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Religion CoursesSee page 27 for Key to Course Descriptions. For Distribution Requirement purposes (see page 22), all RLG courses
are classified as HUMANITIES courses except RLG 210Y1, 211Y1, 212Y1,
301H1, 302H1, 303H1, 304H1, 307H1, 314H1, 315H1, 316H1, 386Y1 which
are SOCIAL SCIENCE courses. |
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HUM199Y1 Undergraduate seminar that focuses on specific ideas, questions, phenomena or controversies, taught by a regular Faculty member deeply engaged in the discipline. Open only to newly admitted first year students. It may serve as a distribution requirement course; see page 40. RLG100Y1 An introductory study of the ideas, attitudes, practices, and contemporary situation of the Judaic, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto religious traditions. RLG101Y1 Theories about the variety and nature of religious experience, personal and collective. How religious life is expressed in such forms as myth, narrative and ritual, systems of belief and value, morality and social institutions. RLG201Y1 A survey of spirits, indigenous rites, stories, visions, shamanic and healing practices. Canadian First Nations' and Metis' experiences placed in cross-cultural perspective First Nations' and Metis' spiritualities studied academically in the history of religions, anthropology, and stories. RLG202Y1 An introduction to the religious tradition of the Jews, from its ancient roots to its modern crises. Focus on great ideas, thinkers, books, movements, sects, and events in the historical development of Judaism through its four main periods - biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern. RLG203Y1 An introduction to the Christian religious tradition as it has developed from the 1st century C.E. to the present and has been expressed in teachings, institutions, social attitudes, and the arts. RLG204Y1 The faith and practice of Islam: historical emergence, doctrinal development, and interaction with various world cultures. RLG205Y1 A historical and thematic introduction to the Hindu religious tradition as embedded in the socio-cultural structures of India. RLG206Y1 The teachings of the Buddha and the development, spread, and diversification of the Buddhist tradition from southern to northeastern Asia. RLG207H1 Sikh religious teachings, practices and institutions; the founder, Guru Nanak, and the scripture, the Adi Granth; subsequent Gurus, other Sikh texts and the religious aspects of the history of the Sikh community in India and abroad. RLG209H1 Basic teachings and historical developments of the Jain religious tradition, with attention to Jain contributions to religious philosophy, ethics, religious biography, literature and the arts. RLG210Y1 Religion from the sociological viewpoint; religion as the source of meaning, community and power; conversion and commitment; religious organization, movements, and authority; the relation of religion to the individual, sexuality and gender; conflict and change; religion and secularization. Emphasis on classical thinkers (Durkheim, Marx, Weber) and contemporary applications. RLG211Y1 A survey of the various psychological approaches to aspects of religion such as religious experience, doctrine, myth, ritual, community, ethics and human transformation. The historical place of introspective, psychoanalytic, humanistic and transpersonal methods in the psychology of religion. RLG212Y1 Anthropological study of the supernatural in small-scale non-literate societies. A cross-cultural examination of systems of belief and ritual focusing on the relationship between spiritual beings and the cosmos as well as the rights and obligations which arise therefrom. Among the topics covered are: myth and ritual; shamanism and healing; magic, witchcraft and sorcery; divination; ancestor worship. RLG220H1 This course deals with how the momentous experience of the Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored murder of six million Jews as well as many others, has forced thinkers, both religious and secular, to rethink the human condition. RLG221H1 A brief survey of the Jewish biblical and rabbinic traditions; the extension of these teachings and methods of interpretation into the modern period; common and divergent Jewish positions on pressing moral issues today. RLG222H1 Reason, experience (the natural law tradition) and revelation as the bases for moral judgment; faith and morality; freedom of conscience and the Church's claim to be a moral teacher; relevance to contemporary Catholic moral theology. RLG223H1 The development of Protestant ethics since the Reformation. Gospel and law, love and justice, realism and perfectionism, moral norms and moral context, the personal, political, and economic orders. RLG228H1 The ethics and religious symbolism of environmental change: animal domestication and experimentation, deforestation, population expansion, energy use, synthetics, waste and pollution. RLG231H1 The impact of the physical and social sciences on religion