School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3470

BTI Category:

Buddhist Studies

Semester:

SP23

This seminar will primarily involve a close reading of the 8th century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva’s magnum opus Bodhicāryāvatāra (How to Lead an Awakened Life) along with his Śikṣāsamuccāya (A Student’s Anthology).  But we will read the text in some context, with some commentaries, and against some contemporary secondary literature and moral theory. The goal is to develop a cogent reading of the entire text.  Context will be provided by selections from Buddhaghosa’s Visudhimagga (The Path of Purification).  We will also examine  some Tibetan commentaries, including the 19th century Tibetan scholar Kunzang Sonam’s A Lamp Completely Illuminating the Profound Reality of Interdependence:  A Progressive Overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Bodhicaryāvatāra.  We will also read a fair amount of recent scholarship on Bodhicāryāvatāra and recent work in the theory of moral perception and cultivation.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3013

BTI Category:

Buddhist Studies

Semester:

SP23

Sangha, or the "Buddhist spiritual community," as one of the Three Jewels is seen to be a refuge for community support, dharma practice, and personal transformation through the teachings of the Buddha. This course explores "sangha" from a range of Buddhist traditions in the context of "polity," the way a lived spiritual community is organized and functions to meet the needs of its members. Themes central to the course will include: how monastic traditions are being adapted in the present-day modern West; the nature and organizational structure of various forms of American "sanghas" and their practices; leadership, power and governance; the concept of a "Buddhist identity" in community; issues of race, gender and diversity; and the nature of power and authority between ordained and lay leadership. We will also explore liturgical practices and together seek to build a resource for ritual and core texts that support and represent a diverse range of community praxis. We will also discuss shaping sustainable polity among developing Buddhist communities in terms of "skillful means" as attending to the specific needs and structure of a given organizational vision. The course will include group discussion, in-class presentations, guest speakers, and research and analysis of a dharma community or Buddhist-inspired organization.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3056

BTI Category:

Buddhist Studies

Semester:

SP23

This course focuses on the Buddhist spiritual Path or "marga" through the lens of spiritual formation theories. Students will be introduced to religious and secular theories of spiritual formation, human development, and moral growth. They will then examine Buddhist literature on the Path from Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana sources for their applicability to contemporary human spiritual development. Students will gain the ability to analyze and compare Buddhist and other models of spiritual formation, articulate important aspects of their own spiritual path, and facilitate the growth of others along their own spiritual path(s). Texts will be read in English translation; no scriptural languages needed.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3141

BTI Category:

Buddhist Studies

Semester:

SP23

Mahayana Buddhism, a widespread form of Buddhism in both past and present, is distinguished in part by its remarkable body of scriptures. The numerous Mahayana Buddhist scriptures (sutras) are greatly varied in their content, form, and literary qualities, endlessly thought-provoking, and often wonderfully entertaining. With all readings in English translation and with no prior background assumed, this course explores seminal examples of different types of Mahayana sutras. Our foci are the spiritual, ethical, philosophical, and meditative teachings within the scriptures. We attend to the literary elements employed by sutras to bring about transformations in their readers, to issues of interpretation, and to the ritual uses of the texts. We inquire into the contexts of a sutra's production and into the cultural reception of a text in various places and moments in history. Ideas of special interest are the arenas of a bodhisattva's or a Buddha's salvific activity, Pure Lands, Buddha-nature, levels and dynamics of consciousness, the paramitas or transcendent activities, and the path to Buddhahood. Sutras read in English in their entirety or in part may include the Vimalakirti, Sukhavativyuha, Samdhinirmocana, Ashtasahasrikaprajnaparamita, Vajracchedika (Diamond Sutra), Prajnaparamitahrdaya (Heart Sutra), Suvarnaprabhasottama (Golden Light), Nirvana, Gandavyuha and Dashabhumika sutras. The course concludes by appraising how a key Mahayana thinker systematizes and draws from Mahayana sutras, for instance, Asanga in his Mahayanasutralamkara (Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras) or Shantideva in his Shikshasamuccaya (Compendium of Training).

