College Bulletin 2022-2023

May 16, 2024

College Bulletin 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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Psychology - Seminars
	PSYC 135B. Seminar in Social Psychology: Psychology of Climate Change Environmental issues such as climate change are, at their core, issues with human behavior and social institutions. Thus, social psychology has a key role to play in addressing the climate crisis. This seminar will explore several interconnections between social psychology and climate change, including how psychological barriers lead to climate inaction, how social norms and persuasion principles can be used to encourage pro-environmental behavior, and the role of culture, relationships, and values in determining belief in climate change. Prerequisite: Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 035. Social Psychology or permission of the instructor. PSYC 025. Research Design and Analysis is strongly preferred. Social Sciences. 1 credit. Eligible for Eligible for Eligible for ENVS. Spring 2023. Jacobs. Catalog chapter: Psychology Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 137. Seminar in Multicultural Psychology: Immigrant Adjustment This seminar will bring students to use multicultural theories and concepts to understand the experiences of immigrants as they adjust to their new countries. Questions under consideration include “What does cultural adjustment look like for immigrants?” and “What stressors do undocumented immigrants endure?” The course uses an ecological framework to tackle the multifacetedness of the impact of immigration on the individual. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 037 , or permission of the instructor. Social sciences. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Thelamour. Spring 2024. Thelamour. Spring 2025. Thelamour. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 138. Seminar in Clinical Psychology Seminar in Clinical Psychology is an advanced study of special topics in clinical psychology, including etiology and treatments for several major disorders. In addition to considering adolescent and adult mental health difficulties within a developmental psychopathology framework, readings and topics will emphasize the role of context and culture in the understanding, diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of psychopathology. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 038: Clinical Psychology or permission of the instructor. Social sciences. 1 credit. Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 138A. Seminar in Clinical Psychology: The Role of Context This course examines the role of context in both the development and treatment of psychopathology. We consider questions regarding the interplay of biology, development, and social/cultural context as we seek to understand the genesis of different psychological disorders, and the forces that maintain, exacerbate, and ameliorate them. Within this framework, we examine how the subjective experience of illness and of the therapeutic relationship affect treatment outcome, how an ecological perspective has informed empirically supported and alternative treatments for a wide variety of psychological disorders, and several current controversies in the theory and practice of clinical psychology. Students may only use one clinical seminar, either PSYC 138A or PSYC 138B as an honors preparation. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 038 or permission of the instructor. Social Sciences. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Psychology Department website: http://swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 138B. Seminar in Clinical Psychology: Anxiety Disorders This course provides an in-depth look at anxiety disorders, including phobias, panic disorder, agoraphobia, GAD, social anxiety disorder, OCD, and PTSD. We will explore the etiology, psychopathology, and treatment of each disorder, as well as current controversies and future directions. We will give attention to different theoretical orientations and methods of investigation; however, we will primarily emphasize empirically supported approaches. That is, we will explore what research tells us about anxiety. Students may only use one clinical seminar, either PSYC 138A or PSYC 138B as an honors preparation. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 038 or permission of the instructor. Social Sciences. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Siev. Spring 2025. Siev. Catalog chapter: Psychology Department website: http://swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 138C. Seminar in Clinical Psychology and Well-Being This course is an advanced study of special topics related to mental health and well-being. We will discuss mental health and well-being from a variety of perspectives including biological, psychological, developmental, and social-contextual. We will focus a broad range of interventions from the treatment and prevention of common psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety to the promotion of well-being. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 038: Clinical Psychology or permission of the instructor. Social sciences. 1 credit. Spring 2024. Gillham. Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 139. Seminar in Cognitive Development How do children come to understand themselves and other people? This seminar explores identity and social cognition in early childhood. Topics include self-awareness, gender identity, and the emotional self, as well as children’s perception and understanding of gender, race, morality, and other social constructs in others. We will examine these topics with the goals of understanding (a) the development of young children’s identity and social thinking, (b) the role of socialization in this development, and (c) the implications of children’s social cognition for their participation in the social world. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 and PSYC 039. Developmental Psychology or permission of the instructor. Social sciences. 1 credit. Eligible for COGS, ESCH. Spring 2023. Baird. Spring 2024. Staff. Catalog chapter: Psychology Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	PSYC 180. Honors Thesis An honors thesis, a yearlong empirical research project, fulfills the senior comprehensive requirement in psychology as part of an honors major in psychology. It must be supervised by a member of the department and must be taken as a two-semester sequence for 1 credit each semester. Students should develop a general plan in consultation with an adviser by the end of the junior year. When possible, students are encouraged to begin work on their thesis during the summer before their senior year. This course may not be taken as pass/fail. Prerequisite: PSYC 001 ; PSYC 025. Research Design and Analysis and permission of a research supervisor. Social sciences. Writing course. 1 credit each semester. Fall 2022. Staff. Spring 2023. Staff. Fall 2023. Staff. Spring 2024. Staff. Fall 2024. Staff. Spring 2025. Staff. Catalog chapter: Psychology Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/psychology Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Religion
	RELG 001. Introduction to Religion This course introduces the nature of religious worldviews, their cultural manifestations, and their influence on personal and social self-understanding and action. The course explores various themes and structures seminal to the nature of religion and its study: sacred scripture, visions of ultimate reality and their various manifestations, religious experience and its expression in systems of thought, and ritual behavior and moral action. Members of the department will lecture and lead weekly discussion sections. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 002. Religion in America This course is an introduction to religion in the United States, beginning with Native American religions and European-Indian contact in the colonial era, and moving forward in time to present-day movements and ideas. The course will explore a variety of themes in American religious history, such as slavery and religion, politics and religion, evangelicalism, Judaism and Islam in the United States, “cults” and alternative spiritualities, New Age religions, popular traditions, and religion and film, with an emphasis on the impact of gender, race, and national culture on American spiritual life. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 003. The Bible The Bible has exerted more cultural influence on the West than any other single document; whether we know it or not, it impacts our lives. This class critically examines the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)-from its Ancient Near Eastern context to its continued use today. We explore a variety of scholarly approaches to the Bible- historical, literary, postmodern-as we read the Bible both with the tools of source-criticism and as cultural critics. Particular focus will be placed on constructions of God, gender, nature, and the “other” in biblical writings as well as the themes of collective identity, violence, and power. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 003A. Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters When was the last time you read the most important text in the West? The Hebrew Bible isn’t what it used to be. In the modern period, the scientific study of the Bible opened up new ways of thinking about sacred texts. This is an introduction to the Hebrew Bible as a literary, historical, political, and religious document. We will explore the use and abuse of the Hebrew Bible by Jews and Christians, paying attention to its role in contemporary culture, politics, and ethics. Reading select books of the Bible, we will emphasize issues of gender and race, revolution and Zionism, genocide and slavery, good and evil. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 003B. Varieties of Religious Experience in African Diaspora This course explores varieties of Black Diaspora religion through the lens of *religious experience* – or all those ways that Black ritual foregrounds sensible encounters with Spirit as an aim of worship. Through reading discussions, lectures, multimedia sources, and social media platform assignments, students will discover aspects of Black Spirit ritual through the domains of the five physical senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, sound; choreography, kinaesthetics and embodied movement; and the Diasporic “sixth senses” of dreams, visions, divination, revelation, spirit possession, trance, and ecstasy. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, LALS Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 004. Radical Jesus (Cross-listed as CLST 004 ) Discussion-and writing-intensive study of classical and contemporary understandings of the figure of Jesus through analytical reading, classroom dialogue, expository writing, and community engagement. It asks the questions, Who was the real historical Jesus? and, What is the relevance of Jesus for today? Introduction to wide understanding of Greco-Roman cultures and ancient texts, biblical and otherwise, including many of the extracanonical scriptures that did not make the final cut for inclusion in the commonly received New Testament. Also introduction to the Greek alphabet, lexicons, and research tools for New Testament study along with rudimentary Greek terms essential to biblical scholarship and commentary. Instruction is intellectually rigorous and responsive both to skeptical and faith-based readings of Jesus’ biography and the Bible. The ground is level in this class: believers and unbelievers, evangelicals and atheists are welcome. No prior background in religious or biblical studies is assumed or required. The class is divided into four three-week sessions with each session devoted to one of the Gospels, and a final week-long session focusing on the Book of Acts. Each session will study the interplay between Christian scriptures along with writings and images about Jesus drawn from the Hebrew Bible, extracanonical writings, film and video, history, theology and fiction. Images of Jesus through time will be tackled: Jewish rabbi, political revolutionary, apocalyptic prophet, queer lover, desert shaman, African messiah, and Native American trickster. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for CLST, ENVS, INTP Spring 2023. Wallace. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 004B. Biblical Interpretation A famous rabbinic statement proclaims, “If you wish to know The-One-Who-Spoke-and-the-World-Came-Into-Being, learn aggadah” (Sifre Deuteronomy 11:22). This course further proclaims, if you wish to know Judaism, study Jewish interpretation. The process of Jewish interpretation, begun in the Hebrew Bible and continuing to the present day, offers great insight not only into the ways Jewish tradition, literature, and culture have come into being, but also how these facets of Judaism, and Judaism writ large, adapt and develop over time. This class begins with Jewish interpretations during the 2nd Temple Period, proceeds to examine in some depth classical rabbinic exegesis, moves on to explore some “off the beaten track” medieval sources, and culminates in contemporary meditations (and movies) about Judaism. We pay attention to both the continuities and disjunctions of Jewish writings and representations over time as we explore what the boundaries are-if indeed there are any-of both Jewish interpretation and Judaism. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 005. World Religions This introductory course supplies students with the religious literacy skills necessary to think and write critically and comparatively about the world’s religions. It will challenge the “world religion” paradigm in both its form and content while engaging students through the study of diverse traditions. Organized thematically with a focus on “lived religion,” we will explore different topics such as food, architecture, performance, and art through a combination of theoretical pieces and case studies. We will also make use of a variety of media resources including film, podcasts, and music. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-core Fall 2022. Persaud. Fall 2023. Persaud. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 006. Abrahamic Religion/s: Violence and Monotheism This course introduces students to the academic study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the figure of Abraham. How have these religions understood Abraham in competing and overlapping ways? In what ways have their respective portrayals of Abraham fostered both unity and discord, peaceful coexistence and religious wars, that persist throughout history and up to current geo-political, religious landscapes (e.g. Hevron/Hebron/al-Khalil)? Broader themes this course addresses through the figure of Abraham are the roles of violence in religion, and gendered and racialized violence and monotheism. Finally, we critically examine the use of the discourse of “Abrahamic Faith/s” in Religious Studies and Inter-religious dialogue. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for PEAC, GSST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 006B. The Talmud: Sex, Gender, & Mental Health in Antiquity (Cross-listed as ANCH 006B ) This class explores rabbinic constructions of the body and embodiment, which include constructions of gender, dis\ability, dis-ease, and health. We examine rabbinic traditions about fetal creation and development, nonbinary and “binary” gender, madness, and mental health. We contextualize these traditions in their broader Late Antique Greco-Roman settings in order to compare and contrast ancient historical and contemporary theories about reproduction, wellness, illness, pain, suffering, and trauma on both individual and collective levels. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for CLST, PEAC, GSST Fall 2023. Kessler. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 006C. First Year Seminar: Apocalypse: Hope and Despair in the Last Days (Cross-listed as ENVS 006 ) For millennia, speculation about the end of the world has fired the imaginations of Western cultures. Today, in the light of the interrelated crises of ecological collapse and COVID-19, scientists argue we are in the time of the “Sixth Great Extinction,” while religious communities assert we are living into the end of the world based on ancient prophecies. This course will ask how two seemingly unrelated modes of discourse-environmental science and religious studies-converge to shape productive responses to the world’s end; and the power, and the anxieties of environmental spiritualities (with special reference to Buddhist, Neopagan, Christian and Indigenous worldviews) to give birth to hope and resilience in the face of the coming storm. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS, ESCH Fall 2022. Wallace. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 007. Chester Semester Fellowship (Cross-listed as BLST 007 and ENVS 007 ) ChesterSemester is an interdisciplinary course on social change with an engaged scholarship internship component. Housed within the Environmental Studies Program and the Black Studies Program and supported by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, it consists of a weekly class facilitated by engaged faculty, staff, and community partners; a supervised internship in the nearby city of Chester; and a final research paper with a public-facing presentation. The purpose of ChesterSemester is to build strong relationships between committed students and community leaders on common projects of mutual transformation. In sum, the ChesterSemester Fellowship includes a Fall course with a 4-5 hr/wk internship (and Spring paid internship) in Chester City. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ENVS, ESCH. Fall 2022. Wallace. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 007B. The Caribbean Carnival: Sacred Myth and Performance From saint feast day processions and pilgrimages for Black Christ statues to Carnaval, Crop Over, and other Caribbean harvest festivals, religious holidays in Latin America are occasions for celebration. This course focuses on religious festivals and ritual bodies to reveal the ways these performances form mobile archives of history that yet testify both to the accumulated forces of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism that shaped this region, as well as the power of choreography and other embodied movement as instruments and devices of popular insurgency. Course materials include primary and secondary readings, multimedia sources such as ethnographic videos and audio recordings, material and sartorial culture objects, and in-class lectures and discussions. Potential field trip to Philadelphia’s El Carnaval de Puebla. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ESCH, LALS Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 008. Patterns of Asian Religions A thematic introduction to the study of religion through an examination of selected precepts and practices of several religious traditions of India, China, and Japan structured as patterns of religious life. Materials taken from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of India, Confucian and Taoist traditions of China, and from Zen traditions of Japan. Themes we will consider include issues of religious symbols, cosmology, and ritual; the gods, personhood/self, and religious transformation; liberation, gender, and sexuality; philosophy, narrative and popular piety; and the place of the body in meditation, worship and religious experience. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-Paired, ASAM Spring 2023. Hopkins. Spring 2024. Hopkins. Spring 2025. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 008B. The Qur’an and Its Interpreters This is course will include detailed reading of the Qur’an in English translation. The first part of the course will be devoted to the history of the Qur’an and its importance to Muslim devotional life. The first portion of the course will include: discussion of the history of the compilation of the text, the methods used to preserve it, styles of Qur’anic recitation, and the principles of Qur’anic abrogation. Thereafter, attention will be devoted to a theme or issue arising from Qur’anic interpretation. Students will be exposed to the various sub-genres of Qur’anic exegesis including historical, legal, grammatical, theological and modernist approaches. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM, MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 009. The Buddhist Traditions of Asia This course explores the unity and variety of Buddhist traditions within their historical developments in South, Central, and East Asia, by way of the study of its texts The course will be organized chronologically and geographically, and to a lesser extent thematically, focusing on the formations of early Indian Buddhism (the Nikaya traditions in Påli and Sanskrit), the Theravada in Sri Lanka and Thailand, Mahayana Ch’an/Zen traditions in China and Japan, and Vajrayana (tantra) traditions in Tibet. Themes include narratives of the Buddha and the consecration of Buddha images; gender, power, and religious authority, meditation, liberation, and devotional vision; love, memory, attachment and Buddhist devotion; the body, and the social construction of emotions and asceticism. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Fall 2022. Hopkins. Fall 2024. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 010. African American Religions What makes African American religion “African” and “American”? Using texts, films, and music, we will examine the sacred institutions of Americans of African descent. Major themes will include Africanisms in American religion, slavery and religion, gospel music, African American women and religion, black and womanist theology, the civil rights movement, and Islam and urban religions. Field trips include visits to Father Divine’s Peace Mission and the first independent black church in the United States, Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ESCH, PEAC Fall 2023. Chireau. Fall 2024. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 011. First-Year Seminar: Religion and the Meaning of Life What is the purpose and meaning of life? What constitutes “a life well lived”? Seminar themes include religion and personal and social change; understandings of the Sacred; suffering, death, love, justice, healing, fear, hope; and meaning in times of plagues and pandemics. Readings include Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Thomas, Lucretia Mott, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mary Oliver, and William Barber II. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Ross. Fall 2023. Ross. Spring 2025. Ross. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 011B. The Religion of Islam: The Islamic Humanities This course is a comprehensive introduction to Islamic doctrines, practices, and religious institutions in a variety of geographic settings from the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the present. Translated source materials from the Qur’an, sayings of Muhammad, legal texts, and mystical works will provide an overview of the literary expressions of the religion. Among the topics to be covered are: the Qur’an as scripture and as liturgy; conversion and the spread of Islam; Muhammad in history and in the popular imagination; concepts of the feminine; Muslim women; sectarian developments; transmission of religious knowledge and spiritual power; Sufism and the historical elaboration of mystical communities; modern reaffirmation of Islamic identity; and Islam in the American environment. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM, MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 012. The History, Religion, and Culture of India I: From the Indus Valley to the Hindu Saints A study of the religious history of India from the ancient Indo-Aryan civilization of the north to the establishment of Islam under Moghul rule. Topics include the ritual system of the Vedas, the philosophy of the Upanishads, the rise of Buddhist and Jain communities, and the development of classical Hindu society. Focal themes are hierarchy, caste and class, purity and pollution, gender, untouchability, world renunciation, and the construction of a religiously defined social order. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 012B. Hindu Traditions of India: Power, Love, and Knowledge This course is an introduction to the religious and cultural history of Hindu traditions of India from the prehistoric Indus Valley in the northwest to the medieval period in the southeast, and major points and periods in between, with a look also at formative points of the early modern period. Our focus will be on the interactions between Vedic, Buddhist, brahmanical, popular/ritual, and Jain religious traditions in the development, and formation of Hindu religious streams, along with major ritual and ascetic practices, hagiographies, and myths, hymns and poetry, and art and images associated with Hindu identities and sectarian formations, pre-modern and modern. In addition to providing students with a grasp of the basic doctrines, practices, and beings (human, superhuman, and divine) associated with various Hindu traditions, the course also seeks to equip them with the ability to analyze primary and secondary sources. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 013. The History, Religion, and Culture of India II: Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Dalit in North India After a survey of premodern Hindu traditions, the course tracks the sources of Indo-Muslim culture in North India, including the development of Sufi mysticism; Sindhi, Urdu, and Tamil poetry in honor of the Prophet Muhammad; syncretism under Mughal emperor Akbar; and the consolidation of orthodoxy with Armad Sirhindi and his school in the 16th to 17th century. We then trace the rise of the Sikh tradition in the milieu of the Mughals, northern Hindu Sants and mendicant Sufis, popular goddess worship and village piety, focusing on several issues of religious experience. We then turn to the colonial and post-colonial period through the lenses of the Hindu saints, artists, and reformers (the “nationalist elite”) of the Bengali Renaissance, and the political and religious thought of Mohandas Gandhi and Dalit reformer Ambedkar. We will use perspectives of various theorists and social historians, from Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Peter van der Veer, to Veena Das and Gail Omvedt. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA ISLM Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 014. Race, Gender, and Sex in the Bible Is the Bible racist? Sexist? Homophobic? This course introduces students to the academic study of the Bible and critical theories about gender, race, sexuality, and ethnicity. How is it that the Bible has been mobilized to support racist, homophobic, and misogynist ideologies and that the same Bible has been used to subvert, undermine, and ultimately try to eradicate these same ideologies? Course readings focus on black feminist, womanist, African American, Asian American, and Latinx biblical interpretations. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 015. First-Year Seminar: Religion and Literature: Blood and Spirit A seminar-style introduction to study the relation of religious ideas to visionary literature, including novels, stories, sacred texts, and films. A variety of critical theories are deployed to underand (or construct) the meaning of different imaginative variations on reality. Academic and creative writers include many or all of the following: Sophocles, Augustine, Joyce, Morrison, O’Connor, Updike, Dostoevsky, Crace, Lewis, Weil, Scorsese, Kazantzakis, Snyder, Abbey, and Camus. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 015B. Philosophy of Religion (Cross-listed as PHIL 016 ) Searching for wisdom about the meaning of life? Curious as to whether there is a God? Questioning the nature of truth and falsehood? Right and wrong? You might think of philosophy of religion as your guide to the universe. This course considers Anglo-American and Continental philosophical approaches to religious thought using different disciplinary perspectives; it is a selective overview of the history of philosophy with special attention to the religious dimensions of many contemporary thinkers’ intellectual projects. Topics include rationality and belief, proofs for existence of God, the problem of evil, moral philosophy, biblical hermeneutics, feminist revisionism, postmodernism, and interreligious dialogue. Thinkers include, among others, Anselm, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kant, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Levinas, Weil, and Abe. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ESCH, INTP Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 016. First-Year Seminar: Bible and Politics What role does the Bible play in contemporary political debates? How do the Bible-and religion-shape American politics, political movements, and the law? This course explores the intersections among the Bible, Religion, and Politics. It critically examines categories often taken as self-evident and distinct-such as “the religious” and “the political”-and demonstrates how they work together in ways that continue to impact individual and collective identities in the United States. We begin by reading the Bible - in itself both a political act and an act steeped in politics. From “the politics of interpretation,” we then move on to explore the ways in which religion and biblical interpretations are called upon, both explicitly and implicitly, in modern and current debates about gender, sexuality, race, science, ethics, and Constitutional Law. We explore issues such as abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, creationism, incarceration, and capital punishment. Students will be introduced to a range of methods and theories in the academic study of Religion and related critical theories. Through seminar discussion and written assignments, students will develop skills that are crucial to engaged, nuanced, critical discourses in the academy and beyond. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 017. Animal Religion This course examines the multiple, sometimes dissonant, connections between animals and religion. Do animals have religion? Why have some religions venerated animals as divine beings while others claim to be against such “strange worship”? What are the religious ethics of sacrificing-or eating-animals? How does grappling with questions about personhood, the soul, and emotions help us better understand the relationship between animality and humanity? By critically examining the range of connections between animals and religion, this class introduces students to far larger questions about what it means to be human and what differentiates-yet binds together-human and non-human animals. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 018. Global Christianities This course explores Christian beliefs and practices in a global context. We consider Christian worldviews, their cultural expressions, history, and influence upon personal and social self-understanding and action. Examples will be drawn from Christian communities in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Themes include images of the sacred and of Jesus and Mary, mother of Jesus; pilgrimage and festivals; saints; gender; power; and religious authority; politics, conflict, and social transformation; and healing traditions. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 018B. Modern Jewish Thought Is modern reason compatible with biblical revelation? Beginning with the heretic Spinoza, we’ll examine the giants of Jewish thought- religious reformers, philosophers, and theologians wrestling with the challenge of modernity, politics, and multiculturalism. Topics will include: the essence of Judaism, the nature of law, religion and state, God and evil, the status of women and non- Jews, the legacy of the Holocaust. Readings from: Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Judith Plaskow, Emmanuel Levinas, and others. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 019. First-Year Seminar: Religion and Food Why do some people eat the body of their deity? Are pigs clean or unclean? Are mushrooms sacred beings? What is Soul food? Which is better, to feast or to fast? All of these questions are tied together by a common theme: they frame the relationship between food and the religious experiences of human beings. RELG 19 is an introduction to the Humanities via the academic study of global religions. The course centers around food as a point of entry to examine Christianity, Islam, Native American, Judaism, African, and Eastern traditions. We will discuss topics such as sacrifice, diet, fasting and spirituality, sacred vegetarian practices, and edible plants/spirits with class projects that include preparing and serving relevant food items and creating food-related forms. Field research trips and activities are included. This is a Speaking Associates Program (SPA) course. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2022. Chireau. Fall 2023. Chireau. Fall 2024. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 020. Christian Mysticism This course considers topics in the history of Christian mysticism. Themes include mysticism as a way of life, relationships between mystics and religious communities, physical manifestations and spiritual experiences, varieties of mystical union, and the diverse images for naming the relationship between humanity and the Divine. Readings that explore the meaning, sources, and practices of Christian mystical traditions may include Marguerite Porete, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, and Dorothee Soelle. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 021. Prison Letters: Religion and Transformation Focusing on themes of religion and transformation and prison as a literal and metaphorical space, this course explores themes of life and death, oppression and freedom, isolation and community, agency, and identity. Drawing primarily on Christian sources, readings move from the New Testament through Martin Luther King, Jr., to the contemporary U.S. context where more than 2 million people are incarcerated today. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2022. Ross. Fall 2024. Ross. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 022. Religion and Ecology (Cross-listed as ENVS 040 ) This course focuses on how different religious traditions have shaped human beings’ fundamental outlook on the environment in ancient and modern times. In turn, it examines how various religious worldviews can aid the development of an earth-centered philosophy of life. The thesis of this course is that the environment crisis, at its core, is a spiritual crisis because it is human beings’ deep ecocidal dispositions toward nature that are the cause of the earth’s continued degradation. Course topics include ecological thought in Western philosophy, theology, and biblical studies; the role of Asian religious thought in forging an ecological worldview; the value of American nature writings for environmental awareness, including both Euro-American and Amerindian literatures; the public policy debates concerning vegetarianism and the antitoxics movement; and the contemporary relevance of ecofeminism, deep ecology, Neopaganism, and wilderness activism. In addition to writing assignments, there will be occasional contemplative practicums, journaling exercises, and a community-based learning component. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ESCH, ENVS, PEAC, GLBL-Core Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 023. Quakers Past and Present (Cross-listed as PEAC 024 ) This course explores the religious beliefs, social teachings, and impact of Quakers in North America from the 1650s to the present. Topics include Quaker beliefs about God and the light within; Quakers and social reform including anti-slavery work, women’s rights advocacy, Native American rights, and peace work; contemporary Quakers and social justice (including the work of Earth Quaker Action Team [EQAT] and the American Friends Service Committee). While focusing on Quakers and social change, this course includes discussion of specific concerns and methods in the study of Religion and of Peace and Conflict Studies. Students will have the opportunity to work with the resources of Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library and Peace Collection. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for PEAC Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 024. From Vodun to Voodoo: African Religions in the Old and New Worlds Is there a kindred spirituality expressed within the ceremonies, beliefs, music and movement of African religions? This course explores the dynamics of African religions throughout the diaspora and the Atlantic world. Using text, art, film, and music, we will look at the interaction of society and religion in the black world, beginning with traditional religions in west and central Africa, examining the impact of slavery and migration, and the dispersal of African religions throughout the Western Hemisphere. The course will focus on the varieties of religious experiences in Africa and their transformations in the Caribbean, Brazil and North America in the religions of Candomblé, Santeria, Conjure, and other New World traditions. At the end of the term, in consultation with the professor, students will create a web-based project in lieu of a final paper. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ESCH, GLBL-core Spring 2025. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 025. Black Women, Spirituality, Religion This course is an exploration of the spiritual lives of African American women. We will hear black women’s voices in history and in literature, in film, in performance and music, and within diverse periods and contexts, and reflect upon the multidimensionality of religious experience in African American women’s lives. We will also examine the ways that religion has served to empower black women in their personal and collective attempts at the realization of a sacred self. Topics include: African women’s religious worlds; women in the black diaspora; African American women in Islam, Christianity, and New World traditions; womanist and feminist thought; and sexuality and spirituality. Readings include works by: Alice Walker; Audre Lorde; bell hooks; Zora Neale Hurston; Patricia Williams, and others. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, GSST Fall 2022. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 028. Christian Spiritual Journeys This course explores personal narratives about the Christian life from the time of Jesus to the present. Themes include understandings of the Sacred, the self, and the world; suffering and loss, brokenness and alienation, oppression and subjugation, healing and liberation, identity and agency, love and justice, solidarity and community, and individual and social transformation. Readings may include: Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Thomas, Augustine of Hippo, Brendan of Clonfert, Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Cone, Kwok Pui-lan, Lara Medina, Shane Claiborne, Traci West, Kings Bay Plowshares 7. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Ross. Spring 2025. Ross. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: Religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 029. Islam, Race, and Anti-Blackness How have the inhabitants of West Asia and Africa conceived of social and religious difference? This course will explore both past and present the social, cultural and political contingencies that gave rise to ethnic and racial identities within and beyond Muslim societies. How did these identities and categories change over time and in which ways were they impacted by slave trades, local, social and political factors, European colonialism and decolonization in the twentieth century? What are the terms and meanings attached to skin color, racial phenotype, and social difference in the Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Berber, Swahili, Songhai, Amharic, or Turkish speaking worlds? How are these meanings constructed and controlled? Who gave these categories meaning and why? What are the obstacles to discussing and identifying race particular to the histories of these regions, and their peoples? In order to answer these questions, the course will draw extensively on primary sources, historical research, as well as theoretical writings on race and ethnicity. Particular attention will be given to theories, and the social and cultural practices that have been used to justify racial domination and anti-blackness. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM, BLST Fall 2023. al-Jamil. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 030. The Power of Images: Icons and Iconoclasts This course is a cross-cultural, comparative study of the use and critique of sacred images in biblical Judaism; Eastern Christianity; and the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions of India. Students will explore differing attitudes toward the physical embodiment of divinity, including issues of divine “presence” and “absence”; icons, aniconism, and “idolatry”; and distinctions drawn in some traditions between different types of images and different devotional attitudes toward sacred images, from Yahweh’s back and bleeding icons to Jain worship of “absent” saints. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 031. Healing Praxis and Social Justice Social justice rhetoric and activism are often framed around the theme of a fight or a struggle – however noble – against the forces and powers of oppression. This course takes a different tack and approaches social justice via perspectives of healing, wellness, and critical care practices. This course places an emphasis upon praxis, and as such will center healing and social justice practitioners and their methodologies as our primary curricular materials (via in-class visits and their social media footprints) to accompany more traditional classroom readings and multimedia assignments. What happens to our notions of social justice if we view current-day global oppression chiefly as a problem of colonial dis/ease – a restless sickness wracking the social and political body, the encrusted layers of generational trauma and violence catalyzed by the on-going and open-ended histories of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism? Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ENVS, ESCH, LALS, PEAC, GLBL-paired Fall 2022. Padilioni. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 032. Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology The God of the Bible and later Jewish and Christian literature is distinctively masculine, definitely male. Or is He? If we can point out places in traditional writings where God is nurturing, forgiving, and loving, does that mean that God is feminine, or female? This course examines feminist and queer writings about God, explores the tensions between feminist and queer theology, and seeks to stretch the limits of gendering-and sexing-the divine. Key themes include: gender; embodiment; masculinity; liberation; sexuality; feminist and queer theory. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST, INTP Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 033. The Queer Bible This course surveys queer and trans readings of biblical texts. It introduces students to the complexity of constructions of sex, gender, and identity in one of the most influential literary works produced in ancient times. By reading the Bible with the methods of queer and trans theoretical approaches, this class destabilizes long held assumptions about what the bible–and religion–says about gender and sexuality. Humanities 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Spring 2023. Kessler. Spring 2024. Kessler. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 034. Partitions: Religions, Politics, and Gender in South Asia Through the Novel This discussion-focused, seminar-style course will focus on a close reading of modern and contemporary South Asian novels and short stories structured around the theme of “partition(s),” not only the historical events of the partition of Bengal (East Pakistan, eventually Bangladesh), India’s Partition in 1947, or the social catastrophe of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in the 1970’s, but the long shadows of these events right up to the (social, political) present. We will focus on many “figures of partition,” personal, religious, and political, in Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu, and English prose literatures of India and Pakistan. Themes will range from religion and politics, gender/power; sexuality; love within and outside of the family; women, honor, and seclusion; asceticism and eroticism; caste, class, ethnicity, and race; children and their social and political vulnerabilities; and love, politics, and inter-caste marriage in Hindu, Parsee, Sikh, Muslim, and Christian settings in South Asia. Humanities 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, GLBL-Paired, PEAC, ASAM Spring 2023. Hopkins. Spring 2025. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 035. The Talmud Lab This .5 credit course offers students an opportunity for hands-on, experiential, and experimental learning of the Talmud and related Jewish texts. The Talmud is comprised of 5,422 pages; it is a massive collection of laws, myths, stories, and biblical exegesis that sheds light on its creators’ politics, philosophies, and cosmologies. We will learn Talmud from its smallest, atomized units while holding in sight how its whole might still exceed the sum of its parts. This “Lab” setting allows students to engage and experiment with the Talmud, Jewish text study, and the varieties of Jewish identities as we experience the Talmud and related topics through critical inquiry comprised of intuition, emotion, investigation, testing, and refinement. Humanities. 0.5 credit. Spring 2023. Kessler. Spring 2024. Kessler. Spring 2025. Kessler. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 036. Christian Visions of Self and Nature This course is a thematic introduction to Christianity. Beginning with early Christian writings and moving historically up through the contemporary period, we will explore a wide variety of ideas about God, self, and nature. Readings will focus on scientific and natural history treatises in dialogue with theological texts. We will explore the writings of Christian naturalists to study the linking of science and religion, and we will investigate a multiplicity of views about Christian understandings of the relationship between the human and non-human world. This class includes a community-based learning component: Students will participate in designing and teaching a mini-course on “Nature and Chester” to students in the nearby community of Chester. Readings include Aristotle (critical for understanding science in the later Middle Ages), Hildegard of Bingen, Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Graceanna Lewis, Thomas Berry, Nalini Nadkarni, and Terry Tempest Williams. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 037. Sex, Gender, and the Bible The first two chapters of the biblical book of Genesis offer two very different ancient accounts of the creation of humanity and the construction of gender. The rest of the book of Genesis offers a unique portrayal of family dynamics, drama and dysfunction, full of complex and compelling narratives where gender is constantly negotiated and renegotiated. In this class, we will engage in close readings of primary biblical sources and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship about these texts, as we explore what the first book of the Bible says about God, gender, power, sexuality, and “family values.” Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST, INTP, MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 038. Religion and Film An introductory course that uses popular film as a primary text/medium to explore fundamental questions in the academic study of religion. In particular, we will be concerned with the ways that religion and religious experience are constituted and defined on film as well as through film viewing. In discussing films from across a range of subjects and genres, we will engage in the work of mythical, theological and ideological criticism, while examining the nature, function, and value of religion and religious experience. We will also consider some of the most significant writers and traditions in the field of Religion and develop the analytical and interpretive skills of the discipline. Scheduled films include The Seventh Seal, The Matrix, Breaking the Waves, Contact, Jacob’s Ladder, The Passion of the Christ, The Rapture, The Apostle, as well as additional student selections. Weekly readings, writing assignments, and evening screening sessions are required. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Chireau. Spring 2024. Chireau. Spring 2025. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 039. White Supremacy and Antisemitism “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?” This class surveys antisemitism from antiquity to the present day. It historicizes “religious” and “political” Jew-hatred, considering their differences as well as continuity over time. Since antisemitism intersects with racism, misogyny, homophobia, gender-nonconformity, and economics, considerable attention is placed on constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST, PEAC Fall 2022. Kessler. Spring 2024. Kessler. Spring 2025. Kessler. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 040. Rape, Slavery, and Genocide in Bible and Culture This course examines biblical “texts of terror.” It explores the functions of violence in religious writings as well as their influence and impact on current cultural issues. What are the biblical contributions to or roots of current societal crises about gender, race, and war? What are the limits and limitations placed on rape, slavery, and genocide in the Bible that are obscured in current (mis)uses of biblical precedents in support of such modern day atrocities? Without collapsing the distinctions between or simply blaming the Bible for current manifestations of extreme violence, this class aims to bring these “texts of terror” into the open to help facilitate critical discussion about, and critique of, violence then and now. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 041B. Religion and Nature: Wonders Signs & Portents Wonder is the province of the wide-eyed child in the woods, and the wild-eyed scientist in the lab. Wonder at the world is prompted by the odd and uncanny, the strange and novel, the transcendent and sublime, as well as encounters with the monstrous and horrific. This course centers the experience of natural wonder in American history as a primary religious impulse. Through an affect theory frame that approaches religion through embodied emotions, we will chronicle the formation of modern American religious communities and ways of knowing and doing that arose from encounters between indigenous Americans, European settlers, and enslaved Africans with the other-than-human spectacular. Topics covered include: diverse cosmologic perspectives on celestial events (eclipses, meteor storms); plant medicine (ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology), psychedelics, and entheogens; human-animal relations; levitation and trance reports, spectrality (hauntings, monsters, UFO sightings); the mysteries of quantum entanglement; the apocalyptic imagination and the Anthropocene. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS Fall 2024. Padilioni. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 042. Performing Ecstasy Dancing the Sacred (Cross-listed as DANC 038 ) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, GSST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 043B. Decolonizing Afro-Latin American Religion Is scientific knowledge superior to ancestral wisdom or spirit revelation in its ability to apprehend and describe reality? This course interrogates the problem of coloniality as an imposition of power-knowledge that occurred as Iberians and their state-church institutions conquered indigenous Americans and enslaved indigenous Africans. We will free the subjugated knowledges of “Latin” America by encountering alternative narratives of history and sacred memory embedded within mythology and ritual. We will approach various streams of indigenous wisdom to discover philosophical-ethical outlooks on justice, reciprocity, and right living. Students will develop an account of how Euro-America’s scientific-rational knowledge has appropriated the ethnobotanical and other ecological perspectives of Africans and Native Americans contained within healing/wellness traditions. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST Spring 2025. Padilioni. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 044. Reading Comics and Religion This course focuses on how notions of Religion and the Sacred arise in comics and graphic novel texts. Drawing upon world religious traditions, the course will explore how comics use both text and image to frame spiritual identity, sacred practice, and religious experience. Using comics as primary sources, the class will engage the expression, imagination, and critical interpretation of religion through close readings of comics as texts, with analysis of their visual forms. Coursework includes weekly lab meetings within a digital media maker’s space. The course will culminate with the production of student-created comics, which will be developed over the semester and supervised by an artist-in-residence. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 045. Bob Marley’s Setlist: Vibrations of a Rastafari Worldview and Ethos On July 21, 1979, Bob Marley & the Wailers performed at Boston’s Harvard Stadium as part of the Amandla Festival of Unity held in support of the liberation of South Africa. Their 90-minute reggae music concert featured a sonic-rhythmic-choreographic kaleidoscope looping the audience through 400 years of Rastafari mythic history and prophetic visions: although Africans were taken captive to Babylon (the American wilderness of racial capitalism), Jah Rasatafi had prepared a homeland in Ethiopia for the return of all Jah people, if only they chant down Babylon’s destruction by preaching one love, good vibrations, and unity in I-and-I. This class holds reggae music as a preeminent liturgical corpus of the Rastafari tradition, and investigates the Rasta worldview as performed by Bob Marley & the Wailers during their legendary Amandla set. Through a combination of concert video footage and a set of secondary source materials, students will place each Marley & the Wailers reggae anthem within its mystic Rastafari theological, aesthetic, and historic contexts. Topics include Diasporic Ethiopianism, Black Diaspora-Jewish Diaspora typology, Afro-Jamaican spirit-ecstatic musical traditions (myal, obeah, kumina, and burru), Rasta womanhood/gender, Caribbean resistance to slavery via marronage and fugitivity (Tacky’s Rebellion), pan-Africanism (Marcus Garvey’s UNIA “Back to Africa” Movement). Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, LALS Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 046. The Bible in Popular Culture What do Bob Dylan, Pulp Fiction, and Superman have in common? This course will focus on the interpretation of the Bible in pop culture. We will explore the use of the Bible as inspiration and content in many genres of music, films, and visual arts. The arts have always looked to the Bible as a source for its plots, themes and symbols, both overtly and covertly. We will consider how the Bible is used and the effect it has on the interpretation of the Bible itself and the development of our popular culture. No previous knowledge of the Bible or pop culture required. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 047. Afro-Futurism: Astral Mythologies of Creation and the Afterlife (Cross-listed as ENVS 057 ) In his 1974 film Space is the Place, avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra announced his mission to rescue Black earthlings and shuttle them in his spaceship to the safety of a newly-discovered planet: “I come to you as a myth. Because that’s what black people are, myths. I come to you from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago.” In many ways, Sun Ra’s prophecy parallels variants of the Dogon creation myth of Mali, West Africa (recorded in the 1940s) that details the fateful voyage of the Nommos demiurge deities, who traveled to Earth in a sky vessel from a planetary point of origin some observers speculate may orbit the Sirius star system. Through primary and secondary readings, interactive classroom activities, and multimedia sources – including a bevy of music and film recordings – this course investigates Afrofuturism as a radical imaginary within the broader corpus of Black Astral Mythologies. By tracing a throughline between topics such as 16th-century astronomical observations at the University of Timbuktu, U.S. Underground Railroad fugitive navigations according to the ‘North Star,’ and recent cosmogonic speculation by quantum physicists into the elusive nature of Dark Matter, students will consider this premise: when the safe harbor of the earth no longer offers itself as habitation, Blackened celestial futures constellate the cosmic horizons. Possible field trip to the House of Future Sciences, headquarters of the Philadelphia collective AfroFuturist Affair. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, ENVS Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 050. Sacred Plants, Holy Fungi, and Religious Experience (Cross listed as ENVS 055) This course investigates the sacred meaningfulness and practical utility humans have discovered in plants and fungi. From pharmacopeia and herbalism employed to cure ailments and relieve pain, to psychedelic and entheogenic rituals that modulate the sensorium of one’s consciousness to “reveal the God within,” the intimate relationships worked out between humans, plants, and fungi reveal the human in all of its evolutionary-biological, mythic, poetic, and religious dimensions. Through primary and secondary scholarly readings, multimedia sources, and case studies highlighting the cultural histories of the African Diasporic and Indigenous Mesoamerican communities, students will encounter various healing rituals, wisdom traditions, and emerging scientific paradigms that place plants and fungus at the center of human health and wellness. Topics include: mystical and visionary circuits of consciousness; Cannabis sativa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade; Inquisition witchcraft trials and “witches’ ointment;” Mexican-Oaxacan psilocybin shamans and the 1960s Hippie Movement; and a potential fieldsite visit to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. This course does not advocate the casual use of psychedelics or other substances. Humanities 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS. Spring 2023. Padilioni. Fall 2024. Padilioni. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 051. Asian Religions in the Americas Taking a hemispheric approach, this course will examine the histories, communities, and religious practices of Asians in South, Central, and North America and the Caribbean. We will learn about the indentured labor trade that brought Indian and Chinese laborers to the Americas in the 19th-20th centuries, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the case of Bhagat Singh Thind, and Japanese internment camps during WWII, in addition to other examples of racism and resistance that Asians faced migrating across the Americas. Our focus will be on how Asians have sacralized the local landscape and maintained and/or altered their religious practices, as well as how Asians have penetrated the culture of the Americas, looking at topics like food, architecture (temples and religious institutions), music, and pop culture. As part of the emphasis on culture, we will also explore the impact of Asian religions on American culture from the early transcendentalists to the Rajneesh movement and more, exploring the ways in which Asians have transformed the cultures of the Americas as much as their communities have been transformed by their new homelands. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, PEAC Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 052. The Good Life What is a good life? What is the good life? This course applies multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to explore the answers to these questions. As part of the course, we will discuss the characteristics of a good life by analyzing how various people and religious cultures have defined “the good life,” and exploring how people have chosen to live as members of both local and global communities. Throughout the semester, we will examine the construction and cost of living a “good life” and the concepts and expressions of beauty, power, love, health, and justice. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 053. Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Islamic Discourses An exploration of sexuality, gender roles, and notions of the body within the Islamic tradition from the formative period of Islam to the present. This course will examine the historical development of gendered and patriarchal readings of Islamic legal, historical, and scriptural texts. Particular attention will be given to both the premodern and modern strategies employed by women to subvert these exclusionary forms of interpretation and to ensure more egalitarian outcomes for themselves in the public sphere. Topics discussed include female piety, marriage and divorce, motherhood, polygamy, sex and desire, honor and shame, same-sex sexuality, and the role of women in the transmission of knowledge. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ESCH, GSST, ISLM, MDST Fall 2022. al-Jamil. Fall 2023. al-Jamil. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 055. Interpreting Asian Religions This course examines the Western reception, experience, and interpretation of Asian religions, and the Asian responses to encounters with the West. We will critique the category of “Asian religion” and discuss the methodological approaches to this category within the study of religion. There are no formal prerequisites and no knowledge of any Asian language is required. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 056. Afro-Asian Solidarities in the Americas This interdisciplinary course analyzes the relationship between Black and Asian communities in the Americas, highlighting moments of solidarity and unity and areas of divergence and conflict. Moving from slavery to indentureship to U.S. immigration, particularly post 1960s, students will examine the rhetoric of the “yellow peril,” the myth of the model minority, the rise of Black Power movements, orientalist stereotypes, and anti-blackness within the Asian (inclusive of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean) community. Humanities 1 Eligible for ASIA, PEAC Fall 2023. Persaud. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 058. ‘Tis the Season: Festivals of Solstice, Yule, and Christmas (Cross-listed as ENVS 045 ) What is time and temporality? What makes festival and holiday time different from other seasons of the year? This course investigates the complex of ritual traditions known today as the Winter Solstice, Yuletide, and Christmas. Through a combination of primary and secondary textual and multimedia sources, students will consider what these holiday traditions reveal about the ways in which humans make the experience of time meaningful. Students will encounter the long history of Christianization in Europe and its global spread via economies of colonialism during the Modern Period, and will analyze the ways in which Christian religious authorities and institutions negotiate(d) with indigenous, land/nature-based spiritualities. From conifer trees to flying reindeer and the cryptozoological legends of Krampus, students will consider December holiday rituals and lore as a special form of ecological knowledge that holds potential to relate humans to the earth, animals, plants, and the seasonal passage of time in more intimate and expansive ways. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ENVS. Fall 2023. Padilioni. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 060. Varieties of Zionist Thought: Judaism, Nationalism, Antisemitism, and the Jewish Question (Cross-listed as HIST 034 ) This course focuses on political expressions of Jewish identity since the late nineteenth century through an exploration of the central texts of Zionist thought. It integrates biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish texts about Jerusalem, the idea of Zion, and the centrality of the Land of Israel to provide historical context and background. We ask: what are the ways select Jewish sources from antiquity to modernity have grappled with varied attitudes toward land, political sovereignty, and national identity in the Diaspora. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 067. Judaism and Nature “We are not obligated to complete the task; neither are we free to abstain from it.” (Pirke Avot 2:21) The task before us is to examine the relationship(s) between Judaism and Nature. We are setting out to decide-or at least ponder-the following questions (though we will surely encounter more along the way): What does Jewish literature from the Garden of Eden to the present day say about the earth and humanity’s relationship with it? Because of the growing awareness about current ecological concerns and crises, Jewish tradition is being mined-or cultivated-for historical precedents that reflect ecologically sound models of Jewish living. How fruitful is this process? To what extent can contemporary Jews rely on tradition to provide such models, and to what extent must Jews today find new ways of bringing humanity and nature together? Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 093. Directed Reading 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 095. Religion Café: Senior Symposium What is Religion? How is Religion constructed as an academic discipline? Religion 095 is a weekly café for thoughtful reading and discussion of selected texts for senior majors and strongly recommended for minors. The Religion Café highlights approaches to Religious Studies with works that have influenced theoretical and philosophical assumptions and vocabularies in the field. Readings include case studies and multidisciplinary writings on Religion. The course will examine a number of approaches to Religious Studies including, but not limited to, those drawn from: post-structuralism, gender studies, critical race theory, queer theory, cognitive science, phenomenology, ethics, pragmatism, social history, and anthropology, with occasional works by Religion Department faculty members. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2022. al-Jamil. Fall 2023. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 096. Thesis Writing course. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 097. Thesis 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Religion - Seminars
	RELG 100. Holy War, Martyrdom, and Suicide in Christianity, Judaism and Islam An examination of the concepts of martyrdom, holy war, and suicide in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. How are “just” war, suicide, martyrdom presented in the sacred texts of these three traditions? How are the different perspectives related to conceptions of death and the afterlife within each tradition? Historically, how have these three traditions idealized and/or valorized the martyr and/or the “just” warrior? In what ways have modern post-colonial political groups and nationalist movements appropriated martyrdom and holy war in our time? Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ISLM, MDST, PEAC Spring 2023. al-Jamil. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 101. Jesus in History, Literature, and Theology This seminar explores depictions of Jesus in narrative, history, theology, and popular culture. We consider Jesus as historical figure, trickster, mother, healer, suffering savior, visionary, embodiment of the Divine, lover, victorious warrior, political liberator, and prophet. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 102. Magic, Theory and Practice Historian Owen Davies defines Magic as “the everyday employment of Religion for reasons other than spiritual enlightenment or salvation.” In this course we examine the history, theory, and meaning of Magic as a category of belief and practice intersecting with religious forms, institutions, and material cultures. Focusing on the arts of American Magic - what we will call Conjure Americana, we will look at the rise of Magic in the early modern era, from its initial formations in post Reformation European popular religion, to its expressions in English Christianity, Puritanism and in colonial encounters with indigenous religions. This seminar centers on theoretical literature and secondary sources about Anglo-American, Native American, and African American Magic, with an emphasis on local occult traditions such as Pennsylvania Dutch and German healing arts, Pow-wows, charms, and sigil architecture. Seminar will include a mandatory lab section and two off-campus research trips. Religion prerequisites recommended, but not required. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Chireau. Spring 2024. Chireau. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 108. Poets, Saints, and Storytellers: The Poetry and Poetics of Devotion in South Asian Religions A study of the major forms of Hindu religious culture through the lenses of its varied regional and pan-regional literatures, with a focus on the literature of devotion (bhakti), including comparative readings from Buddhist and Islamic traditions of India. The course will focus on both primary texts in translation (religious poetry and prose narratives in epic and medieval Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Hindi, Pali, Sinhala, Sindhi, and Urdu) as well as pertinent secondary literature on the poetry and poetics of religious devotion. We will also pay close attention to specific literary forms, genres, and regional styles, as well as the performance (music and dance) and hagiographical traditions that frame the poems of Hindu saint-poets, Buddhist monks, and Muslim mystics. Along with a chronological and geographical focus, the seminar will be organized around major themes such as popular/vernacular and “elite” traditions; the performance and ritual contexts of religious poetry; the place of the body in religious emotion; love, karma, caste, and family identity; asceticism and eroticism; gender and power; renunciation and family obligations. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA, MDST Fall 2023. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 109. Afro-Atlantic Religions This course investigates the Afro-Atlantic trope of spirit possession. The notion of “possession” contains a double meaning, referring in one register to phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and other embodied engagements with Spirit(s), historically identified by religious studies scholars as hallmarks of African Diasporic ritual traditions. In yet another register, the notion of “possession” chains Black religion to the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its logic of racial capital that sold Black bodies as commodities to be possessed by a master. By way of ethnographic field reports, videos, films, and readings in critical race theory, kinesthetics, and phenomenology, students will untangle these tropes of Black spirit and possession to discover what their alternative, Africanist perspectives might teach us about the nature of Being, consciousness, materiality, and how to live well in ancestral community. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for BLST, LALS Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 112. Postcolonial Religious Thought Today we are facing the four horsemen of the apocalypse: climate catastrophe, white nationalism, global poverty, and a raging pandemic. In confronting these dire threats, what is the role of religion? This seminar explores new models for understanding religion – Indigenous studies, liberation theology, critical plant studies, queer theory – and a variety of thinkers – Kierkegaard, Buber, Bonhoeffer, Derrida, Mbembe, Tinker, Kimmerer – to enable resiliency, even joy, in the face of the coming storm. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for INTP Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 114. Love and Religion A comparative seminar that deals with ancient Greek, early and medieval Christian, medieval Jewish, “secular” troubadour, Hindu, South Asian and East Asian (Japanese) Buddhist traditions on the transformations of “love” in religious devotional literatures. We focus on themes of erotic and parental love; gender, sexuality, and the body; the emotions as ethical appraisal; individual love, loss, lament, and “ennobling virtue;” and the enduring tensions between the particular and “universal” in discourses of and about love, the passions and their vicissitudes in the histories of religion. Primary texts will range from Plato’s Symposium, Gregory of Nyssa’s Greek commentaries on the Song of Songs and his Bios makrinou; the Occitan poetry of female Provençal troubadours, Dante’s Vita nuova, selections from the Commedia, Angela di Foligno’s Libello; to early Buddhist women in the poetry and narratives of the Pāli Therīgāthā, the Sinhala narratives of the Buddha’s wife Yasodharā and the Buddha’s two mothers, Bengali poetry to the Hindu goddess Kālī and to the divine lovers Krishna and Rādhā; Heian-period Japanese love poems of Izumi Shikibu, and Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA, GSST, MDST Fall 2022. Hopkins. Fall 2024. Hopkins. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 119. Islamic Law and Society A survey of the history of Islamic law and its developments, with particular attention to the ways Islamic legal principles were formed, organized, operated in practice, and changed over time. It will focus on issues in Islamic legal theory, methodology, constitutional law, personal law, and family law that have had the greatest relevance to our contemporary world. This course functions as a basic introduction to the Islamic legal system in its pre-modern and contemporary forms. The course will also provide comparative discussion of the contrasts between Islamic legal theory and positive law and European and American legal and constitutional thought. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ISLM, MDST Spring 2024. al-Jamil. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 126. The Poetry and Prophesies of William Blake This course focuses on the lyric poems, extended epic cycles, and illuminated books of one of the most unique poets in English literature, William Blake (1757-1827). We will do a close reading of the poetry and images of the major works of Blake, with the help of text-critical, theoretical and historical perspectives, views of the body, innocence, experience, sexuality, the “margins” of literature; selfhood, self-giving, and “the gift of death” in the late prophetic books. Along with published books of the designs and extended commentaries on the illuminated books by David Erdman, images, bibliographies, and other resources from the online “Blake Archive” of Eaves and Viscomi will be used for “close reading” of Blake’s illuminated books and visionary designs. Humanities. 2 credits. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 127. Secrecy and Heresy This seminar will explore religious literature, bodily practices, and social behaviors associated with the performance of secrecy in various geographical, historical, and political contexts. Religious communities have often employed secrecy as a strategy for the maintenance of group solidarity and religious identity when faced with allegations of heresy. Secrecy functions not only as a means to subvert and undermine the marginalization of religious minorities but as a powerful tool for the creation of more egalitarian possibilities through preservation of privileged knowledge and the presence of internally shared though externally undisclosed social and religious connections. What kinds of religious secrets are meant to be safeguarded? What set of behaviors and strategies are required to keep these “secrets” or sustain adopted personas? Is religious secrecy merely a tactic for ensuring survival in the context of social marginalization and political persecution? What is the relationship between secrecy and suspicion? Is it necessary that what one wishes to conceal is inherently negative, pernicious or even heretical? Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ISLM, MDST Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 180. Senior Honors Thesis 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	RELG 199. Senior Honors Study 0.5 credit. Catalog chapter: Religion Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/religion Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Russian
	LITR 005R. First Year Seminar: Back to the Future: Contemporary Russian Culture and Society (Cross-listed as RUSS 005 ) Hailed as the “end of history” and “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century,” the fall of the Soviet Union forced Russia to reconcile a past that had long been suppressed with a present reality full of possibility. We’ll discuss works that address contemporary issues (Putinism, protests, refugees, corruption) and resurrect historical traumas (WWII, Stagnation, Soviet anti-Semitism, the Leningrad Siege) to understand Russia today. We will also have the opportunity to speak with some of the authors we’ll be reading. FYS and W. Taught in translation. No knowledge of Russian required. Open to all. Humanities. W 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Russian Department website: https://swarthmore.edu/russian Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 013R. The Meaning of Life and the Russian Novel (Cross-listed as RUSS 013 ) This course surveys nineteenth-century Russian-language literature, with a particular focus on the novel, and considers its major themes: nationalism, colonialism, and the ideology of Empire; the meaning of life in the face of death; women’s fate in a patriarchal society; the individual, the collective, and the experience of modernity; reason and irrationality; and the danger and promise of utopian thought. Our approach will be 1) to read and closely analyze a series of texts that became the foundation for the novelistic tradition in Russian within their own contexts and 2) to explore how these texts speak to contemporary issues, our lives, and eternal questions that all of humanity faces. We will read major novels by Fedor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy, as well as novels, poems, and stories by numerous other authors, including Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Karolina Pavlova, and Nikolai Gogol. Taught in translation. No knowledge of Russian language or culture required. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for RUSS Fall 2023. Stuhr-Rommereim. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 014R. The Russian Novel: Revolution, Terror and Resistance (Cross-listed as RUSS 014 ) What does a culture look like after it undergoes a series of revolutions-sexual, political, linguistic-in short succession? To answer this question, this course surveys literature from the last days of the Russian Empire, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the turbulent present of the Post-Soviet World. Together, we will consider how literary authors grapple with catastrophic upheaval, from the rapid construction of industrial socialism, to Stalin’s purges, World War II, the Gulag labor camps, and the Russian war on Ukraine in 2014 and the present. We will encounter fantastic, tragic, and absurd tales from a wild century: a battle of values in the early USSR between a rebel and a sausage maker; the joys and tribulations of post-revolutionary sexual liberation; a surreal night of drunkenness on the Moscow Metro; a lifetime in Soviet Central Asia recounted as astronauts make contact with a utopian society in a distant galaxy. All are welcome. Taught in translation. No previous knowledge of Russian language or culture required. Humanities. Writing course. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-paired. Fall 2022. Stuhr-Rommereim. Fall 2024. Stuhr-Rommereim. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 015R. First Year Seminar: East European Prose in Translation (Cross-listed as RUSS 015 ) Novels and stories by the most prominent 20th-century writers of this multifaceted and turbulent region. Analysis of individual works and writers with the purpose of appreciating the religious, linguistic, and historical diversity of Eastern Europe in an era of war, revolution, political dissent, and outstanding cultural and intellectual achievement. Readings, lectures, writing and discussion in English; qualified students may do some readings in the original language(s). Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for CPLT Fall 2023. Forrester. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 017R. First-Year Seminar: Love and Sex in Russian Literature (Cross-listed as RUSS 017 ) Best known for political priorities and philosophical depth, Russian literature has also devoted many works to the eternal concern of love and sex. We will read significant and provocative works from traditional folk tales through the 21st century to discuss their construction of these most “natural” impulses-and how they imagine the relationship of human attraction to art, politics and philosophy. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST Fall 2024. Forrester. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 021R. Dostoevsky (in Translation) (Cross-listed as RUSS 021 ) Writer, gambler, publicist, and visionary Fedor Dostoevsky is one of the great writers of the modern age. His work inspired Nietzsche, Freud, Woolf, and others and continues to exert a profound influence on thought in our own society to the present. Dostoevsky confronts the “accursed questions” of truth, justice, and free will set against the darkest examples of human suffering: murder, suicide, poverty, addiction, and obsession. Students will consider artistic, philosophical, and social questions through texts from throughout Dostoevsky’s career. Students with knowledge of Russian may read some or all of the works in the original. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2023. Matthews. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 023R. The Muslim in Russia (Cross-listed as RUSS 023 ) The long and strong relationship of Russia and Islam has been neglected in scholarship until recently. This course will examine texts (and films) spanning more than a thousand years, to introduce actual interactions of Russians and Muslims, images of Muslims in Russian literature (and a few Muslim images of Russia), the place of Muslim writers in Soviet literature, and the current position of Muslims in Russia and in Russian discourse. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 024R. Russian & East European Cinema (Cross-listed as RUSS 024 ) This course will introduce students to cinema from “the other Europe.” We will begin with influential early Soviet avant-garde cinema and survey the traditions that developed subsequently with selections from Caucasian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Yugoslav cinema. Screenings will include films by Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, Wajda, Kusturica and Paradzhanov, among others. Students will hone critical skills in filmic analysis while considering the particular cultural, national and political forces shaping the work of filmmakers in this “other Europe” from the early 20th to the early 21st century. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Russian Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/russian Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 025R. The Poet & Power (Cross-listed as RUSS 025 ) This course will explore Russian literature in its cultural and historical contexts. In Russia, a poet has always been a voice, a herald of freedom or non-conformism, if not an envoy of the regime. The poet is also a philosopher and a thinker. Students will read Russian literary texts from the early 18th century through the beginning of the 21st century. The circle will begin with Lomonosov, whose poetry glorified the Tsarinas. We will continue with censored works by Pushkin, Griboedov, Chaadaev, Gogol, Akhmatova, Chukovskaya, Solzhenitsyn and others who underwent political or social pressure from the Russian or Soviet state. We finish with postmodernist Pelevin, who was neither harassed nor arrested for his prose in a new phenomenon for Russia: during the last two decades literature has come to exist independently from power, in a parallel world. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Russian Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/russian Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 026R. Russian and East European Science Fiction (Cross-listed as RUSS 026 ) Science fiction enjoyed surprisingly high status in Russia and Eastern Europe, attracting such prominent mainstream writers as Karel Čapek, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Evgenii Zamiatin. In the post-Stalinist years of stagnation, science fiction provided a refuge from stultifying official Socialist Realism for authors like Stanisław Lem and the Strugatsky brothers. This course will concentrate on 20th-century science fiction (translated from Czech, Polish, Russian and Serbian) with a glance at earlier influences and attention to more recent works, as well as to Western parallels and contrasts. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for CPLT Spring 2024. Forrester. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Literatures in Translation Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/modern-languages-literatures Access the class schedule to search for sections.
	LITR 033R. Propagandize This: LGBTQ Russia, Past and Present (Cross-listed as RUSS 033 ) In 2013, the Russian government passed a law forbidding the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors” - that is, restricting and potentially criminalizing any open discussion of LGBTQ identities or direct acknowledgment of the existence of queer people in Russia. Homophobic Russian rhetoric emphasizes the supposedly recent and foreign nature of LGBTQ identity and ideas - an idea at odds with the diverse sexuality and gender legacies of Russia and the USSR explored in this course. We will consider the authors represented in this course, which covers the 19th century through the present, as participants in legacies, but also as individual creators, and sometimes theorists, of queer strategies of survival, as well as LGBTQ thought and art. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GSST, GLBL-paired. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: Russian Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/russian Access the class schedule to search for sections.