and religious thought. A comparative philosophical study of scientific and theological ways of analysis and of the status of scientific and religious assertions. Areas of cooperation and of conflict between the "two cultures." RLG232H1 The role of film as a mediator of thought and experience concerning religious worldviews. The ways in which movies relate to humanity's quest to understand itself and its place in the universe are considered in this regard, along with the challenge which modernity presents to this task. Of central concern is the capacity of film to address religious issues through visual symbolic forms. RLG237H1 The social and legal status of women in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The historical and contemporary situation of women in these traditions. RLG239H1 Some topic of central interest to students of religion, treated on a once-only basis by a professor visiting from another university. For details of this year's offering, consult the Department's current undergraduate handbook. RLG241Y1 An introduction to New Testament literature, examined within the historical context of the first two centuries. No familiarity with Christianity or the New Testament is expected. RLG274H1 The religions and philosophies of China, including ancient religion and mythology, the three traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism (including their philosophical dimensions), and Chinese popular religion. RLG275H1 The religions of Japan (Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism) and the religions of Korea (Confucianism, Buddhism, Shamanism). RLG280Y1 An alternative version of the content covered by RLG100Y1, for students in second year or higher who cannot or do not wish to take a further 100-level course. Students attend the RLG100Y1 lectures and tutorials but are expected to produce more substantial and more sophisticated written work, and are required to submit an extra written assignment. RLG299Y1 Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. See page 40 for details. RLG301H1 Systematic analysis of Freud's main writings on religion, studied within the context of central concepts and issues in psychoanalysis such as: the Oedipus Complex, the meaning and function of symbols, the formation of the ego and the superego, and the relations between the individual and culture. RLG302H1 Jung's analysis of the development of the personality through its life cycle, and of the central place which religion holds within the process of maturation. The unconscious, the collective unconscious, dreams, myths, symbols, and archetypes; implications for religious thought, therapy, education, and definitions of community. RLG303H1 Problems of negative life experience and their relations to issues of meaning and personality development. Includes discussion of internal conflict and suffering in the experience of melancholia and the divided self, and the existential experiences of evil and suffering. Examines myth, symbol, and forms of religious discourse as responses to such crises. RLG304H1 Theories of the self that involve the constitutive role of language in its various forms. Problems of socially-conditioned worldviews and sense of self as related to discourse. Myth, symbol, metaphor, and literary arts as vehicles for personality development and self-transformation along religious lines. RLG307H1 Sociological examination of religion in contemporary Canadian society: religions of English and French Canada; religious organization and demography; relation of religion to ethnicity, social questions and politics; secularization and privatization. RLG309Y1 The relationships between religious and ethical norms, social and political ideals, and systems of law. The roots of Western legal concepts such as authority, duty, rights, and punishment in biblical and natural law tradition, and their counterparts in positive law theory. Church and State conflict in a philosophy of law context. RLG310Y1 Historical and critical-philosophical examination of the development of atheism in Western intellectual circles. Consideration of 18th, 19th and 20th century critiques of religion derived from: theories of knowledge that privilege science; radical social and political thought; and analysis of the soul and its symbol-systems. Authors include Hume, Marx, Bakunin, Nietzsche, and Freud. RLG311H1 A study of the responses of selected world religious traditions to the emergence of global ecological concerns. Key concepts and tenets of the traditions and their relevance for an examination of the environmental crisis. RLG312H1 Karl Barth, Schubert Ogden, and Rahner, three influential 20th century Christian thinkers, on how religious believing is related to critical thinking. Illustrations are drawn from their diverse accounts of God. RLG314H1 Examination of gender as a category in the understanding of religious roles, symbols, rituals, deities, and social relations. Survey of varieties of concepts of gender in recent feminist thought, and application of these concepts to