2019-2020 University Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2019-2020 University Catalog archived

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REL 195 - Special Topics in Religion


FDR: HU
Credits: 3 credits in fall or winter, 4 in spring


A course offered from time to time in a selected problem or topic in religion. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2020, REL 195-01: From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism (3). In this course, we encounter and analyze the forms and histories of anti-Jewishness. The course tracks from Judaeophobia in the ancient world to anti-Semitism in the contemporary world, with a focus on three moments: first, the Mediterranean world at the birth of Christian empire; second, the Holocaust in historical and ideological context; and third, anti-Semitism in America, from Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooting. In the process we ask some hard questions. What is the connection between anti-Semitism and racial thought? What is the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism? How does Christian religion intersect with anti-Semitism? How have Jewish people responded to hostility and attack, and how has suffering and loss been memorialized? (HU) Chalmers.

Fall 2019, REL 195A-01: Special Topic: Corporeal Religion: The Body in Judaism (3). Bodies matter. This is true for Jewish identity as well, both in terms of traditional practices (such as circumcision and menstrual impurity) and body-related discourses (like the process by which American Jews became racially white). This course explores the traditions and practices of Jewish life, as well as the problems and possibilities of Jewish identities, through a specific focus on the body: how it has been perceived, how it has been targeted for violence, how it has been shaped and formed within Jewish tradition, and how it intersects with race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion. (HU) Chalmers.




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