| RELIGST1 | Religion Around the Globe | This course surveys major religious traditions of the world in all of their complexity, in relation to philosophy and politics; liturgy and literature; identity and social hierarchies; art, community, and emotion. Through examination of a variety of... |
| RELIGST106 | Religion and Body Modification | From circumcision and branding to tattooing and hair removal, acts of body modification are central to many religious traditions and communities. These acts of cutting, burning, plucking, and puncturing operate on the level of individual bodies, but... |
| RELIGST107 | Buddhism in the Bay Area | The San Francisco Bay Area is home to some of the oldest and most racially and linguistically diverse Buddhist communities in the United States. This course engages differences in power and representation in Buddhist temples and centers across the Ba... |
| RELIGST10N | The Good Death | We often discuss what makes a 'good life' - that is a life worth living, a life exemplary of one's values and ideals, a life full of meaning. But what makes a 'good death'? Far from being a topic to avoid, ideas of death - what it means, its variatio... |
| RELIGST111 | Queering Buddhism: Gender, Sexuality, and Liberatory Praxis | Is the body we identify as a 'self' a given? How does a body that is gendered, raced, or marked as deviant become free? Like Queer studies, Buddhism has long ago recognized the constructedness of identity, and developed an impressive array of contemp... |
| RELIGST112 | Aliens, Asteroids, & The Antichrist: Imagining the World's End | When is the world going to end? Could anyone survive it? More importantly, how is it going to happen? The doomsday clock created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists suggests that we are closer to global catastrophe than ever before. Yet theories abo... |
| RELIGST115X | Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1500 | (HISTORY 15D is 3 units; HISTORY 115D is 5 units.) This course provides an introduction to Medieval Europe from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. While the framework of the course is chronological, we'll concentrate particularly on the structure o... |
| RELIGST116 | Buddhist Philosophy | Buddhism often figures in the popular imagination not as a religion, but as a philosophy, or a way of life. But why is such a distinction made? Does Buddhist thought and practice make sense as a philosophy? What do Buddhists actually mean when they s... |
| RELIGST117 | Christianity, Race, and Gender in 21st-century America | As the largest religion practiced in the United States, Christianity not only shapes the private lives of a large number of Americans but also plays an important role in public discourse, policies, and debates. This course investigates Christianity's... |
| RELIGST118 | Freedom Fighters, Terrorists, and Social Justice Warriors: Protest and Decolonization in South Asia | The South Asian region comprises the contemporary nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. Racially, linguistically, politically, religiously, and in every way diverse, this region has also experienced the c... |
| RELIGST119 | Religion and Conflict | Conflicts involving religions are among the most vexing challenges facing international agencies, governments, institutions, and - above all - humanity. Although religion is often used as a descriptor of a conflict (Jewish - Muslim conflict in the M... |
| RELIGST11N | The Meaning of Life: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Religious Perspectives | The seminar is in two parts: (1) personal authenticity in Western philosophy, religion, and culture; readings from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre; (2) social authenticity: readings from Marx, Bourdi... |
| RELIGST123 | The Hindu Epics and the Ethics of Dharma | The two great Hindu Epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, offer a sustained reflection on the nature of virtuous living in the face of insoluble ethical dilemmas. Their treatment of the concept of dharma, understood simultaneously as ethical action an... |
| RELIGST125 | The Bible and its Interpreters | Introduction to major stories, figures, and themes of the Christian Bible and their retellings in theological writing, art, literature, film, and music throughout the ages. |
| RELIGST126 | Protestant Reformation | The emergence of Protestant Christianity in 16th-century Europe. Analysis of writings by evangelical reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Sattler, Hubmeier, Müntzer) and study of reform movements (Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Spiritualist) in their... |
| RELIGST127 | Love, Loss, and Devotion in Indian Literature | Why are human cultures perennially preoccupied with love, and with what happens when it vanishes? Classical theorists in India have argued, at least, that love is the very foundation of aesthetic experience, and that love has something fundamental to... |
| RELIGST128 | Women and Gender in Early Judaism and Christianity | Beginning with the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, we will explore female figures in early Jewish and Christian literatures, such as Eve, Ruth, Mary, and Junia. Based on this, we will probe the prescriptions for female comportment in early Judaism an... |
| RELIGST129 | Milk and Honey, Wine and Blood: Food, Justice, and Ethnic Identity in Jewish Culture | This course examines Jewish culture and the food practices and traditions that have shaped and continue to shape it. Students learn to prepare a variety of meals while studying about the historical and literary traditions associated with them, such a... |
| RELIGST12N | Perspectives on the Good Life | The question is how to approach and evaluate different perspectives on the good life, especially when those perspectives are beautifully, and elusively, presented to us as texts. We will consider both classic and modern writers, from the West and fro... |
| RELIGST133 | Muslims, Jews, and Christians: Conflict, Coexistence, and Collaboration | Relationships between Muslims, Jews, and Christians today are informed by a multitude of complex and often painful histories. These faith traditions emerged out of deep and sustained engagement with one another sharing theological and ethical princip... |
| RELIGST134 | The Language of Islam | Why do we as humans love? What is the nature of the 'self'? Is our experience of the world authentic and real? If there is an ultimate source of the universe, by what means do we access it? These are some of the questions which we will grapple with a... |