religious life and experience. Examples will be drawn from a variety of religious traditions and groups, contemporary and historical. RLG315H1 Analysis of rituals of transition form one social status to another (e.g., childbirth, initiation, weddings) from theoretical, historical and ethnographic perspectives. Particular attention is paid to the multi-religious North American environment, and to the importance of rites of passage in the construction of gendered identities. RLG316H1 An examination of the theories of religion developed by late 19th and 20th century anthropologists such as Taylor, Frazer, Durkheim, Freud, Van Gennep, Levi-Strauss, Douglas and Turner. Their ideas about systems of ritual and belief in small-scale, non-literate, kinship-based societies. RLG317H1 Religious violence and nonviolence as they emerge in the tension between strict adherence to tradition and individual actions of charismatic figures. The place of violence and nonviolence in selected faith traditions. RLG320H1 Judaism and Christianity in the period from 70 C.E. to 200.CE. The course focuses on the relationship between the two religious groups, stressing the importance of the setting within the Roman Empire. RLG321H1 An introduction to the first and second century Christian writings. A survey of the surviving works and their historical contexts, close analysis of selected texts and an examination of what these sources tell us about the early Christian communities. RLG322H1 Literary, historical, and rhetorical analyses of selected early Christian gospels. The gospels to be treated will vary, but each year will include a selection from the four canonical gospels and extra-canonical gospels (the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Truth, infancy gospels, and fragments of Jewish-Christian gospels) RLG323H1 An examination of the "historical Jesus" based on a critical study of the earliest accounts of Jesus, with intensive study of the Gospels to determine what can be said about Jesus' activities and teachings. RLG324H1 An examination of Paul's life and thought as seen in the early Christian literature written by him (the seven undisputed letters), about him (the Acts of the Apostles, the Acts of Paul) and in his name (the six disputed NT letters). RLG325H1 This course treats the major elements of the apocalyptic literary corpus and accompanying visionary experiences in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Contemporary theories on the function and origin of apocalyptic literature. RLG326H1 Analysis of selected documents of Second Temple Judaism in their historical contexts, as part of the generative matrix for both the early Jesus movement and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism. RLG327H1 Magic, religion, astrology, alchemy, theurgy, miracle, divination-all of these phenomena characterize the context and practice of ancient Christianity. This course examines the constitution of these categories, the role and character of these phenomena in the Graeco-Roman world, and the interaction with and integration of these phenomena by ancient Christianity. RLG330H1 A study of some of the most important and influential attempts by Christians to reconcile their experience and understanding of evil with their purported experience and understanding of God. Selections from biblical writers, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Karl Barth, and Gustavo Gutierrez. RLG331Y1 The formation and development of distinctively Eastern traditions of Christianity. The history and major writers of Eastern Christianity up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The development of the national Eastern Churches up through the modern period, and their particular contributions to the Eastern Christian tradition. RLG332Y1 The central ideas of Protestant Christianity from the 16th century reformers to their 20th century heirs: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Edwards, Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Rauschenbusch, Barth, Tillich, Niebuhr, Moltmann. Analysis of pietism, orthodoxy, liberalism, fundamentalism, neo-orthodoxy, the contemporary situation. RLG334H1 Thoroughly cross-cultural study of how Christians across the world constructed the extraordinary variety of their religious life during the period when Christianity became by far the most widespread, the most diverse, and the most populous religion in world history. Emphasis on selected cultures on all continents. RLG335H1 Analysis of how Christians (i.e., one-third of the world's population) have engaged large themes since the First World War: liturgy, migration, creedal change, the Holy Spirit, religious privatization and public life, denominations, war, inculturation, scripture, secularity, disintegration of empires, world capitalism, encounter with Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, indigenous religions, Judaism. RLG340Y1 A study of four great figures during critical moments in Jewish history, each of whom represents a turning point: Jeremiah (biblical