HDS 3760/RELG 1060: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary
Instructor: Francis Clooney, Spring 2025 – Time: M,W – 10:30-11:45am
This course explores the female divine – and supreme female beings – along with issues of gender and divinity. We read hymns praising Hindu goddesses Sri Laksmi, the great Goddess (Maha Devi), the Tamil goddess Apirami, and Bengal’s Kali, while noting too how feminine divinity is constructed in environments where gods and goddesses both flourish. The course is also comparative, exploring the piety and cult of the Virgin Mary, also through famous hymns such as the Greek Akathistos, the Latin Stabat Mater, and a Tamil hymn praising Mary as mother of Tamil Catholics. This approach is sharpened by some attention to performative, social, visual dimensions, and by attention to contemporary feminist and theological insights, and thinking a bit about the fluidity of gender identities today. Not a survey, but an in-depth introduction. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Religion 1060.
HDS 3750 / RELG 1615: The Bhagavad Gita and Its Greatest Commentary
Instructor: Francis Clooney, Spring 2025 – Time: Tu.- 3:00pm-5:59pm
The Bhagavad Gita is a very Hindu classic of devotion and theology. Deep and complex, it has received extensive classical and contemporary interpretation, as to what it means, and how it affects life in any time and place. The seminar reads the Gita itself, and then interprets it according to the classic commentary of Madhusudana Sarasvati (16th century), who sought to synthesize liberative knowledge, detached action, yoga, with love of Krishna – in essence melding together Nondualist and Devotional readings of the Gita. Other approaches too will be noticed. This course is meant for students interested in closely reading a great Hindu text, honoring both its past and its present. Sanskrit useful but not required; some background knowledge of Hinduism helpful. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Religion 1615.
RELIGION 1821: Indian Ocean Islam
Instructor: Teren Sevea, Spring 2025 – Time: Monday- 3:00pm – 5:30pm
Does thinking oceanically influence the study of Islam? Can we remember a people’s history of the Indian Ocean world? This course considers these questions and others as it focuses on religious worlds within port cities and the networks of Indian Ocean Islam. The course examines how religion in port cities and islands was centered upon a plethora of saints, missionaries, divinities and other agents of Islam, who have been marginalized in academic literature on the Indian Ocean. It simultaneously examines how oceanic religion was intimately connected to economic, political and technological developments. Students will be introduced to scholarship on oceanic Islam and monsoon Islam, before they are introduced to a variety of sources on transregional Islamic networks and agents of Islam, including biographies, hagiographies, travelogues, novels, poems and ethnographic accounts. Students will, moreover, be encouraged to consider ways in which approaches to studying Islam could be enhanced by a focus on religious economies and networks, as well as the lives of ‘subalterns’ who crossed the porous borders of the Indian Ocean world and shaped its religious worlds.
LING 107: Introduction to Indo-European
Instructor: Jay Jasanoff, Spring 2025- Time – M,W – 10:30-11:45am
An introduction to the historical study of the Indo-European languages, using the comparative method to arrive at a picture of the parent language of the family, Proto-Indo-European.
LING 220AR: Advanced Indo-European
Instructor: Jay Jasanoff, Spring 2025- Time – ursday: 3:00pm-5:00pm
The course will be an introduction to the language of the Rigveda, with reading of selected hymns and linguistic discussion.