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 1260

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This course will provide a basic historical introduction to ancient Christianity from the first to fourth centuries CE. How did different Christians in this period navigate the diverse teachings, rituals, and social practices associated with Jesus of Nazareth to produce a religious movement that came to dominate the Roman Empire, even as it was itself always complex, variegated, and internally contested from its earliest moments? Throughout the course, we will explore the diversity of ancient Christian thought and practice across a range of topics and geographical areas, as well as the ways in which Christians situated themselves within the larger Roman world and in relation to others both internal and external.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 1566

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This seminar focuses on close reading of two sources in Greek: the Greek translation of Isaiah and Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. In the first half of the semester, we will focus on LXX Isaiah in relation to Jewish Greek translation of Jewish scriptures and their value both for textual criticism of the Bible and for the history of Jewish biblical interpretation. In the second half of the semester, we will turn to readings from Justin, an early Christian author who quotes heavily from LXX Isaiah; through reading his Dialogue in Greek, we will explore the Christian exegesis of Jewish scripture in relation to Christian self-definition and anti-Judaism. At least two semester of Greek are required; the course might fulfill the requirement for a fourth semester of Greek. Some Hebrew is ideal but not required. To apply, please send a brief statement to areed@hds.harvard.edu with the following: your name, degree program, year of study, school or university, relevant academic background, and reasons for wanting to take the course.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 1731

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This class surveys the history and literature of ancient Judaism and the Jesus movement. The first half of the class considers our evidence for Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple period, focusing on apocalyptic literature, sectarianism, messianism, and eschatology. The second half of the class focuses on the first century CE and our evidence for Jesus and the earliest movement surrounding him, focusing on debates about Jesus and Judaism, both ancient and modern.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2013

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

Despite Jesus' teachings on simplicity of life - defined as ordered relationships with time, money, food, and possessions - the western Church today is largely silent on materialism and overconsumption, and their relationship to economic injustice and environmental degradation. In this course, we will explore the writings of the Christian counterculture that took Jesus at his word: the desert fathers and mothers of the 4th and 5th centuries, Benedict and the early monastics, St. Francis and the friars of the 13th century, John Woolman and the early Quakers, Thoreau, and Dorothy Day, among others. We will also engage with theologians and pastoral writers from the 1970s to the present who have argued that simplicity of life should concern not only vowed religious and intentional communities, but householder Christians as well. We will apply what we read to our own relationship with time, money, food, and possessions in a series of brief experiments.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2188

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This is a lecture course introducing students to the complex conditions of the sixteenth century Protestant Reforms in Europe. Protestant traditions emerged from multiple places and diverse conditions during a time of turmoil and rapid change in and beyond Europe. Factors to consider alongside the causes of religious fragmentation include changing approaches to nature and materiality, artistry, intellectual crises over perception and knowledge, emerging colonization, class warfare and realignment, iconoclasm, new media, national consolidation, the seeds of absolutism, and the emergence of the modern state. This course both at the conditions surrounding major movements of Protestant Reform and the role of theological arguments in re-shaping concepts of power, representation, and the unifying roles of identities and institutions.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2360

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This course surveys spiritual practices and movements that have been labeled as metaphysical, esoteric, pagan, occult, harmonial, and New Age. We will begin with a historical survey of esoteric spirituality from colonial-era astrology and alchemy to New Age and neopagan traditions, then consider some leading constructive thinkers within alternative spiritual traditions, such as Starhawk and Joanna Macy.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2390B

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

Presentation and discussion of the research of doctoral candidates in American religious history. Available, with instructors' permission, to Harvard doctoral students in other fields of religious studies or American studies. Note: Second half of an academic year bi-weekly course. Credit will not be earned unless both the fall and spring semester of the course is completed.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2391

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This course is a seminar for students who wish to write research papers on American religious history. We will discuss every aspect of the research and writing process, including identifying a meaningful research problem, finding sources, making historical claims, and writing with clarity and grace. All students will make a presentation on their research and will submit a final paper of 25-30 pages in length.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2781

