RLST 5100a, Method and Theory  Kathryn Lofton

Required seminar for doctoral students in Religious Studies. Others admitted with instructor’s permission.
W 9:25am-11:20am

RLST 5920b / HIST 8521b, Society and Religion on the Silk Road  Eric Greene

An introduction to artifacts and documents pertaining to social history and religion from the most important sites on the Northern and Southern Silk Roads in China, including Niya, Kizil, Turfan, and Dunhuang. Assigned readings are in English. Readers of Chinese also participate in a separate section reading documents in classical Chinese from Turfan and Dunhuang.
W 1:30pm-3:25pm

RLST 6160b / HIST 6157b / JDST 7206b / MDVL 7157b, How the West Became Antisemitic: Jews and the Formation of Europe, 800–1500  Ivan Marcus

This seminar explores how medieval Jews and Christians interacted as religious societies between 800 and 1500.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

RLST 6262b, Dilthey’s Introduction to the Human Sciences  Noreen Khawaja

Advanced reading course focused on Wilhelm Dilthey’s major, unfinished work, Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883–1911). A multivolume publication we read through slowly but also always something beyond the book—a plan, a project, a program of work—Dilthey’s Introduction asks readers to inhabit an expressive atmosphere, where modern historical science, Romantic epistemology and poetics, literary biography, and experimental psychology intersect and inform each other. Students prepare portions of the text for each meeting and work toward a final project of their own. Instructor permission required.
M 4pm-5:55pm

RLST 6420a / CLSS 7685a, Christianity and the Law: The First Millennium  Maria Doerfler

Christianity has often been treated as a religion of grace, not law—a contrast often worked out, from the New Testament onward, at the expense of Judaism. Engagement with late antique, medieval, and Byzantine sources, however, yields a far more complicated—and far less antinomian—picture. This seminar attends to developments in legal and religious thought during the first millennium CE, with particular emphasis on Christians’ relationship with law. Three central loci focus on the law of the Hebrew Scriptures, and Christians’ appropriation (and frequently simultaneous rejection) thereof; Christians’ engagement with the laws of their civic environs, including the Roman Empire and its successors, the Sassanid Kingdom, and the Caliphates; and Christians’ own efforts at writing law.
M 9:25am-11:20am

RLST 6430b / JDST 7445b, The Global Right: From the French Revolution to the American Insurrection  Elli Stern

This seminar explores the history of right-wing political thought from the late eighteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on the role played by religious and pagan traditions. This course seeks to answer the question, what constitutes the right? What are the central philosophical, religious, and pagan, principles of those groups associated with this designation? How have the core ideas of the right changed over time? We do this by examining primary tracts written by theologians, political philosophers, and social theorists as well as secondary literature written by scholars interrogating movements associated with the right in America, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. Though touching on specific national political parties, institutions, and think tanks, its focus is on mapping the intellectual overlap and differences between various right-wing ideologies. While the course is limited to the modern period, it adopts a global perspective to better understand the full scope of right-wing politics.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

RLST 6580a / EGYP 512 / EGYP 5120a, Egyptian Monastic Literature in Coptic  Stephen Davis

Readings in the early Egyptian classics of Christian ascetism in Sahidic Coptic, including the Desert Fathers and Shenoute. Prerequisite: EGYP 5100 or equivalent.
MW 9am-10:15am

RLST 6610a / ER&M 6671a / SAST 5710a, Hindu Worlds Through Narratives  Shiva Sai Ram Urella