era), Rabbi Akiva (rabbinic era), Moses Maimonides (medieval era), Franz Rosenzweig (modern era). Belief in God; Torah as law, teaching, tradition, revelation, eternity of Israel, meaning of Jewish suffering, problem of radical evil, history and messianism. RLG341H1 An inquiry into the theme of "exile and return" in Judaism, often called the leading idea of Jewish religious consciousness. Starting from Egyptian slavery and the Babylonian section, and culminating in the ideas of modern Zionism, the course will examine a cross-section of Jewish thinkers- ancient, medieval, and modern. RLG342Y1 The development and range of modern Jewish religious thought from Spinoza, Mendelssohn and Krochmal, to Cohen, Rosenzweig and Buber. Responses to the challenges of modernity and fundamental alternatives in modern Judaism. RLG343H1 A historical study of the Kabbala and the mystical tradition in Judaism, with emphasis on the ideas of Jewish mystical thinkers and movements. RLG344Y1 The religious and cultural roots of antisemitism and its manifestations in Western civilization: anti-Jewish aspects of pagan antiquity, the adversus Judaeos tradition in classical Christian theology; racist antisemitism in Europe (the Aryan myth); the rise of political antisemitism; the Nazi phenomenon, antisemitism in Canada and the United States. RLG345H1 The environment and human society studied as systems of organization built for self-preservation. Such topics as vegetarianism and the humane treatment of animals, suicide and euthanasia, sustainability and recycling, explored from the perspective of Judaism. RLG346H1 The meaning of holy time and holy place, the physics and metaphysics of time and space within Judaism. Topics include the garden of Eden, the temple, the netherworld, the land of Israel, and exile; the sabbath and the week; the human experience of aging as fulfillment and failing. RLG350H1 This course examines Muhammad's life as reflected in the biographies and historical writings of the Muslims. Students will be introduced to the critical methods used by scholars to investigate Muhammad's life. Issues include: relationship between Muhammad's life and Qur'an teachings and the veneration of Muhammad. RLG351H1 The revelatory process and the textual formation of the Qur'an, its pre-eminent orality and its principal themes and linguistic forms; the classical exegetical tradition and some contemporary approaches to its interpretation. RLG352H1 Aspects of the relationship of Islam with other religions and cultures. Topics treated may include attention to both the medieval and the modern periods as well as to contemporary challenges faced by Muslim populations in Europe and North America. RLG361H1 Readings in Vedic, Pauranic, Tantric and folk myths; traditional Hindu understandings of myth; recent theories of interpretation, e.g. those of Levi-Strauss, Eliade, Ricoeur, applied to Hindu myths. RLG363H1 Hindu ritual in its Vedic, Pauranic, Tantric, and popular forms; the meaning that ritual conveys to its participants and the relation of ritual to Hindu mythology and to social context. RLG365H1 The development of modern Hindu religious thought in the contexts of colonialism, dialogue with "the West" and the secular Indian state. RLG366H1 A study of six classical schools of Hindu philosophy, focusing on the key issues of the Self, the Real, karma and ethics. RLG371H1 The schools of Buddhism in East Asia, with focus on two principal ones: Ch'an (Zen) and Pure Land. Readings in translation from their basic sutras. RLG372H1 A survey of the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, focusing on differences in both theory and practice, with readings of Tibetan texts in translation and ethnographic studies of Buddhist practice in Tibet. RLG375H1 An introduction to philosophical thought in the Buddhist traditions of India and Tibet. RLG376H1 This course considers Buddhist notions of death, the afterlife, and rebirth. Topics include Buddhist cosmology and karmic causality, exemplary models of death and birth, and ritual studies of mortuary rites and birth practices. Readings will combine Buddhist primary texts in translation and secondary scholarship in religious studies and anthropology. RLG380H1 A comparative examination of Christian (Latin and Orthodox), Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Hindu and Islamic mystical traditions. RLG384H1 The contemporary phenomenon of religious pluralism: its historical emergence, social context and intellectual justifications. Achievements, techniques and outstanding issues in inter-religious dialogue. RLG386Y1 This course explores the nature of religion in societies whose main traditions are orally encoded. Emphasis will be placed on the peoples and cultures of Oceania in terms both of ethnography and of various theories about how to understand religion in small scale, kinship-based societies without written traditions. RLG388H1 RLG389H1 RLG398H0/399Y0 An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. See page 40 for details. RLG400Y1/401H1/402H1 