| RELIGST135 | Contemporary Islam & Muslims in the United States | In this course, we will explore contemporary Islam and Muslims in a post-9/11, post-Trump United States. Following some brief grounding history in Week 1, we will use ethnographic studies and digital media content to understand the American Muslim ex... |
| RELIGST139 | Religion along the Silk Road | From roughly the year 1 to the year 1000, a vibrant trade route stretched across Central Asia, linking Europe, India and East Asia. Along this route, merchants bought and sold the silk that gave the route its name, along with paper, ceramics, spices,... |
| RELIGST141 | Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, JR.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom | Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) and Martin Luther King, Jr. are both icons of the twentieth-century civil rights and black freedom movements. Often characterized as polar opposites - one advocating armed self-defense and the other non-violence a... |
| RELIGST141X | Ancient Greek Religion | Survey of the religious practices of the ancient Greeks. Readings will be both from original sources and from modern scholarship. There are no prerequisites. Knowledge of ancient Greek will be useful, but not required. Undergrads should give one... |
| RELIGST144 | John Calvin and Christian Faith | Close reading and analysis of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as a classic expression of Christian belief. |
| RELIGST147 | Building Heaven and Hell | How did early Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians imagine space? How did they construct heaven and hell and the afterlife through their written texts? Can we take written images of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem and her temple, such as those fou... |
| RELIGST149 | Finding Utopia: New Religious Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries | What is the connection between new religious movements and secularization? As the religious concept of freedom was expanded in the 19th century, so was secular culture: there was a vast array of possible routes a person might take to pursue transcend... |
| RELIGST14N | Buddha's Brain and the New Science of Mind | How has the modern fascination with the Buddha, who lived nearly 2,500 years ago, come to influence scientific research on the nature of mind and its potential role in human flourishing? Do "mindfulness apps" have anything to do with ancient Buddhist... |
| RELIGST150 | Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East | This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the anc... |
| RELIGST152 | Buddhism and the Family in Southeast Asia | What do we owe our parents? This course centers how Buddhist authors in Cambodia and Vietnam have wrestled with questions of debt and gratitude in the family. We will begin with the Indian and Chinese antecedents that shaped ideals of filial piety in... |
| RELIGST153 | Buddhist Tantra | This course provides an introduction to Buddhist Tantra through considering select themes in its historical development, philosophy, contemplative and ritual dynamics, visual and material culture, and variations across different times and cultures, f... |
| RELIGST158 | Spiritualism and the Occult | This course will examine the popular mystical practices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when millions of people in Europe and America described themselves as spiritualists and shared a recognizable set of practices. These served as a... |
| RELIGST15N | Magic and Marvel: Theorizing Religion Through Popular Culture | Though marginalized through terms like 'superstition' and 'witchcraft,' magic remained a ubiquitous feature of the United States sociocultural and religious landscape well beyond the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. From dream books to horseshoes to conjure,... |
| RELIGST164 | Violence & Liberation: Jainism in South Asia | From early-Buddhism to the Civil Rights movement, Jainism has left an indelible mark on culture, politics, and religion across the globe. This course examines the history of Jainism, one of the oldest lived religions in the world. The aim is to devel... |
| RELIGST165 | Modern Jewish Mysticism: Devotion in a Secular Age | The twentieth-century was a time of tremendous upheaval and unspeakable tragedy for the Jewish communities of Europe. But the past hundred years were also a period of great renewal for Jewish spirituality, a renaissance that has continued into the pr... |
| RELIGST166 | The Divine Feminine in India | What happens when God is a woman? Is the Goddess a feminist? The Goddess, in her numerous incarnations, is foundational to much of Indian religiosity, whether Hindu, Buddhist, or even Jain¿and in turn, without her story, much of the theology and prac... |
| RELIGST168 | Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction | Most views about and attitudes toward religion found on college campuses today trace their origins back to the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Calls for social justice, a political order free of ecclesiastical domi... |
| RELIGST169 | Sacred Words: Jewish Thought and the Question of Language | Jews have long been referred as the people of the book, but they might better be referred to as the people of the word. Drawing upon texts from the Hebrew Bible to the works of modern Hebrew writers like of Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Amoz Oz, this semi... |
| RELIGST16N | Stop the Steal: January 6 as a case study into American Religion and Politics | This course examines the January 6 storming of the US Capitol as a way to study and understanding religion and politics in contemporary America. |
| RELIGST170A | Biblical Hebrew, First Quarter | Establish a basic familiarity with the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew and will begin developing a facility with the language. Students that are enrolled in this course must also enroll in Beginning Hebrew. This course requires no prior kn... |
| RELIGST170D | Readings in Talmudic Literature | Readings of Talmudic texts. Some knowledge of Hebrew is preferred, but not necessary. The goal of the ongoing workshop is to provide Stanford students with the opportunity to engage in regular Talmud study, and to be introduced to a variety of approa... |
| RELIGST171A | Biblical Greek | This is a one term intensive class in Biblical Greek. After quickly learning the basics of the language, we will then dive right into readings from the New Testament and the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. No... |
| RELIGST173X | Latin 400-1700 CE | Readings in later Latin, drawing on the vast bodies of texts from the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Each week students will prepare selections in advance of class meetings; class time will be devoted to translation and discussion.... |