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This seminar will explore recent scholarship in the history of Christianity that grapples with how to bring issues of difference vital to contemporary Western life and theory into conversation with premodern material. Toward this end, we will also read important theoretical texts in queer, trans, and disability studies, as well as work thinking theoretically and historically about race. Among the questions we will explore: what temporalities are embedded within and rendered problematic by these categories of difference? Can they be usefully deployed in a transhistorical way? If so, how? If not, how else might we get at the issues that these modern concepts raise for historians? The course will be divided into three parts. Part I will focus on theoretical readings. Part II will turn to historiographical case studies, critically evaluating some recent histories in light of these debates. Part III will provide an opportunity for students to bring these questions to bear on their own academic work and fields of study.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2950

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

Among its vast array of denominations and non-denominational members, doctrines, social, cultural, racial, political, and theological makeups and identities, "baptist" has always carried cultural assumptions, perceptions, and implications in the public sphere. This course will take a rigorous and full immersion into the broad strokes of baptist history from the bible to its ark of traditions and distinctives, geographies and regional identities, democratic/congregational governance structure and operation, liturgy and worship, ordination and contemporary ministry. We will also trace the political, cultural, and racial diversities, contentions, and beliefs among baptists. This course curriculum will fulfill area research interests, arts of ministry requirements, submissions for ordination applications, and contextual/field education for pastoral and community leaders.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2961

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This course is an orientation to the theology of the Lutheran church with special attention to the uses that it has made of the witness of Martin Luther. The course will examine themes and debates within the Lutheranism at its formation in the sixteenth century, as well as explore current issues in confessional theology and church practice. Particular attention will be given to the chief ecumenical proposal of the Lutheran movement - namely, that human existence is justified by faith apart from human striving - and the difference this proposal makes for the great traditional topics of Christian reflection.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3087

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This graduate seminar course provides a critical survey of and introduction to major themes, debates, and trajectories in the field of African American Religious History. We will examine the multiple and manifold meanings of "African American religions" with attention to Christian denominational histories and extra-church, non-Christian, and quasi-Christian religious formations and interventions among people of African descent in the United States. To do so, students will be introduced to key historical events, prominent and unsung religious actors and institutions, and a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches to investigating, analyzing, and narrating the archives of African American religious life and culture.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3135

BTI Category:

Church History/History of Religions

Semester:

SP23

This course examines Shamanism in the history of religions with attention to recent interdisciplinary approaches to the topic It offers a theoretical approach to the study of shamanism through the anthropological and ethnographic literature, with particular focus on traditional ritualized practices among various people groups of Central Asian identifiable with shamanism. The course aims to provide a practical experiential understanding on shamanic ritualism based on case-studies documented in late nineteenth and twentieth centuries by ethnographers, anthropologists, and the European explorers. The course introduces students to the study of shamanic practices through the comparative study of religious, spiritual, and psycho-physical practices particularly Islam.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2844

BTI Category:

Church Polity/Canon Law

Semester:

SP23

Unitarian Universalist lifespan faith development practices have been evolving in response to changes in the religious and cultural landscape. Intentional faith formation for all ages is more crucial than ever to the spiritual health of people and our world. This seminar will explore how theory and practice from our forebears offer a foundation for innovation in faith development programming to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Exploration of material from past and present theorists, our own experience and understandings, as well as guest presentations from current religious education innovators will encourage students to bring a faith development perspective to all aspects of their congregational and community ministries.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2432

BTI Category:

Ethics

Semester:

SP23

This course explores the relationship between coloniality, race and ecology through the lens of “catastrophe.” We will examine a variety of theoretical and literary sources that deploy or refute tropes of the “end of the world,” to place the current discussions in a longer historical contexts. We will also study texts that seek to highlight the connections between environmental devastation with histories of colonialism and radicalization. This course requires independent research, in addition to the readings for class. Students will write a research paper focusing on a specific place of their choice.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3337