Intensive programs of study including site visits and lectures in areas of religious significance abroad. Preparatory work expected, together with paper or assignments upon return. RLG410Y1 RLG411H1 This course explores the study of Nature in South Asia from the perspective of both natural sciences and the spiritual traditions, and how, if at all, these two perspectives encounter each other. The course is structured as a seminar in which active participation by students is encouraged and expected. The religious traditions of South Asia are explored more in the context of their cultural expressions, values and institutions, and must less in their textual, philosophical interpretations. Study of nature too is examined an historical and cultural context, with its on going, every day exploration for survival, understanding and meaning for human drama. RLG412H1 This course looks at the cultural production and representation of Islam and Muslim identities. Drawing on the works of contemporary "Muslim artists" working in various media--film, visual arts, music--we look at the ways artists negotiate both the art-worlds/markets along side their own relationships to an "Islamic discursive tradition." Critical questions on postcoloniality, cosmopolitanism, patriotism, nationalism, citizenship and the ummah will be addressed, in addition to understanding the limits of beauty and pleasure in the context of suffering and violence. RLG420H1 An advanced study of selected Enlightenment thinkers with a focus on their interpretations of religion. The work of Immanuel Kant will form a focus point, but others will be discussed as well. Issues include the rational critique of traditional religion, the relations among religion, ethics and politics, and the pursuit of universal approaches to religion. RLG421H1 Provides an indepth study of selected theorists in the psychology of religion, such as Freud, Ricoeur, Lacan, and Kristeva. Approaches the topic both in terms of interpretive models applied to individual and cultural religious forms, such as symbols, rituals, and personal experiences, and in terms. Of religious subjectivity as related to self-knowledge and ethical development. RLG422H1 This course will concentrate on works by Emile Durkheim, Arnold Van Gennep, Marcel Mauss, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Robert Hertz and others that attempted to establish universals of religious beliefs and experience. Topics include double burial, sacrifice, rites of passage, "participation", and concepts of sacred and profane. RLG423H1 This course will examine the 19th Century origins of anthropology in the study of the bible and 'other' primitive religions. It will focus on influential works by Frazer, Tylor, Robertson-Smith, Mueller, Bachofen and Freud. RLG430H1 RLG431H1 RLG432Y1 This seminar deals with the question of how a religion like Judaism or Christianity, based on revelation and its norms, can acknowledge and incorporate norms discovered by human reason, without reducing reason to revelation or revelation to reason. RLG433H1 An introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides, and to some of the basic themes in Jewish philosophical theology and religion. Among topics to be considered through close textual study of the Guide: divine attributes; biblical interpretation; creation versus eternity; prophecy; providence, theodicy, and evil; wisdom and human perfection. Also to be examined are leading modern interpreters of Maimonides. RLG434H1 Close study of major themes, texts, and thinkers in modern Jewish thought. Focus put on the historical development of modern Judaism, with special emphasis on the Jewish religious and philosophical responses to the challenges of modernity. Among modern Jewish thinkers to be considered: Spinoza, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, Scholem, Strauss, and Fackenheim. RLG435H1 The philosophic thought of Leo Strauss approached through his writings on modern Judaism. Primarily addressed will be the mutual relations between philosophy, theology, and politics. Among other topics to be dealt with: origins of modern Judaism, Zionism, liberal democracy, and biblical criticism; meaning of "Jerusalem and Athens"; cognitive value in the Hebrew Bible. RLG440H1 The relationship between religion and healing in the North American context through analysis of the religious roots of the biomedical model, as well as religious influences on alternative modes of healing. RLG441H1 Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and Bernard Lonergan on God as knowable by natural reason, God as manifested by supernatural revelation, and the psychological analogy for the Trinity. RLG442H1 This course considers the varieties of religious practice in North America from anthropological and historical perspectives. Of particular interest are the ways religions have mutually influenced each other in the context of nineteenth and twentieth century North America. RLG448H1 The course emphasizes the importance of material culture (artifacts, tombs, architecture, art, industrial