| RELIGST174 | Religious Existentialism-Kierkegaard | Existentialism is often understood to be a secular or anti-religious philosophy of life, a substitute for Christian ethics in a post-theistic world come of age. Yet this twentieth-century philosophical movement owes many of its concerns and much of i... |
| RELIGST180 | Gender Relations in Islam | This course investigates the ways in which gender identities and relationships between men and women have been articulated, constructed, and refashioned throughout the Muslim world. Starting with problematizing the fixed notions of gender and sexuali... |
| RELIGST190 | Bible, Politics, and the Internet | Why do some herald Donald Trump as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies? Does the Bible support building walls or welcoming immigrants? How about vaccines or mask resistance? The Bible is everywhere in American politics and public life, on multiple... |
| RELIGST199 | Individual Work | Prerequisite: consent of instructor and department. May be repeated for credit. |
| RELIGST19X | Zen: A Way of Life Through Meditation and Cooking | This class is being offered in collaboration with the Stanford Program in Kyoto, Bing Overseas Studies Program.Fundamental to Zen Buddhism is the meditative practice of zazen ("seated meditation"). In recent decades, zazen-inspired meditative practic... |
| RELIGST2 | Is Stanford a Religion? | This course seeks to introduce students to the study of religion by posing a two-part question: What is a religion, and does Stanford qualify as one? Scientific, pragmatic, seemingly secular, Stanford may not seem at all similar to religions like Chr... |
| RELIGST202A | Monsters, Ghosts and Other Fantastic Beings: The Supernatural and the Mysterious in Japanese Culture | Examine the development of strange and fantastic creatures in Japan. Mysterious creatures in folklore, literature, art, manga and movies. Through them see how the concept of the strange or mysterious have evolved and how they inform Japanese modernit... |
| RELIGST203 | Defining the Moral Body: Sex, Race, and Gender in Religion | What is the ideal, moral body in a given culture? How does it perform? What does it look like? How does it survive in a pluralistic, global religious society? Are there multiple and/or shifting ideals? In this course, we will consider the ways religi... |
| RELIGST208X | Islam in West Africa Beyond Decolonization | This course will survey the history of Islam and Muslim societies in West Africa through the beliefs, practices, writings, stories and poems of Sufi scholarly sages. The course will focus on the Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition of West Af... |
| RELIGST209 | THE QURAN AND EARLY ISLAM | In this course, we will set out to critically reconstruct the central practices and ideas of the early Muslim community as a basis for thinking creatively about several issues pertaining to the fields of theology, philosophy, law, sexuality, economic... |
| RELIGST210 | Translating Religion | What happens to Buddhism when the Buddha speaks Chinese? Is the Qur'an still the Qur'an in English? What did Martin Luther do for the German language? We try to answer these and other such questions in this course, which explores the translation of s... |
| RELIGST210X | Doing Religious History | What is religion, and how do we write its history? This undergraduate colloquium uses case studies from a variety of regions and periods - but with a specific focus on the African continent - to consider how historians have dealt with the challenge o... |
| RELIGST211 | Economic Justice | This seminar brings philosophical, humanistic, and religious analyses to bear on current issues of economic justice in the United States. The first part of the seminar studies general background issues (history of U.S. economics, philosophies of mone... |
| RELIGST212 | Zhuangzi | The 'Zhuangzi' (Chuang Tzu) in its original setting and as understood by its spiritual progeny. Limited enrollment; consent of instructor required. Please complete the questionnaire at: https://forms.gle/ZzYe45S6rV2wY8gB6 |
| RELIGST215 | Death, Power, and Religion | We live with the dead. Not only in the bodily traces of our ancestral origins, but also in the ways that the dead shape the worlds of the living - generating ethical structures, built environments, ritual performances, political imperatives, and conc... |
| RELIGST217 | Music and Sound in Buddhism | "This course will explore the musical cultures and soundscapes of Buddhism, ranging from monastic chants to classical music to modern pop music. We will study how sounds support practitioners in their personal cultivation and how music helps to commu... |
| RELIGST218X | The Holy Dead: Saints and Spiritual Power in Medieval Europe | Examines the cult of saints in medieval religious thought and life. Topics include martyrs, shrines, pilgrimage, healing, relics, and saints' legends. |
| RELIGST220 | Religion and Politics: Past and Present | In this course, we will study the phenomenon of politics by attending to its theological dimensions, as well as the historical and philosophical underpinnings of states both ancient and modern. Each week we will take up a specific theme, e.g., univer... |
| RELIGST221 | The Talmud: Research Methods and Tools | This seminar introduces students to the academic study of the Talmud and related classical rabbinic texts from late antiquity. Students will engage the major philological and historical questions concerning the making of the Talmud, along with textua... |
| RELIGST221C | Aramaic Texts | Readings in Aramaic/Syriac with special focus on grammar and syntax of ancient texts. |
| RELIGST222 | Mummies, Ghost, and Relics: Understandings of the Sacred Dead | What can skeletons of the past teach us about Buddhism? Why would monks choose to self-mummify to become 'living buddhas' in their communities? Can a female become a living buddha? What about an animal? Or a child? And, what happens to the souls of y... |
| RELIGST223 | Advanced Readings in Jewish Mysticism | This seminar allows students and faculty to explore foundational concepts of Jewish mystical literature through immersion in primary sources. Together we will examine these texts from a wide range of philosophical, historical and theological perspect... |
| RELIGST226 | The Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Europe | This seminar investigates the central role of the Christian Bible in European religion, culture, and society from ca. 1000-1700 CE. In the medieval and early modern periods, the Bible not only shaped religious attitudes, practices, and institutions,... |
| RELIGST228 | The Earliest Christians | This seminar focuses on the emergence of second- and third-century Christianity. Together we'll explore a wide range of primary sources in English translation as well as recent scholarship in the field. For graduate students, regardless of their spec... |
