Undergraduate Academics
Religion
Religious traditions identify themselves with, and draw sustenance from, the texts that they hold sacred. In Sarah Lawrence College religion courses, those texts command and hold our attention. As students explore the sacred texts of a particular religion—whether studying Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam—they gain insight into the social and historical context of its creation. Using critical, hermeneutical, and intellectual historical approaches, students enter into the writings in such depth as to touch what might be the foundation of that religion. In addition, work with contemporary texts (such as those by religious activists on the internet) gives students insight into what most moves and motivates religious groups today. The College’s religion courses provide an important complement to courses in both Asian studies and history.
Religion 2025-2026 Courses
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First-Year Studies—Year | 10 credits
RLGN 1114
Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality, a race, an ethnicity—or all or none of these? This question has driven Jewish thought for centuries and has preoccupied both Jewish thinkers and non-Jewish thinkers attempting to make sense of the place of the Jewish minority in surrounding cultures. In this seminar, we will explore the complex and multifaceted ways in which Judaism and Jewish peoplehood are understood historically, theologically, and sociologically and how this form of identity does or does not map onto emergent modern concepts of religion and nationality. We will use Judaism as a test case for exploring the very concept of “religion” itself, as it evolved in European culture, and the question of whether religion is a universal concept that applies to all humans around the world or a particularist construction emerging out of a uniquely Christian history. We will investigate topics such as the nature of Jewish religious practice, the relationship between Jewish law and identity, the rise of secular Jewish movements, and the implications of Jewish nationalist movements. We will engage with key texts from the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, and modern Jewish thought while also considering contemporary debates on Jewish identity, secularism, and the intersection of faith, practice, and culture. We will also spend some time on comparative religious studies, examining how Judaism fits within broader categories of religion and spirituality and how these categories describe the multifaceted nature of Jewish life. The course will encourage students to grapple with the way in which concepts that we use in our everyday life, such as “religion,” in fact reflect deeply embedded histories and cultural biases and to think about what it means to do comparative religious studies as an academic project. Students will complete both short essays and in-class presentations over the course of the year in addition to one group presentation. The final conference project will serve as a culmination of a research question that the student has pursued; and while it may take a variety of forms and media, depending on the personal interests of the student, the project will display sustained research and engagement with academic sources related to the topic of choice. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
RLGN 3042
Few people dispute the enormous impact that the Ancient Greeks have had on Western culture—and even on the modern world, in general. This seminar will introduce the interested student to this culture, mainly through reading salient primary texts in English translation. Our interest will range broadly. Along with some background reading, we will discuss mythology (Hesiod), epic hymns and poetry (Homer), history (Herodotus), politics, religion, and philosophy. By the end of the course, students should have a basic understanding of the cultural contribution of the Ancient Greeks, as well as a basic timeline of their history through the Hellenistic age.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
RLGN 3216
A historical survey of religious beliefs, practices, and institutions in Japan, from ancient times to the present, this course will cover all major Japanese religious traditions and movements—Shintō, Buddhism, Shūgendō, Confucianism, and the so-called “new religions”—as well as various elements of religion and culture, such as Noh theatre and Bushidō, that are not readily subsumed under any of the preceding labels. Readings will include many primary sources (Japanese texts in English translation), and audio-visual materials will be used whenever possible to give a fuller picture of traditional religious art, architecture, and ritual performance in Japan. Prior study or experience with Japanese culture (language, literature, history, etc.) is desirable but not required.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
RLGN 3410
