REL 295 - Special Topics in Religion

FDR: HU
Credits: 3-4
Prerequisite varies according to the topic. A course offered from time to time in a selected problem or topic in religion. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topic for Winter 2012:

REL 295-01: God and the Holocaust (3). A study in Jewish theodicy (explaining evil in relation to God’s assumed goodness), applied especially to the Holocaust (Shoah). The course begins with close readings of the biblical books of Job and Lamentations, and later Jewish theological responses to national catastrophe. We compare these traditional ideas with our main topic of study: varieties of theodicy (or its rejection) expressed in modern Jewish thought, fiction, and film of the Shoah. The course begins and ends with Elie Wiesel’s Trial of God, which students rewrite as one of their final projects. (HU) Marks.

Topic for Fall 2011:

REL 295: Journeys: Meanings and Experiences of Travel (3). 

The central questions of the course are what is travel, how do people experience their travel, how are travelers changed by travel, and when can we call those experiences and changes “religious”? What meanings do people find in traveling? These questions are addressed through theories of travel from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, culture studies, and religious studies; through stories from world literature such as Gilgamesh, Bible, Odyssey, Ramayana, Journey to the West, and Basho’s haiku travelogue; through accounts of shamanic travel and pilgrimage; accounts by women, slaves, and non-Westerners; scientific and romantic travel of the 18th and 19th centuries, and “secularized” travel, exemplified by the novel Dodsworth and books by Jan Morris and Paul Theroux. Students engage in “discovery walks” based on John Stilgoe’s method in Outside Lies Magic; hear from a panel of travelers; analyze travel films; and write about the meanings and experiences of their own travels. A final research paper applies categories and questions from our readings to a travel book of choice.

Marks.