| RELIGST230X | Religion, Radicalization and Media in Africa since 1945 | What are the paths to religious radicalization, and what role have media- new and old- played in these conversion journeys? We examine how Pentecostal Christians and Reformist Muslims in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia ha... |
| RELIGST231 | European Reformations | How do new approaches to the reforms of religious belief, practice, and community open new avenues for exploring the transformed religious landscape of early modern Europe? This advanced colloquium explores key theological and social aspects of the s... |
| RELIGST231X | Learning Religion: How People Acquire Religious Commitments | This course will examine how people learn religion outside of school, and in conversation with popular cultural texts and practices. Taking a broad social-constructivist approach to the variety of ways people learn, this course will explore how peopl... |
| RELIGST232 | Buddhist Meditation: Ancient and Modern | An exploration of the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation from the time of the Buddha to the modern mindfulness boom, with attention to the wide range of techniques developed and their diverse interpretation. Undergraduates register for 200-le... |
| RELIGST233 | Comparative Mysticism | This graduate seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students t... |
| RELIGST234 | Islam and Material Culture | Material objects are essential elements of Islamic cultures and practices. This course examines Islamic art, sculpture, architecture, devotional objects, and clothing, as well as basic concepts in studying religion and material culture. |
| RELIGST235 | Sacred Space | The marking off of sacred space is often posited as central to the production of the sacred as a generic category. Moving from Durkheim and Eliade's contrasting views of the sacred as either a collective imaginary reflecting society's self-image or t... |
| RELIGST241 | Black Religion in America | Since Africans arrived on North American shores, their religious cultures have anchored them to the traditions of their originating homelands; offered outlets for communal innovation; and structured their responses to the everyday realities of life i... |
| RELIGST246 | Constructing Race and Religion in America | This seminar focuses on the interrelationships between social constructions of race and social interpretations of religion in America. How have assumptions about race shaped religious worldviews? How have religious beliefs shaped racial attitudes? Ho... |
| RELIGST24S | Witches, Witchcraft, and Witch-Hunting in Early America | The early modern era witnessed a dramatic surge in the religious and legal persecution of women and men suspected of and executed for witchcraft. While witch-hunting was a global phenomenon, this class shall focus on the early American religious expe... |
| RELIGST250 | Readings in Tibetan Literature | Introduction to Tibetan literature through reading texts in Tibetan. Prerequisite: intermediate level facility in classical Tibetan.
Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units |
| RELIGST252 | Hearts and Diamonds: The Lives of Buddhist Sacred Texts | An exploration of two key Mahayana Buddhist scriptures (the Heart & Diamond Sutras) and their histories, looking at what they say and how they have been used, from the first millennium to the present day. |
| RELIGST253 | Recent Research on Japanese Buddhism | Readings in recent English-language scholarship on Japanese Buddhism. Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units. Prerequisite: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies (5 units for 253... |
| RELIGST257 | Women in Japanese Buddhism | This seminar explores the role of women in Japanese Buddhism, starting from the earliest records until today. All readings will be in English. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. You must have taken at le... |
| RELIGST257X | Female Divinities in China | This course examines the fundamental role of powerful goddesses in Chinese religion. It covers the entire range of imperial history and down to the present. It will look at, among other questions, what roles goddesses played in the spirit world, how... |
| RELIGST258 | Readings in Japanese Buddhist Texts | In this course, we will read premodern Japanese Buddhist texts. Prerequisite: Chinese and/or Japanese. |
| RELIGST259 | Buddhist Magic | This course explores the relationship between Buddhism and magic through the lens of an unstudied Southeast Asian manuscript held at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center. Working together as a class, we'll discover how to decipher the words, decode the nume... |
| RELIGST261 | What Does It Mean to be Secular? | "Secularism" and "secularization" are two concepts whose importance to modern life is only matched by their ability to elude our understanding. Our aim in this seminar, therefore, will be to make sense of them as historical and sociological phenomena... |
| RELIGST262 | Sex and the Early Church | Sex and the Early Church examines the ways first- through sixth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resista... |
| RELIGST263 | The Religions and Cultures of Enslaved People in America | More than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery--its histories and legacies--remains the subject of heated debate among the institution's descendants and the millions of others who live in its wake. As a global institution predicated... |
| RELIGST264 | Hindu Tantra | What is Tantra? Tantric forms of ritual and philosophy have been integral to the practice of Hinduism for most of its history. Tantra has provided initiates with a spiritual technology for embodying the divine and transcending the cycle of rebirth; o... |
| RELIGST269 | Plotinus and Augustine | Professor's permission required to register. A reading course focused on the influence of Plotinus Enneads on Augustine's Confessions, early dialogues, and sections on reason and memory in the De trinitate. Proficiency in Greek and Latin will be help... |
| RELIGST270 | Comparative Religious Ethics | The difference that the word religious makes in religious ethics and how it affects issues of genre. Theoretical analyses with examples from W. and E. Asia. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST272 | Death and Resurrection in Finnegans Wake | This close reading of Joyce's masterwork will unravel and reweave some of the major themes of this amazing and difficult literary artifact, including its complex fusion of mythological, religious, historical, and cultural strands. Finnegans Wake has... |