It has been almost a quarter of a century since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. How have perceptions changed about the events that occurred that day? Shortly after the attacks, then-President George W. Bush insisted that Islam was not to blame and, instead, framed the battle ahead as “the war on terror.” But what about those who insisted that what had happened was an almost inevitable result of the “clash of civilizations”? How did Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda frame the narrative and their part in it? What kinds of arguments were presented to justify the attack and the US military interventions that followed? In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, what has been called the “Islamophobia industry” developed and flourished, taking full advantage of new forms of media. What role has mainstream and alternative media played in how Muslims have been portrayed and the discrimination that they have faced in the years since 9/11? Ten years after the attacks, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum opened in New York City. How have this site and other memorials shaped the collective memory of the events, as well as the curriculum being taught to a generation born after 2001? In addition to the architects of these memorials, artists, writers, and filmmakers have explored the many religious, political, and social dimensions of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. How have these works of imagination expanded the ways in which people have made sense of, and found meaning in, painful events? While this seminar is being offered through the religion discipline, the approach will be an interdisciplinary one, drawing upon readings and other materials from a variety of academic, artistic, and literary fields.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
RLGN 3406
The Qur’an declares itself to be a book “for those who believe in the unseen” and gives vivid descriptions of multiple worlds and beings that are invisible to the human eye. Muslims throughout the centuries have expanded upon this Qur’anic foundation in their explorations of what exists beyond, or at the very limits of, human perception and power. The course will examine writings from both past and present about supernatural jinn, angels, satanic beings, and heaven and hell. We will read about the visions and travels of individuals who claim to have accessed other worlds and beings through their dreams, altered states, near-death experiences, and magic. When a philosopher named Ibn Arabi declared in the 13th century that he could hear and understand the speech of animate and inanimate objects on Earth, was he engaging in fantastical, imaginative, deluded thinking or paranormal observation? How have academics and others who live in disenchanted spaces engaged with writings and practices that reject a purely materialist understanding of reality? How has scientific study in areas such as quantum physics and plant intelligence led to alternative ways of viewing what used to be called “primitive” thought? While course work will be looking at these questions and topics primarily through Muslim writings, individual conference projects could involve the exploration of these topics through the lenses of other traditions. No prior knowledge of Islam is required.
Faculty
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Open, Lecture—Fall | 5 credits
RLGN 2139
This course will provide a historical overview of how key philosophical thinkers have thought about religious themes within the philosophical tradition broadly known as Continental philosophy, beginning with Spinoza and ending with contemporary postmodern thinkers. We will engage with key questions of the modern period emerging from the challenge to traditional religious forms and belief systems, such as: What is the nature and existence of God? Can we understand God through rational thought? How do we make sense of evil? How is God reconcilable with a belief in human freedom? How do we make sense of religious pluralism and the existence of multiple belief systems? Does God actively work within human history? What is left of morality if we do not maintain a traditional belief in God? We will think about such questions comparatively and historically, discussing key thinkers and ideas from philosophical movements such as German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, feminism, psychoanalytic theory, and poststructuralism and deconstruction. By the end of the course, students will have a broad understanding of the historical development of the field of Continental philosophy of religions, which should support further work in philosophy for interested students. Though primarily focused on Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish thinkers, as well as atheist and agnostic thinkers from these cultural backgrounds, there will be opportunities for students to explore the field of philosophy of religions within a Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Eastern Orthodox Christian, or other religious framework, if so interested.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits
RLGN 3020
Perhaps no one has not heard the name of a seemingly obscure carpenter’s son executed by the Romans around 33 CE. Why? The religion that we call Christianity shaped the Western world for at least 1,500 years. This course will study the origins of that tradition. As we study those origins, we will explore Judaism in the strange and fertile Second Temple period (515 BCE–70 CE). We will encounter the learned societies of holy men like the Pharisees and the Qumran sectarians, as well as the freedom fighters/terrorists called the Zealots. Our main source will be the New Testament of the Christian Bible, though our sources will be supplemented by other primary materials. Excerpts from the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature, as well as other Hellenistic texts from that period, will provide the cultural backdrop in which Christianity has its roots. We will learn about the spread of the new movement of “Christians,” as they were called by their detractors in Antioch, from its roots in the Holy Land into the greater Greco-Roman world. How did that movement, which began among the Jews of the Eastern Mediterranean, come to be wholly associated with Gentiles by the end of the second century? Who became Christian? Why were they hated so much by the greater Greco-Roman society? What did they believe? How did they behave? What are the origins of Christian antisemitism? What kind of social world, with its senses of hierarchy and gender relations, did these people envision for themselves?