This course introduces students to the vast and varied world of the Purāṇas, a genre that has shaped Hindu thought, practice, and imagination for over a millennium. Encompassing cosmology, genealogy, theology, ritual performances, and narrative art, the Purāṇas defy easy classification. They have been written, recited, performed, painted, danced, engraved, sung, and translated across languages, regions, and centuries—and they continue to be living texts in contemporary South Asia. Through a combination of primary sources in translation and scholarly analyses, we will examine how Purāṇic narratives construct worlds: how they organize time and space, articulate notions of power, imagine the nature of the divine, conceptualize distinct devotional theologies, advertise pilgrimages, and negotiate questions of gender, caste, and regional belonging. We will move between Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, and Marathi contexts and attend to the material and performative lives of these texts as scroll paintings, temple myths, oral performances, manuscripts, and ritual repertoires that informed lived religious contexts. The course asks not only what the Purāṇas are but also how they have been used, by whom, and to what ends they have been mobilized in both pre-modern and modern times.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

RLST 6730b, Islamic Law and Mysticism  Travis Zadeh and Supriya Gandhi

This graduate seminar examines formations of religious and legal authority in the historical development of Islamic law and mysticism. Advanced undergraduates are required to have permission of the instructor.
HTBA

RLST 6930b / HIST 8842b / JDST 7448b, Introduction to Modern Jewish Politics  David Sorkin and Elli Stern

This course introduces graduate students and advanced undergraduates to the major issues of modern Jewish politics through a close reading of canonical and recent scholarship with an emphasis on Europe, Israel, the United States, and the Maghreb/Mashreq. The course pays special attention to the ways in which constantly shifting political conditions have led to reconsiderations and reconceptualizations of the political past—across the millennia, the political present, and the envisioned future.
W 9:25am-11:20am

RLST 7550a / CPLT 6085a / JDST 7841a, Theory and Politics in the Hasidic Tale  Hannan Hever

The Hasidic movement is a pietistic movement of believers that crystallized in the eighteenth century and organized around the courts of the Tzadik (righteous man) who led their communities. Following its inception, the Hasidic movement began to produce a vast number of stories whose purposes were educational, political, shaping the worthy Hasid, and establishing the Tzadik as a sovereign mediator between God and his believers. The course establishes theoretical foundations, anchored in neo-Marxist and post-structuralist theories, for the politics of the literary form and the language of the Hasidic literary text, which is part of a circulation of Hasidic stories that generates a political field and operates in social, educational, faith-based, and path-setting fields—how to behave—and primarily glorifying the status and authority of the Tzadik. At the center of the discussion are the two most important collections: “In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov” (Shivchei HaBesht) and the book of tails, written by Rabbi Nachman's student. However, two additional corpora are added, from which we study a selection: one is Hasidic, tales written and distributed after “In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov,” for example, of Chabad Hasidism; and the second—Maskilim’s (proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment) satires against the Hassidim’s life that allow for a reading of the Hasidic experience and its tales through the eyes of the “Maskilim.” At their center stand the satires written by Joseph Perl, and the biting satires of Isaac Erter. Through the confrontation between the Maskilim and the Hasidim, contradictions are revealed between two different politics and opposing poetics, all of which provide a valuable key to mapping Jewish life and culture in moments of crisis in Eastern Europe in which Hasidism, which became a large movement, plays a central role in addressing the “Jewish Question.”
T 4pm-5:55pm

RLST 7730a / HIST 6229a / JDST 7261a / MDVL 7229a, Jews and the World: From the Bible through Early Modern Times  Ivan Marcus

The course is a comprehensive introduction for GS students as well as YC students.  It serves as a window course to pre-modern Jewish history.  For YC students this can lead to taking seminars on more limited topics.  For graduate students it is a good preparation for comprehensive exams and provides a model survey course to be offered later on as an instructor.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

RLST 7770b / HIST 6155b / JDST 7264b / MDVL 7155b, Jews in Muslim Lands from the Seventh through the Sixteenth Century  Ivan Marcus

Introduction to Jewish culture and society in Muslim lands from the Prophet Muhammad to Suleiman the Magnificent. Topics include Islam and Judaism; Jerusalem as a holy site; rabbinic leadership and literature in Baghdad; Jewish courtiers, poets, and philosophers in Muslim Spain; and the Jews in the Ottoman Empire.
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