| RELIGST281 | Asian Religions in America; Asian American Religions | This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions. |
| RELIGST283 | Religion and Literature | A wide-ranging exploration of religious themes in literary works. Readings will include prose and poetry stemming from various world regions, time periods, and religious traditions. Limited enrollment; consent of instructor required. Please complete... |
| RELIGST286 | Goodness and the Literary Imagination | In her Ingersoll lecture at Harvard Divinity School, Toni Morrison probed the issue of literary presentations of goodness. We will begin with that very rich lecture, and a collection of essays by scholars of religion and religious leaders exploring t... |
| RELIGST290 | Majors' Seminar: Theories of Religion | Required of all majors and combined majors. The study of religion reflects upon itself. Representative modern and contemporary attempts to "theorize," and thereby understand, the phenomena of religion in anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural... |
| RELIGST297 | Senior Essay/Honors Thesis Research | Guided by faculty adviser. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor and department. |
| RELIGST298 | Senior Colloquium | For Religious Studies majors writing the senior essay or honors thesis. Students present work in progress, and read and respond to others. Approaches to research and writing in the humanities. |
| RELIGST3 | The Religious Life of Things | Temples, prayer beads, icons, robes, books, relics, candles and incense, scarves and hats, sacred food and holy water; objects of all sorts play a prominent role in all religions, evoking a wide range of emotional responses, from reverence, solace an... |
| RELIGST300 | Researching Religious History | Although researchers use historical and other academic research methods to access questions of religiosity across time, space, and culture, methodology contours the parameters of 'religion' or the 'religious' for a given study. While method defines a... |
| RELIGST302A | Monsters, Ghosts and Other Fantastic Beings: The Supernatural and the Mysterious in Japanese Culture | Examine the development of strange and fantastic creatures in Japan. Mysterious creatures in folklore, literature, art, manga and movies. Through them see how the concept of the strange or mysterious have evolved and how they inform Japanese modernit... |
| RELIGST303 | Defining the Moral Body: Sex, Race, and Gender in Religion | What is the ideal, moral body in a given culture? How does it perform? What does it look like? How does it survive in a pluralistic, global religious society? Are there multiple and/or shifting ideals? In this course, we will consider the ways religi... |
| RELIGST304A | Theories and Methods | Required of graduate students in Religious Studies. Approaches to the study of religion. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit. |
| RELIGST304B | Theories and Methods | Required of graduate students in Religious Studies. Approaches to the study of religion. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. May be repeated for credit. |
| RELIGST308X | Islam in West Africa Beyond Decolonization | This course will survey the history of Islam and Muslim societies in West Africa through the beliefs, practices, writings, stories and poems of Sufi scholarly sages. The course will focus on the Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition of West Af... |
| RELIGST309 | THE QURAN AND EARLY ISLAM | In this course, we will set out to critically reconstruct the central practices and ideas of the early Muslim community as a basis for thinking creatively about several issues pertaining to the fields of theology, philosophy, law, sexuality, economic... |
| RELIGST310 | Translating Religion | What happens to Buddhism when the Buddha speaks Chinese? Is the Qur'an still the Qur'an in English? What did Martin Luther do for the German language? We try to answer these and other such questions in this course, which explores the translation of s... |
| RELIGST312 | Religion and 20th Century US Politics | Graduate seminar examining the major topics in US Religion and Politics. |
| RELIGST313X | The Education of American Jews | This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the question of how American Jews negotiate the desire to retain a unique ethnic sensibility without excluding themselves from American culture more broadly. Students will examine the various way... |
| RELIGST314 | Seminar in Buddhist Historiography | The focus of this course is on approaches to the past from within Buddhist traditions rather than modern academic writing on Buddhist history. We will briefly examine research on religious conceptions of the past in other religions before turning to... |
| RELIGST315 | Death, Power, and Religion | We live with the dead. Not only in the bodily traces of our ancestral origins, but also in the ways that the dead shape the worlds of the living - generating ethical structures, built environments, ritual performances, political imperatives, and conc... |
| RELIGST315A | Chinese Buddhism | This year the seminar will focus on the twentieth century, perhaps the most vibrant and certainly the most tumultuous period in two thousand years of Chinese Buddhist history. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, leading Buddhists proposed... |
| RELIGST316 | Tantric Buddhism | This course explores many of the key issues in the study of tantric Buddhism, including aspects of its historical development, ritual ideology, visual and material culture, notions of identity and embodiment, and variations across different times and... |
| RELIGST317 | Music and Sound in Buddhism | "This course will explore the musical cultures and soundscapes of Buddhism, ranging from monastic chants to classical music to modern pop music. We will study how sounds support practitioners in their personal cultivation and how music helps to commu... |
| RELIGST317 | Music and Sound in Buddhism | "This course will explore the musical cultures and soundscapes of Buddhism, ranging from monastic chants to classical music to modern pop music. We will study how sounds support practitioners in their personal cultivation and how music helps to commu... |
| RELIGST318X | The Holy Dead: Saints and Spiritual Power in Medieval Europe | Examines the cult of saints in medieval religious thought and life. Topics include martyrs, shrines, pilgrimage, healing, relics, and saints' legends. |
| RELIGST319 | Readings in Hindu Texts | Readings in Hindu texts in Sanskrit. Texts will be selected based on student interest. Prerequisite: Sanskrit. |