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits
RLGN 3026
The concept of a “thing”—an entity that exists in and of itself, separate from all other things—is nothing but a useful fiction. In the real world, there are no self-existing “things” that exist prior to our naming of them, just as there are no constellations in the night sky before we draw imaginary lines between the visible stars. This, in a nutshell, is the startling proposition advanced by the Buddhist doctrine of śunyatā, or “emptiness” as the Sanskrit term is usually translated. Often misconstrued by critics as a form of nihilism (“nothing exists”), idealism (“all that exists are mental phenomena”), or skepticism (“we can never know what really exists”), the emptiness doctrine is better interpreted as a radical critique of language and all of the conceptual categories that we habitually use to talk about and make sense of the world. The premise of this course is that the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness is worth learning, because it empowers all who understand it to be smarter, freer, and more effective in the ways they employ language to think for themselves and communicate with others. It is, in fact, a mode of critical thinking that has universal applicability whether one embraces any beliefs or practices of the Buddhist religion that gave rise to it. Indeed, the doctrine of emptiness was first developed by Buddhist thinkers in ancient India to demonstrate the ultimate arbitrariness of all Buddhist conceptual categories, including “emptiness” itself! The course has two main aims. The first, pursued mainly in fall, is to impart a clear, accurate understanding of the “emptiness” doctrine as it evolved in the context of Buddhist intellectual history. We will read and discuss a number of Buddhist texts—primary sources in English translation from the original Sanskrit or Chinese—that advocate the philosophy of emptiness, as well as some secondary scholarship on the subject. Individual conference research by students in fall should focus on some aspect of Buddhist beliefs, practices, social institutions, arts, or literature. The second aim of the course, pursued in spring, is to explore ways in which the emptiness doctrine, if taken seriously as a critique of the mechanisms and inherent limitations of human knowledge, may be brought to bear in a number of different disciplines, academic and otherwise. The class will read and discuss a number of scholarly works that deal with Western (non-Buddhist) traditions of historiography, literary theory, and scientific inquiry. The readings are designed to introduce students to some of the main intellectual trends in the humanities, social sciences, and “hard” sciences that students are likely to encounter in other College courses. At the same time, the class will learn how to use the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness as an analytical tool to critique the conceptual models employed in the various academic disciplines treated in the readings. For individual conference work in spring, each student will be required to use that tool to analyze the fundamental nomenclature—the way of dividing up the world into “things”—employed by some particular field of human endeavor (which may be an academic, artistic, or athletic discipline) or any other endeavor (e.g., political or economic) in which the student is especially interested.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits
RLGN 3104
Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality, a race, an ethnicity—or all or none of these? This question has driven Jewish thought for centuries and has preoccupied both Jewish thinkers and non-Jewish thinkers attempting to make sense of the place of the Jewish minority in surrounding cultures. In this seminar, we will explore the complex and multifaceted ways in which Judaism and Jewish peoplehood are understood historically, theologically, and sociologically and how this form of identity does or does not map onto emergent modern concepts of religion and nationality. We will use Judaism as a test case for exploring the very concept of “religion” itself, as it evolved in European culture, and the question of whether religion is a universal concept that applies to all humans around the world or a particularist construction emerging out of a uniquely Christian history. We will investigate topics such as the nature of Jewish religious practice, the relationship between Jewish law and identity, the rise of secular Jewish movements, and the implications of Jewish nationalist movements. We will engage with key texts from the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature, and modern Jewish thought while also considering contemporary debates on Jewish identity, secularism, and the intersection of faith, practice, and culture. We will also spend some time on comparative religious studies, examining how Judaism fits within broader categories of religion and spirituality and how these categories describe the multifaceted nature of Jewish life. The course will encourage students to grapple with the way in which concepts that we use in our everyday life, such as “religion,” in fact reflect deeply embedded histories and cultural biases and to think about what it means to do comparative religious studies as an academic project. Students will complete both short essays and in-class presentations over the course of the year in addition to one group presentation. The final conference project will serve as a culmination of a research question that the student has pursued; and while it may take a variety of forms and media, depending on the personal interests of the student, the project will display sustained research and engagement with academic sources related to the topic of choice.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
