Religion & Interdisciplinary Studies
Course topics will rotate to incorporate the study of religion in a variety of other disciplines. Focus will be on the influence or application of religious teachings and traditions in the fields of healthcare, politics, education, etc.
Outcomes: Describe the ethical implications of the religious beliefs and traditions of at least one religion for the primary field of study.
Buddhism Wmn Writers Art Music
Course topics will rotate to incorporate the study of religion in a variety of other disciplines. Focus will be on the influence or application of religious teachings and traditions in the fields of healthcare, politics, education, etc.
Outcomes: Describe the ethical implications of the religious beliefs and traditions of at least one religion for the primary field of study.
Tier 2 Theological Knowledge
Women & Gender Studies
NOTE: This course counts toward the WSGS minor or major.
The course broadens the ways of understanding of Buddhism by bringing attention to the much-neglected voices of women through the lens of art and its intersections with religion and gender. This course asks what is emphasized when womens voices narrate Buddhist hagiographies, philosophy, and traditions. Drawing from womens writings within and outside the Buddhist canon as well as film, music, and art, this course emphasizes womens experiences on the Buddhist path as they navigate suffering and its alleviation across cultures over 2600 years. This course is reading intensive, incorporating two novels in addition to an autobiography, memoir, essays, poetry, film, music, and art. The first novel centers, Yaodhara, the Buddhas wife as she retells her experience of the Buddhas path to awakening; and the second describes a Japanese teens reliance on a Zen nun as she navigates trauma, grief, selfhood, and time. The final work of literature is the autobiography of an eighth century princess, Yeshé Tsogyal, who is one of the most-loved and revered Buddhist masters in Tibetan Buddhism. In addition, this course engages with the collection of poems by the earliest Chinese nuns as they recount the path to awakening, explores Zen nuns writing on non-duality and emptiness, and contemporary Tibetan writers, artists, singers, and poets on Buddhist thought, generational displacement in the face of colonialism, feminism, and the movement of the Tibetan diaspora. The class includes exploring Buddhist ideas together with their exposition in literature, film, art, and music while accounting for paradoxes such as: inclusion/exclusion, unity/diversity, ultimate/relative, self/selflessness.
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