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PSYC 135B. Seminar in Social Psychology: Psychology of Climate Change

PSYC 137. Seminar in Multicultural Psychology: Immigrant Adjustment

PSYC 138. Seminar in Clinical Psychology

PSYC 138A. Seminar in Clinical Psychology: The Role of Context

PSYC 138B. Seminar in Clinical Psychology: Anxiety Disorders

PSYC 138C. Seminar in Clinical Psychology and Well-Being

PSYC 139. Seminar in Cognitive Development

PSYC 180. Honors Thesis

RELG 001. Introduction to Religion

RELG 002. Religion in America

RELG 003. The Bible

RELG 003A. Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters

RELG 003B. Varieties of Religious Experience in African Diaspora

RELG 004. Radical Jesus

RELG 004B. Biblical Interpretation

RELG 005. World Religions

RELG 006. Abrahamic Religion/s: Violence and Monotheism

RELG 006B. The Talmud: Sex, Gender, & Mental Health in Antiquity

RELG 006C. First Year Seminar: Apocalypse: Hope and Despair in the Last Days

RELG 007. Chester Semester Fellowship

RELG 007B. The Caribbean Carnival: Sacred Myth and Performance

RELG 008. Patterns of Asian Religions

RELG 008B. The Qur’an and Its Interpreters

RELG 009. The Buddhist Traditions of Asia

RELG 010. African American Religions

RELG 011. First-Year Seminar: Religion and the Meaning of Life

RELG 011B. The Religion of Islam: The Islamic Humanities

RELG 012. The History, Religion, and Culture of India I: From the Indus Valley to the Hindu Saints

RELG 012B. Hindu Traditions of India: Power, Love, and Knowledge

RELG 013. The History, Religion, and Culture of India II: Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Dalit in North India

RELG 014. Race, Gender, and Sex in the Bible

RELG 015. First-Year Seminar: Religion and Literature: Blood and Spirit

RELG 015B. Philosophy of Religion

RELG 016. First-Year Seminar: Bible and Politics

RELG 017. Animal Religion

RELG 018. Global Christianities

RELG 018B. Modern Jewish Thought

RELG 019. First-Year Seminar: Religion and Food

RELG 020. Christian Mysticism

RELG 021. Prison Letters: Religion and Transformation

RELG 022. Religion and Ecology

RELG 023. Quakers Past and Present

RELG 024. From Vodun to Voodoo: African Religions in the Old and New Worlds

RELG 025. Black Women, Spirituality, Religion

RELG 028. Christian Spiritual Journeys

RELG 029. Islam, Race, and Anti-Blackness

RELG 030. The Power of Images: Icons and Iconoclasts

RELG 031. Healing Praxis and Social Justice

RELG 032. Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology

RELG 033. The Queer Bible

RELG 034. Partitions: Religions, Politics, and Gender in South Asia Through the Novel

RELG 035. The Talmud Lab

RELG 036. Christian Visions of Self and Nature

RELG 037. Sex, Gender, and the Bible

RELG 038. Religion and Film

RELG 039. White Supremacy and Antisemitism

RELG 040. Rape, Slavery, and Genocide in Bible and Culture

RELG 041B. Religion and Nature: Wonders Signs & Portents

RELG 042. Performing Ecstasy Dancing the Sacred

RELG 043B. Decolonizing Afro-Latin American Religion

RELG 044. Reading Comics and Religion

RELG 045. Bob Marley’s Setlist: Vibrations of a Rastafari Worldview and Ethos

RELG 046. The Bible in Popular Culture

RELG 047. Afro-Futurism: Astral Mythologies of Creation and the Afterlife

RELG 050. Sacred Plants, Holy Fungi, and Religious Experience

RELG 051. Asian Religions in the Americas

RELG 052. The Good Life

RELG 053. Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Islamic Discourses

RELG 055. Interpreting Asian Religions

RELG 056. Afro-Asian Solidarities in the Americas

RELG 058. ‘Tis the Season: Festivals of Solstice, Yule, and Christmas

RELG 060. Varieties of Zionist Thought: Judaism, Nationalism, Antisemitism, and the Jewish Question

RELG 067. Judaism and Nature

RELG 093. Directed Reading

RELG 095. Religion Café: Senior Symposium

RELG 096. Thesis

RELG 097. Thesis

RELG 100. Holy War, Martyrdom, and Suicide in Christianity, Judaism and Islam

RELG 101. Jesus in History, Literature, and Theology