RLGN 3312
The Fourth Gospel and the epistles associated with its authors, 1-3 John, have been particularly significant for the development of Christian thought. In this course, we will study the Gospel of John closely, engaging in the hermeneutical arts with an eye to the development of Christian theology, as well as uncovering the history and growth of the early Christian community responsible for its unique prose and views regarding Jesus of Nazareth and the role of Christian discipleship. We will immerse ourselves in the Hellenistic world, especially as it relates to Mediterranean Judaism. In doing so, we will examine the roots of Christian antisemitism and the development of Gnosticism and Christian docetism.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
RLGN 3213
The American fascination with Zen Buddhism began during the postwar occupation of Japan and took off during the 1950s, when Jack Kerouac and other members of the Beat Generation styled themselves as freewheeling Zen "dharma bums." In the 1960s, the Zen writings of D. T. Suzuki became popular and introduced the possibility of satori, or spiritual “enlightenment,” which seemed to fit right in with the “turn on, tune in, drop out” philosophy of the hippie movement and its use of psychedelic drugs. From the 1970s, Zen centers sprang up across the United States and Europe, giving people who were serious about gaining satori a taste of the rigors of Japanese-style Zen monastic training with its long hours of zazen (sitting meditation) and emphasis on ascetic endurance. Karate and other martial arts dojos opened in neighborhoods everywhere, and anyone who trained in one likely heard about the deep historical connection between Zen and Bushido (the “way of the warrior”) in Japan. Meanwhile, Zen has also became known in the West for its refined aesthetic sense, as represented in the “Zen arts” of the tea ceremony, flower arranging, ink painting, landscape gardening, and Noh theatre. This course intends to pull back the curtain of these Western images of Zen and look behind them to see what Zen Buddhism in Japan has really been like from the time of its initial importation from China in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) to the present. It may be surprising to learn, for example, that Zen was instrumental in introducing Confucian-style ancestor worship to Japan and that, even today, the main occupation of Zen monks is the performance of funerals and memorial services for ancestral spirits. Zen monasteries were indeed built and patronized by samurai rulers right down to the advent of the Meiji period in 1868, when Japan began a headlong rush to adopt many elements of Western technology and culture; but what attracted samurai to the religion was largely the elite Chinese culture that it conveyed, not any warrior spirit of fearlessness in the face of death. Ironically, much of what Americans think of as “Zen” was invented in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the Zen Buddhist priesthood in Japan struggled to make itself relevant in the modern, scientific age of colonialism and militarism. The notions that Zen dispenses with religious superstition and empty ritual, for example, and that it is a kind of spirituality that can be practiced in the midst of everyday life no matter what a person's occupation were formulated in Japan by Zen monks and lay practitioners who had been deeply influenced by Western cultural norms, such as rationality and individualistic self-help. The idea that Zen training could toughen up soldiers to fight for the empire similarly dated from a time when the samurai class had been dissolved and the country was consumed by conscripting the sons of farmers and merchants into the military. In the postwar period, the theme of “Zen and Bushido” was conveniently muted, while “Zen and the arts”" was promoted—both within Japan and abroad. This course explores these and other aspects of the history and current status of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Some background knowledge of the Buddhist tradition is desirable but not mandatory.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
RLGN 3419