| RELIGST320 | Religion and Politics: Past and Present | In this course, we will study the phenomenon of politics by attending to its theological dimensions, as well as the historical and philosophical underpinnings of states both ancient and modern. Each week we will take up a specific theme, e.g., univer... |
| RELIGST321 | The Talmud: Research Methods and Tools | This seminar introduces students to the academic study of the Talmud and related classical rabbinic texts from late antiquity. Students will engage the major philological and historical questions concerning the making of the Talmud, along with textua... |
| RELIGST321C | Aramaic Texts | Readings in Aramaic/Syriac with special focus on grammar and syntax of ancient texts. |
| RELIGST322 | Mummies, Ghost, and Relics: Understandings of the Sacred Dead | What can skeletons of the past teach us about Buddhism? Why would monks choose to self-mummify to become 'living buddhas' in their communities? Can a female become a living buddha? What about an animal? Or a child? And, what happens to the souls of y... |
| RELIGST323 | Advanced Readings in Jewish Mysticism | This seminar allows students and faculty to explore foundational concepts of Jewish mystical literature through immersion in primary sources. Together we will examine these texts from a wide range of philosophical, historical and theological perspect... |
| RELIGST325 | Syriac Christianity | In the first millennium, Christianity thrived throughout the Middle East. Because Roman Catholic and Protestant churches later declared many of these Christians to be heretics, their stories have often been excluded from the history of Christianity.... |
| RELIGST326 | The Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Europe | This seminar investigates the central role of the Christian Bible in European religion, culture, and society from ca. 1000-1700 CE. In the medieval and early modern periods, the Bible not only shaped religious attitudes, practices, and institutions,... |
| RELIGST328 | The Earliest Christians | This seminar focuses on the emergence of second- and third-century Christianity. Together we'll explore a wide range of primary sources in English translation as well as recent scholarship in the field. For graduate students, regardless of their spec... |
| RELIGST330X | Religion, Radicalization and Media in Africa since 1945 | What are the paths to religious radicalization, and what role have media- new and old- played in these conversion journeys? We examine how Pentecostal Christians and Reformist Muslims in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia ha... |
| RELIGST331 | European Reformations | How do new approaches to the reforms of religious belief, practice, and community open new avenues for exploring the transformed religious landscape of early modern Europe? This advanced colloquium explores key theological and social aspects of the s... |
| RELIGST332 | Buddhist Meditation: Ancient and Modern | An exploration of the theory and practice of Buddhist meditation from the time of the Buddha to the modern mindfulness boom, with attention to the wide range of techniques developed and their diverse interpretation. Undergraduates register for 200-le... |
| RELIGST333 | Comparative Mysticism | This graduate seminar will explore the mystical writings of the major religious traditions represented in our department: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It will address major issues in the study of mysticism, exposing students t... |
| RELIGST333X | Workshop in Religion and Education | This 1-unit workshop will explore the intersection of religion and education across a variety of learning environments and demographics. It invites an ongoing conversation of the relationships between schools, congregations, religious bodies, learne... |
| RELIGST334 | Islam and Material Culture | Material objects are essential elements of Islamic cultures and practices. This course examines Islamic art, sculpture, architecture, devotional objects, and clothing, as well as basic concepts in studying religion and material culture. |
| RELIGST335 | Sacred Space | The marking off of sacred space is often posited as central to the production of the sacred as a generic category. Moving from Durkheim and Eliade's contrasting views of the sacred as either a collective imaginary reflecting society's self-image or t... |
| RELIGST336 | Calvin's Theology | Graduate student colloquium on issues in classical Protestant thought. Permission of instructor required. |
| RELIGST338 | Seminar in Spiritualism and the Occult | T.W. Stanford, Leland Jr.'s uncle, left money for founding psychic studies at Stanford. The Stanford's were like millions of people in the nineteenth century who described themselves as spiritualist. Far from being the rejection of science, this move... |
| RELIGST341 | Black Religion in America | Since Africans arrived on North American shores, their religious cultures have anchored them to the traditions of their originating homelands; offered outlets for communal innovation; and structured their responses to the everyday realities of life i... |
| RELIGST343X | Anthropology of Religion | This course presents classic and contemporary work on the anthropology of religion: Durkheim Elementary Forms of the Religious Life; Levy-Bruhl; Primitive Mentality; Douglas Purity and Danger; Evans Pritchard Nuer Religion; and recent ethnographies/... |
| RELIGST344 | Feminist Theory and the Study of Religion | This seminar aims to put feminist theory and religious studies into conversation with each other in order to explore the resulting intersections. It will examine new directions in current scholarship. What does it mean to apply a gender studies lens... |
| RELIGST345 | Readings in Late Ancient Christianity | Topics in the study of Christianity for doctoral students. Recent scholarship and approaches to research. |
| RELIGST346 | Constructing Race and Religion in America | This seminar focuses on the interrelationships between social constructions of race and social interpretations of religion in America. How have assumptions about race shaped religious worldviews? How have religious beliefs shaped racial attitudes? Ho... |
| RELIGST347 | Chinese Buddhist Texts | Chinese Buddhist texts from the Han Dynasty onwards, including sutra translations, prefaces, colophons, story collections and biographies. Prerequisite: reading competence in Chinese. |
| RELIGST348 | Readings in Race and Religion in America | This graduate-level readings course investigates the relationship between "religion" and "race" in the United States, showing how the categories cannot be understood separately, even as they are often considered as such. The course will focus on prep... |
| RELIGST350 | Readings in Tibetan Literature | Introduction to Tibetan literature through reading texts in Tibetan. Prerequisite: intermediate level facility in classical Tibetan.
Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units |
| RELIGST351 | Readings in Indian Buddhist Texts | Introduction to Buddhist literature through reading original texts in Sanskrit. Prerequisite: Sanskrit. |
| RELIGST353 | Recent Research on Japanese Buddhism | Readings in recent English-language scholarship on Japanese Buddhism. Undergraduates must enroll for 5 units; graduate students can enroll for 3-5 units. Prerequisite: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies (5 units for 253... |
| RELIGST357 | Women in Japanese Buddhism | This seminar explores the role of women in Japanese Buddhism, starting from the earliest records until today. All readings will be in English. Prerequisites: Solid foundation in either Buddhist studies or East Asian Studies. You must have taken at le... |
| RELIGST357X | Female Divinities in China | This course examines the fundamental role of powerful goddesses in Chinese religion. It covers the entire range of imperial history and down to the present. It will look at, among other questions, what roles goddesses played in the spirit world, how... |
| RELIGST358 | Readings in Japanese Buddhist Texts | In this course, we will read premodern Japanese Buddhist texts. Prerequisite: Chinese and/or Japanese. |
| RELIGST359 | Buddhist Magic | This course explores the relationship between Buddhism and magic through the lens of an unstudied Southeast Asian manuscript held at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center. Working together as a class, we'll discover how to decipher the words, decode the nume... |
| RELIGST359A | American Religions in a Global Context: Proseminar | This 1-unit proseminar is open to graduate students interested in American Religions in a Global Context. We will meet once a month to discuss student and faculty work-in-progress and important books in the field. Enrollment in the proseminar is requ... |
| RELIGST361 | What Does It Mean to be Secular? | "Secularism" and "secularization" are two concepts whose importance to modern life is only matched by their ability to elude our understanding. Our aim in this seminar, therefore, will be to make sense of them as historical and sociological phenomena... |
| RELIGST362 | Sex and the Early Church | Sex and the Early Church examines the ways first- through sixth-century Christians addressed questions regarding human sexuality. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between sexuality and issues of gender, culture, power, and resista... |
| RELIGST363 | The Religions and Cultures of Enslaved People in America | More than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery--its histories and legacies--remains the subject of heated debate among the institution's descendants and the millions of others who live in its wake. As a global institution predicated... |
| RELIGST364 | Hindu Tantra | What is Tantra? Tantric forms of ritual and philosophy have been integral to the practice of Hinduism for most of its history. Tantra has provided initiates with a spiritual technology for embodying the divine and transcending the cycle of rebirth; o... |
| RELIGST367 | Seminar in Religion and Material Culture | The first part of the course will examine approaches to the role of material culture in religion, including scholarship on icons, sacred space, clothing and food. In the second part of the course, students will develop research projects in their area... |
| RELIGST369 | Plotinus and Augustine | Professor's permission required to register. A reading course focused on the influence of Plotinus Enneads on Augustine's Confessions, early dialogues, and sections on reason and memory in the De trinitate. Proficiency in Greek and Latin will be help... |
| RELIGST36X | Dangerous Ideas | Ideas matter. Concepts such as equality, tradition, and Hell have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like race and urban renewal, play an important role in contemporary d... |
| RELIGST370 | Comparative Religious Ethics | The difference that the word religious makes in religious ethics and how it affects issues of genre. Theoretical analyses with examples from W. and E. Asia. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST371 | Writing Religious History | This course offers graduate students a sustained opportunity to think about the craft of writing religious history. We will work together on issues ranging from structuring sentences, to revising an article, to conceptualizing a dissertation. Student... |
| RELIGST372 | Death and Resurrection in Finnegans Wake | This close reading of Joyce's masterwork will unravel and reweave some of the major themes of this amazing and difficult literary artifact, including its complex fusion of mythological, religious, historical, and cultural strands. Finnegans Wake has... |
| RELIGST374F | Science, Religion, and Democracy | How should conflicts between citizens with science-based and religion-based beliefs be handled in modern liberal democracies? Are religion-based beliefs as suitable for discussion within the public sphere as science-based beliefs? Are there still imp... |
| RELIGST37X | Contemporary Religion in Japan's Ancient Capital: Sustaining and Recasting Tradition | This course is being offered in collaboration with the Stanford Program in Kyoto, Bing Overseas Studies Program. Taught online, students will receive real-time instruction from Prof. Ludvik based in Kyoto on contemporary Japanese attitudes to religio... |