installations, etc.) in studying the ancient world, and how it relates to other ways of interpreting religion and society. The course does not require previous familiarity with archaeology, but it presupposes interest in studying a range of excavations. Open to advanced undergraduates and qualified graduate students with permission of the instructor. RLG449H1 Investigation of the history of solutions to the Synoptic Problem from the eighteenth century to the present paying special attention on the revival of the Griesbach hypothesis and recent advances in the Two-Document hypothesis. RLG451H1 Examination of the parables in the gospels and other early Christian writers, and major trends in the modern analyses of the parables. Special attention will be paid to the social and economic world presupposed by the parables. RLG452H1 Examination of the accounts of the passion and death of Jesus in their original historical and literary contexts. RLG453H1 Sets the study of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism into relation with postcolonial historiography. Topics include hybridity, armed resistance, the intersection of gender and colonization, diaspora, acculturation, and the production of subaltern forms of knowledge. Comparative material and theories of comparison are also treated. RLG454H1 The social setting of the early Jesus movement in Roman Palestine and the cities of the Eastern Empire. Topics will include: Rank and legal status; patronalia and clientalia; marriage and divorce; forms of association outside the family; slavery and manumission; loyalty to the empire and forms of resistance. RLG456H1 This course is an introduction to the rich literature that has grown around the study of the Qur'an in the Arabic tradition. In addition to readings in the Qur'an students will read selections from works in ma'ani and majaz and major tafsir works. Selections include: al-Tabari, al-Tha'labi, al-Zamakhshari, al-Qurtubi and al-Razi. The course will culminate in a study of al-Itqan of al-Suyuti. RLG457H1 This course is designed to orient students to the field of contemporary Qur'anic studies through reading and discussion of the text itself and of significant European-language scholarship about the Qur'an as well as through examination of the principal bibliographical tools for this subject area. RLG464H1 This course examines histories of Buddhism authored inside and outside Asia, considering how various models of historiography affect our knowledge of Buddhism and Buddhist cultures. Readings will include translations of indigenous Buddhist histories, recent histories of Buddhism that have shaped the field of Buddhist Studies, and theoretical studies of historiography RLG466H1 Issues common to the establishment and development of the Buddhist tradition(s) in China, Korea, and Japan. The reactions to Buddhism by the societies in which it was being implanted. Transformation of Buddhist teachings, practice, iconography, institutions, etc. as they were assimilated by the host countries. RLG468H1 Major developments in the history of Japanese religious traditions from the earliest known times (ca. 6th cent. C.E.) to the beginning of the modern era. This course will focus on the relations between the religious dimension of Japanese society and its social-political-economic dimensions. RLG471H1 Content varies from year to year. RLG482H1 Frequently today in discussions in bioethics dealing with life and death, even secular thinkers invoke the concept of the "sanctity of human life." Yet that concept is clearly religious in origin. What do the three great monotheistic traditions have to say about this concept and its ethical significance? RLG483H1 The writings of Simon Weil will be studied within the context of political theory and contemporary Christian philosophy. The basis for Weil's critique of the technological society will be examined. RLG484H1 This course examines how religious concerns within various religious traditions interface with contemporary environmental issues. Particular attention is paid to the challenge posed to the human and religious values of these traditions by the present ecological crisis and some salient ethical and religious responses to this challenge. RLG486H1 Major twentieth-century critiques of the technological society through an examination of the philosophical and theological writings of George Grant, Jacques Ellul and Simone Weil. Their seminal critiques will be contrasted with the ethical analyses of Ursula Franklin, Albert Borgmann, Hans Jonas, and Zygmunt Bauman. RLG490Y1/491Y1/492H1/493H1494H1 Student-initiated projects supervised by members of the Department. The student must obtain both a supervisor's agreement and the Department's approval in order to register. The maximum number of Individual Studies one may take is two full course equivalents. Deadline for submitting applications to Department including supervisor's approval is the first week of classes of the session. |
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