One of the greatest rock songs of all time, “Layla,” was written by Eric Clapton after he read the story of star-crossed lovers, Layla and Majnun. This tale of a Bedouin poet, who went mad after he was cut off from his beloved, circulated widely in Arabic sources for hundreds of years before being expanded into a long narrative poem in Persian, by Nizami, in the 12th century. By this point in time, telling compelling stories had become a means by which Sufi writers (the mystics of Islam) described their particular vision of being Muslim, which was that of the pitfalls, despairing moments, and ecstasies of the spiritual quest and search for closeness to the divine Beloved. Layla and Majnun were just one of several couples in allegorical stories that were understood as teaching vehicles for disciples on the path. On the opposite end of the plot spectrum, there is Ibn Tufayl’s famous story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a mystical-philosophical work in Arabic also written in the 12th century. It describes an abandoned baby growing up on a desert island, raised first by a deer and then by his own devices, as he slowly discovers the nature of the human-divine relationship. Other classical works dispensed with this format of the singular narrative, opting instead for nesting stories within stories and mixing animal stories with stories about humans. We will look at examples of these literary techniques in poetic translations of Farid ad-Din Attar’s “Conference of the Birds” and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī's “Mathnawi,” alongside “The Thousand and One Nights” folktale collection. Rooting storytelling in a deeper dimension that explores the human potential for more refined behavior and ethics, as well as higher spiritual states, will serve as the common thread to the works discussed in class.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
RLGN 3407
Is religion meant to protect the status quo or to challenge it? This course will examine individuals and groups that have experimented with ideas and practices that are designed to upend, in nonviolent ways, established paradigms and institutions. On the individual level, this might involve spiritual training along the lines of “crazy wisdom,” which is intended to destabilize the ordinary ways in which one views oneself and reality. It might also entail the adoption of monastic-like disciplines that stand in stark contrast to the materialist preoccupations of ordinary life. On the societal and political levels, religious innovators have created communities and movements that challenge the mainstream interpretations of their respective traditions or the norms of their societies. What distinguishes these individuals and groups is their strong commitment to ideas and practices that require fundamental and profound changes in individual, social, and political behaviors. These commitments are usually not considered a reinterpretation of scriptures and earlier teachings but, rather, a rediscovery of their most crucial elements. Whether flouting society’s conventions through holy madness or alternative communitarian practices—or contesting them through new theologies and political activism—these practices are understood as a type of spiritual work. Examples of this phenomenon will be taken from a variety of religious traditions and movements.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
RLGN 3319
The question of how Judaism does and does not map onto contemporary racial categories has been, for centuries, a defining question of how Jews, as a small minority group, relate to their surrounding cultures. In many ways, the story of the historical construction of racial categories is itself a story indissolubly bound up with Jewish history—ranging from the development of the concept of blood purity during the Spanish Inquisition, which was then exported to the New World through Spanish colonialism, to late 19th-century racial theorists preoccupied with the question of how Jews do or do not relate to European peoples. As such, this course will consider the overarching question—Are Jews white?—from a historical and sociological perspective. In so doing, we will think about the historical development of the concept of whiteness itself and the relationship between the emergent concept of race and concepts of religion, ethnicity, nationhood, and nationality. We will look at how Jews were and are racially defined and categorized in different historical and cultural contexts in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States—and how this question is bound up with broader questions about power relations, political structures, and minority and majority identities. We will look at how Zionism and other forms of Jewish nationalism have altered Jewish racialization; how Jews relate to broader discourses of postcolonialism and Orientalism; and the different racializations of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. The course will look at the ways in which Jews responded to the rise of Black nationalism in the United States and how racialized divisions between different ethnic Jewish communities shape politics in the modern state of Israel, with a particular focus on the rise of the Mizrahi Black Panthers. We will read sources from Jews of color and Jews who identify as white, from many diverse national backgrounds, as well as from many non-Jewish thinkers who find Jewish identity a fruitful way to think about the question of racial identity and its attendant political conflicts. We will explore how racial categories for Jews function both internally, within the Jewish community, and externally. In so doing, we will come to see how Jews and their relationship to whiteness is a defining question not just for Jewish identity but also how Jewishness can help shed light on the very concept of race itself.
Faculty