| RELIGST381 | Asian Religions in America; Asian American Religions | This course will analyze both the reception in America of Asian religions (i.e. of Buddhism in the 19th century), and the development in America of Asian American religious traditions. |
| RELIGST382 | Research in American Religions | Independent Study in American Religions. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor |
| RELIGST383 | Research in Late Antiquity | Graduate independent research in Late Anitquity |
| RELIGST384 | Research in Christian Studies | Independent study in Christianity. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST385 | Research in Buddhist Studies | Independent study in Buddhism. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST387 | Research in Jewish Studies | Independent study in Jewish Studies. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST388 | Research in Religious Thought, Ethics, and Philosophy | Independent study in Religious Thought, Ethics, and Philosophy. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST389 | Individual Work for Graduate Students | May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. |
| RELIGST390 | Teaching Internship | Required supervised internship for PhDs. |
| RELIGST391 | Teaching Religious Studies | This seminar will help prepare you for your role as a university teacher both at a practical and a theoretical level. We will focus on how to best obtain (and keep) a new academic position. We will thus often work together on "nuts and bolts" issues... |
| RELIGST392 | Paper in the Field | Prerequisite: consent of graduate director. May be repeated for credit. |
| RELIGST395 | Master of Arts Thesis | No Description Set |
| RELIGST399 | Readings in Theories and Methods | Directed readings in secondary literature for Religious Studies doctoral students. May be repeated for credit. |
| RELIGST4 | What Didn't Make the Bible | Over two billion people alive today consider the Bible to be sacred scripture. But how did the books that made it into the bible get there in the first place? Who decided what was to be part of the bible and what wasn't? How would history look differ... |
| RELIGST50 | Exploring Buddhism | A comprehensive historical survey of the Buddhist tradition, from its beginnings to the 21st century, covering principal teachings and practices, institutional and social forms, and artistic and iconographical expressions. (Formerly RELIGST 14.) |
| RELIGST51 | Exploring Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas | From elaborate sand mandalas, masked dances, and entrancing ritual music to meditating yogis, robed monks, and the Dalai Lama himself, Tibetan forms of Buddhist traditions have for decades been an integral part of our modern globalized world. This co... |
| RELIGST53 | Exploring Jewish Spirituality | It was once accepted as fact that Judaism is, at its core, a rational religion devoid of any authentic mystical tradition. But the past century of scholarship has reversed this claim, demonstrating that the spiritual life has been integral to Judaism... |
| RELIGST55 | Exploring Zen Buddhism | This course is an introduction to Chan/Zen Buddhism. We will study the historical and doctrinal development of this tradition in China and Japan and examine various facets of Zen, such as the philosophy, practices, rituals, culture, and institution.... |
| RELIGST56 | Exploring Chinese Religions | An overview of major themes and historical developments in 5000 years of Chinese religion. In this course, we will try as much as possible to appreciate Chinese religion from the Chinese perspective, paying particular attention to original texts in t... |
| RELIGST61 | Exploring Islam | This course introduces some of the most important features of the Islamic religious tradition. It explores the different ways in which Muslims have interpreted and practiced their religion. The main subjects of discussion --- including the life of th... |
| RELIGST62 | Exploring Islamic Mysticism | What is Sufi Islam? For many Sufis it concerns the search for a personal, experiential knowledge of and encounter with God. To that end, Sufis may be scrupulously observant of behavioral, ethical, ritual, and legal guidelines in their quest. For othe... |
| RELIGST6N | Religion in Anime and Manga | Religious themes and topoi are ubiquitous in Japanese anime and manga. In this course, we will examine how religions are represented in these new media and study the role of religions in contemporary Japan. By doing this, students will also learn fun... |
| RELIGST801 | TGR Project | (Staff) |
| RELIGST802 | TGR Dissertation | No Description Set |
| RELIGST86 | Exploring the New Testament | To explore the historical context of the earliest Christians, students will read most of the New Testament as well as many documents that didn't make the final cut. Non-Christian texts, Roman art, and surviving archeological remains will better situa... |
| RELIGST8N | Gardens and Sacred Space in Japan | This seminar will explore gardens and sacred spaces in Japan. We will study the development of Japanese garden design from the earliest records to contemporary Japan. We will especially focus on the religious, aesthetic, and social dimensions of gard... |
| RELIGST91 | Exploring American Religious History | This course will trace how contemporary beliefs and practices connect to historical trends in the American religious landscape. |