EALC034 - What Is Taoism?

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
What Is Taoism?
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
401
Section ID
EALC034401
Course number integer
34
Registration notes
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen.
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Hsiao-Wen Cheng
Description
This course introduces a wide variety of ideas and practices that have at one time or another been labeled as Daoist (or "Taoist" in the Wade-Giles Romanization), in order to sort out the different senses of the term, and consider whether these ideas and practices have had any common features. We will begin with the two most famous Daoist works--the Zhuangzi and the Daodejing (or Laozi). We will also survey other bio-spiritual practices, such as the meditational techniques of Inner Alchemy and the self-cultivation regimens known today as Qigong and Tai-chi, as well as the theological and ritual foundations of organized Daoist lineages, many of which are still alive across East Asia. We will conclude with a critical review of the twentieth-century reinvention of "Daoism," the scientization of Inner Alchemy, and the new classification of "religious" versus "philosophical Daoism." While familiarizing ourselves with the key concepts, practices, and organizations developed in the history of Daoism, this course emphasizes the specific socio-political context of each of them. Throughout the course, we will think critically about the label of "Daoist" (as well as "Confucian" and "Buddhist") in Chinese history and in modern scholarship. We will also question modern demarcations between the fields of philosophy, religion, and science.
Course number only
034
Cross listings
RELS184401
Use local description
No

EALC025 - Chinese Popular Culture

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
1
Title (text only)
Chinese Popular Culture
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
001
Section ID
EALC025001
Course number integer
25
Registration notes
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen.
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Meeting times
M 03:30 PM-06:30 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Zhenzhen Lu
Description
This course explores the cultural landscapes of twentieth-century China and beyond through the lens of "popular culture." We will familiarize ourselves with some key approaches in modern cultural studies, while learning to critically interpret literary, musical, and visual texts in the Chinese-speaking world in social and historical context. Topics include orality and folk culture, media and mass culture, the local and the global, and politics and popular culture. We will emerge from the course with a new set of tools in thinking about "culture" both familiar and unfamiliar. No previous knowledge of Asia is required.
Course number only
025
Fulfills
Cross Cultural Analysis
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
X
Activity
REC
Section number integer
407
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
407
Section ID
EALC022407
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013407
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
O
Activity
REC
Section number integer
406
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
406
Section ID
EALC022406
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Aditya Narayan Bhattacharjee
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013406
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
X
Activity
REC
Section number integer
405
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
405
Section ID
EALC022405
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013405
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
O
Activity
REC
Section number integer
404
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
404
Section ID
EALC022404
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
F 12:00 PM-01:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Aditya Narayan Bhattacharjee
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013404
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
O
Activity
REC
Section number integer
403
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
403
Section ID
EALC022403
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Aditya Narayan Bhattacharjee
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013403
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
X
Activity
REC
Section number integer
402
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
402
Section ID
EALC022402
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013402
Use local description
No

EALC022 - Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters

Status
O
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Gods, Ghosts, and Monsters
Term
2020C
Syllabus URL
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
401
Section ID
EALC022401
Course number integer
22
Registration notes
Crse Online: Sync & Async Components
Humanities & Social Science Sector
Registration also required for Recitation (see below)
Meeting times
T 05:00 PM-07:00 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Justin Mcdaniel
Description
This course seeks to be a broad introduction. It introduces students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed, and art produced about "the fantastic" from earliest times to the present. The fantastic (the uncanny or supernatural) is a fundamental category in the scholarly study of religion, art, anthropology, and literature. This course fill focus both theoretical approaches to studying supernatural beings from a Religious Studies perspective while drawing examples from Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Central Asian, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean sources from earliest examples to the present including mural, image, manuscript, film, codex, and even comic books. It will also introduce students to related humanistic categories of study: material and visual culture, theodicy, cosmology, shamanism, transcendentalism, soteriology, eschatology, phantasmagoria, spiritualism, mysticism, theophany, and the historical power of rumor. It will serve as a gateway course into the study of Religion among numerous Asian, and East Asian Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Film Studies. It will include guest lectures from professors from several departments, as well as an extensive hands-on use of the collections of the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection of Van Pelt Library. It aims to not only introduce students to major, approaches, and terms in the study of religion and the supernatural, but inspire them to take more advanced courses by Ilya Vinitsky, Liliane Weissberg, Projit Mukharji, Talya Fishman, Annette Reed,David Barnes, David Spafford, Frank Chance, Michael Meister, Paul Goldin, Renata Holod, Paul Rozin, among several others.
Course number only
022
Cross listings
RELS013401
Use local description
No

EALC015 - Introduction To Buddhism

Status
X
Activity
REC
Section number integer
405
Title (text only)
Introduction To Buddhism
Term
2020C
Subject area
EALC
Section number only
405
Section ID
EALC015405
Course number integer
15
Registration notes
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen.
Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
Meeting times
CANCELED
Level
undergraduate
Description
This course seeks to introduce students to the diversity of doctrines held and practices performed by Buddhists in Asia. By focusing on how specific beliefs and practices are tied to particular locations and particular times, we will be able to explore in detail the religious institutions, artistic, architectural, and musical traditions, textual production and legal and doctrinal developments of Buddhism over time and within its socio-historical context. Religion is never divorced from its place and its time. Furthermore, by geographically and historically grounding the study of these religions we will be able to examine how their individual ethic, cosmological and soteriological systems effect local history, economics, politics, and material culture. We will concentrate first on the person of the Buddha, his many biographies and how he has been followed and worshipped in a variety of ways from Lhasa, Tibet to Phrae, Thailand. From there we touch on the foundational teachings of the Buddha with an eye to how they have evolved and transformed over time. Finally, we focus on the practice of Buddhist ritual, magic and ethics in monasteries and among aly communities in Asia and even in the West. This section will confront the way Buddhists have thought of issues such as "Just-War," Women's Rights and Abortion. While no one quarter course could provide a detailed presentation of the beliefs and practices of Buddhism, my hope is that we will be able to look closely at certain aspects of these religions by focusing on how they are practiced in places like Nara, Japan or Vietnam, Laos.
Course number only
015
Cross listings
SAST142405, RELS173405
Use local description
No