dance.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Broad survey of Asian dance theater performance
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
DanteÂs Divine Comedy: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of awareness. Awareness is a finite relationship with infinity. It is the active interaction of you as a finite individual identity with you as an infinite potential identity. Two of our three class sessions per week will be the practice of Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, with discussion of yogic lifestyle.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of awareness. Awareness is a finite relationship with infinity. It is the active interaction of you as a finite individual identity with you as an infinite potential identity. Two of our three class sessions per week will be the practice of Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, with discussion of yogic lifestyle.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
South Asian musicians and their instruments, genres, performance traditions, and contexts. Study of the relationship of music to social, religious, historical, and philosophical trends informed by listening to the musical forms themselves in recorded and live performances
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Issues of representing the Holocaust in Israel through various cultural media, such as literature, film, criticism, historiography, legal documents, and music. The limits of representation: the historical and ideological deployment of Holocaust representation in different cultural contexts.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Office: 112 East Duke Building; email: wharton@duke.edu
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This course considers historical and contemporary conversations regarding religion and medicine in America. We examine the development of "scientific" medicine and healthcare while considering the engagement of religious communities in this transformation. Transitions in understandings and expectations of both medicine and religion as responses to suffering and illness are discussed and located as part of broader social and intellectual developments. The evolving nature of our notions of disease and the "therapeutic" in American society and their ethical implications as interpreted within religious traditions are examined. Issues considered within this context include pharmacotherapeutics, genomics, mental health, enhancement "therapies", medical research, and end-of-life care. Finally, we examine the current "religion and health" movement and its implications for both religion and medicine.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Is globalization undermining the nation-state? Does globalization mean that different parts of the world are becoming more alike? What is globalization, anyway, and when did it start? What is the relationship between national, religious, and ethnic identity? how are they constructed? What assumptions do we bring to our nderstanding of tradition and modernity? How do the different ways in which we understand progress (economic, technological, human rights) affect our understanding
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
Is globalization undermining the nation-state? Does globalization mean that different parts of the world are becoming more alike? What is globalization, anyway, and when did it start? What is the relationship between national, religious, and ethnic identity? how are they constructed? What assumptions do we bring to our nderstanding of tradition and modernity? How do the different ways in which we understand progress (economic, technological, human rights) affect our understanding
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
While Yoga has been popularly reduced to a kind of exotic psycho-physical therapy in the West, this course explores its cultural roots and philosophical legacy in India, its subsequent historical developments in the subcontinent's religious history, and its global career as an integral part of Hindu, Buddhist, and cosmopolitan religious culture. The course historically and culturally contextualizes Yoga by analyzing its original philosophical and religious doctrines, aimed at the radical transformation of the human mind-body complex, and culminating in claims of physically transcendent liberation that lay at the core of Indic spiritual values. The latter part of the course then considers the global career of Yoga in its export to the West, first through the Orientalism of the colonial period, and later through contemporary New Age meditation and supposedly "Tantric" sexual therapies.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page
This course explores representations of European medieval Christianity in modern film and fiction alongside texts and images from the medieval period. Medieval subjects are perennially popular in American fiction, and film representations of the Middle Ages range from farce to tragic drama. Some depict medieval Christianity as foreign and fantastical, others as anachronistic reflections of modern concerns. Investigating these retellings of medieval narratives and the medieval originals (texts and images) reveals the complex relationship between present-day understandings of medieval Christianity and the ways people actually perceived and practiced Christianity in the Middle Ages. We will consider topics including monks, crusade, the Grail legend, church buildings, and Joan of Arc. To study how filmmakers and novelists bring medieval religion to life, we will read medieval and modern fiction as well as modern non-fiction and scholarly literature, and view films and images. The course is reading and writing intensive.
Score: 9.751918 Details | Listing | Web page