RLST 8030a / ANTH 5331a / CLSS 7000a / EALL 7730a / HIST 6000a / HSAR 6564a / JDST 6553a / NELC 5330a, Archaia Seminar: Art, Architecture, and Climate Change in the Premodern World  Avary Taylor

This seminar explores artistic, architectural, and material responses to environmental transformations, such as floods, droughts, volcanic events, and periods of exceptional abundance, across the premodern world. Foregrounding the indivisibility of natural worlds and human creativity, we examine how ancient peoples conceived of, and responded to, the disruptions and affordances of their environment. Through a comparative framework that puts cultures across the ancient world into conversation—from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica and beyond—we trace the entanglements of art, politics, and climate, asking: how, if at all, did environmental change materialize in the things people made? This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
M 9:25am-11:20am

RLST 8031b / ANTH 5332b / CLSS 7001b / EALL 7731b / HIST 6010b / HSAR 6574b / JDST 6554b / NELC 5331b, Archaia Seminar: Literacy, Books, and the Materiality of Writing in the Premodern World  Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Joe Glynias

What is literacy? What is reading? This course takes a longue durée approach to how premodern individuals produced and engaged with texts. From hieroglyphs to alphabets (and everything in between), this course considers ways of writing and the intersection between orality, aurality, and textuality in the premodern world, focusing on (but not limited to) the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Due to its focus on the physical media of writing and the preservation and study of premodern writing materials by modern scholars, roughly half of the meetings of this course take place in Yale Collections. Topics covered by the course include pseudoscripts and pseudepigrapha, scribes and scholars, and the ideological and ritual uses of writing across premodern cultures. This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia’s Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered.
W 9:25am-11:20am

RLST 8340a / SMTC 5460a, Northwest Semitic Inscriptions: Phoenician and Punic Epigraphy  Jimmy Daccache

This course completes the introduction of Phoenician epigraphy. It is designed to study the Phoenician and Punic inscriptions found in the western Mediterranean basin. The chronological span stretches from the eighth century BCE to the Roman period. The study of inscriptions—examined from photographs and drawings—follows a chronological order: Phoenician inscriptions from the eighth and seventh centuries BCE (Italy, Iberian Peninsula); Punic and Late Punic inscriptions between the sixth century BCE and the first century CE (Italy, Iberian Peninsula, North Africa [Carthage, Maktar, etc.]). At the end of the term, students have a firm grasp of the Phoenician language and script and its evolution toward Punic and Late Punic.
  Prerequisite: RLST 832.
W 9am-10:50am

RLST 8380a / SMTC 5130a, Elementary Syriac I  Jimmy Daccache

Syriac was an Aramaic dialect that developed its own written tradition in the northern Levantine city of Edessa in classical antiquity. It became (and remains to this day) the liturgical language of Eastern Christianity in its various manifestations. This course provides students with a basic working knowledge of the language, namely, the three principal scripts (Estrangela, Serṭo, and “Nestorian”), verbal morphology, and the fundamental rules of syntax. Extracts of several Syriac texts are studied for purposes of application. At the end of the course, students are able to read, translate, and analyze simple texts.
T 9am-10:50am

RLST 8740a / SMTC 5530a, Advanced Syriac I  Jimmy Daccache

This course is designed for graduate students who are proficient in Syriac and is organized topically. Topics vary each term and are listed in the syllabus on Canvas.
T 11am-12:50pm

RLST 8800a, Spinoza and the God of the Bible  Nancy Levene

An exploration of Spinoza’s writings on God, nature, and person; human law, divine law, and political life; and the interpretation of the Bible.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

RLST 8820a, Readings on Mind and Nature  Nancy Levene

Study of works on nature, history, reason, person. Readings vary from year to year.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

RLST 9050a, Theology Doctoral Seminar  Eboni Marshall Turman

Doctoral seminar for RLST doctoral students in theology and others interested (with permission of instructor).
W 1:30pm-3:25pm