Global Arc

Problems of mass migration are among the most pressing of our times. What does it mean to be a stranger in a strange land? What do we owe foreigners and what might foreigners owe their host nations? This course focuses on biblical depictions of strangers and migration, with particular attention to the story of Joseph, the Exodus from Egypt, and the Book of Ruth. The course explores the use of these biblical texts in modern literature, art, film, theology and political theory, with particular attention to debates about exile, acculturation, race, and gender.

This course will involve a close reading of the Qur'anic text and its interpretive traditions. The course will also go beyond approaching scripture as a bounded, collected, literary text, by examining the ritual, experiential and material encounters between the Qur'an and Muslim communities. How does the Qur'an operate within societies? What are its multiple functions? How are the controversial verses often associated with the Qur'an interpreted? Through a critical engagement with categories like "scripture," and "interpretation" students will be introduced to larger debates on hermeneutics and material culture within the study of religion.

The "monotheistic superheroes" in the Islamic tradition are the "brother prophets" who preceded Muhammad, the "seal of the prophets." These prophets include figures who have parallels in the Jewish and Christian traditions, such as Abraham, Moses, Solomon and Jesus. We will explore the history of the rich post scriptural Islamic tradition, both oral and written, that developed and expanded the "stories of the prophets" and made them into the "monotheistic superheroes" that they continue to be today. One three-hour seminar.

Muslim, Christian, and Jewish travelers and pilgrims in the lands of Islam before the period of European dominance in the Middle East. The course uses original accounts (in translation) along with a range of contemporary scholarly literature drawn from history, religious studies, and anthropology. One three-hour seminar.

In 2014, ISIS distributed a pamphlet of authoritative responses (fatwas), based in Classical Islamic law, to questions about the enslavement and sexual exploitation of non-Muslim women and girls. This revival of slavery shocked the Muslim world and led to questions about the history of slavery and "concubinage" in Islam. We will address some of those questions through close reading of texts in translation and modern scholarship. What is the history of slavery in Islamic law and practice? What role do sex and gender play in slavery, specifically in Islamic societies? How "Islamic" is slavery? We will also include a comparative perspective.

India and Pakistan, home to nearly a third of the world's Muslim population, offer an unusually rich spectrum of the ways in which Islam has been lived, thought about, and transformed in recent times, both within this vast region and in the wider world. Our topics include: Sufism; the evolving relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims; major trends in Islamic law, theology, and political thought; Islamic institutions of learning (madrasas); and Muslim and non-Muslim minorities. One three-hour seminar.

This course studies the development of Judaism in the diaspora from 333 BCE to 200 CE. Its primary focus is the rich body of literature produced by Egyptian Jewry, the best documented of the ancient diaspora communities. It will also give some attention to the archeological and epigraphic evidence for Judaism in Rome and Asia Minor and to the writings of ancient non-Jews on the Jews and Judaism.

This course studies the rich corpus of revelations about end of the world, the fate of souls after death, the secrets of the cosmos, and God's heavenly abode in ancient Judaism and Christianity by placing them in their historical contexts and considering them in relation the development of Judaism and Christianity from the Hebrew Bible through late antiquity. Among the works to be considered are 1 Enoch (an anthology of ancient Jewish apocalypses about the antediluvian patriarch), Daniel (Hebrew Bible), Revelation (New Testament), early Christian tours of hell and paradise, and the early Jewish mystical work 3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot).

We will read the selections from the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew, considering aspects of translation and Hebrew grammar and syntax, as well as the historical, literary and religious contexts of the books.

Contemporary discussions about sexuality are filled with Jewish and Christian texts from antiquity. Quotations from the Bible and its ancient interpretations are continuously used to make claims about sexual behavior and sexual desire. Yet these texts themselves come from a very different world, with values, facts and passions of its own. This course examines the classical Jewish and Christian texts on sexuality within their own ancient historical context. Throughout the course, we will emphasize the diversity of positions in antiquity and the broad cultural conversations in which these positions were staked.