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

This interdisciplinary course examines the conceptual logic of using a settler-colonial lens to interpret the history and politics of Israel/Palestine. Our explorations will include the following: the religious dimensions of settler colonial narratives and practices and their intersections with secular, religious, and apocalyptic nationalisms; what the deployment of a settler-colonial lens illuminates, what it obscures, and why; the recent proliferation of scholarship that has taken a comparative settler colonial approach and triangulating that with the literature on Israel's Jewish identity, its meaning, and how and why those identities and meanings have shifted over the decades. We will likewise engage another set of conversations on nationalism and political theologies and identify the relevance of global anti-racism social movements and their uses and abuses of Palestinian struggles and Israeli narratives. We will finally interrogate the symbolic, semiotic, metaphorical, and theological operation of Zion and Palestine. The three instructors for this course are grounded in multiple disciplines, including political and legal theory, religious studies, critical pedagogies, and just peace research. There are no prerequisites, and student final projects can range from a research paper on a theme relevant to our explorations to more public facing projects (such as podcasts, educational materials, or photo essays with commentary) focused on an audience related to a student's professional and/or vocational interests.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2300

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

When Audre Lorde argued "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," the lesbian feminist writer challenged the marginality of Black women in the feminist movement and exposed the invisibility of Black and lesbian epistemic resources in re-imagining freedom, justice, and liberation within political struggles against domination, subjugation, and violence. In doing so, she highlighted the limits of (white liberal) feminist thought and Black politics of respectability to detangle the web of political, racial, economic, gender, and cultural domination in the U.S. and abroad. To this end, Lorde's hermeneutical turn fundamentally altered the conceptual schemes and political aspirations steering post-Black Power writings on politics, transnationalism, and power. This course retrieves Lorde's critical theory as a framework for examining social domination and inequality within the post-Civil Rights era. We will then (re) turn to figures such as W.E.B Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Maria Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Booker T. Washington to explore the major moral questions that framed the emergence of Black liberal, conservative, nationalist, Marxist, and feminist thought. Lorde's framework will give us the tools for examining the major political categories at stake (and contested) within Black liberation theology and contemporary Black Political Thought: double consciousness, domination, respectability, freedom, racial uplift, intersectionality, social death and racial solidarity.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2508

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

This seminar will consider philosophical approaches and perspectives offered by five Western twentieth century thinkers on ethics, religion, politics, and our (self) understanding as human beings. Works from Du Bois, Arendt, Fanon, Levinas and Ricoeur will taken up to interrogate phenomenological, social, political and religious interpretations of the human condition, and our corresponding possibilities and responsibilities.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2592

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

This course treats persecution in America as a site of public history and ethics. Focusing on three historical cases - the Salem witch trials, the Underground Railroad, and Cold War-era McCarthyism - we will explore how hunts for witches, runaway slaves, and communists (along with their fellow travelers) have shaped American political culture. Literary, historical, theoretical, and cinematographic sources will figure prominently, along with field trips to Salem, Danvers, and various other points around Boston. Using Ren Girard's work on violence and persecution to help connect the dots across the centuries, we will try our hands at crafting public history, meditate on efforts to engage "everyday ethics," and write short pieces on ethical issues for popular audiences. In the final weeks of the course, we will consider how today's anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sensibilities relate to longstanding impulses to identify and root out alien elements in the body politic.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2721

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

A study of the life, thought, and actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. An ethical analysis of his primary concepts, ideas, and strategies based upon a reading and discussion of his writings and their sources.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3077

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

Susan Howe's poetry - especially Singularities (1990), The Nonconformist's Memorial (1993), Pierce-Arrow (1999), The Midnight (2003), Souls of the Labadie Tract (2007), That This (2011), deaths (2017), and Concordance (2020), and her prose, My Emily Dickinson (1985), The Birth Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993), and Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathies of the Archive (2014) - are deeply immersed in archives, particularly, but by no means only, those of American history. Through her work she brings that history alive in all of its violence, contradiction, pain, and pleasure, seeking to make the unknown, repressed, forgotten, or erased visible, legible even as illegible, somehow even potentially livable. Her poetry and her criticism, as I often find it hard to distinguish, fully, between the two is a refuge and a refusal, performing a contradictory doubling without which we can't survive, without which we probably don't deserve to (thrive). The course will be an exploration of Howe's project, with crucial attention to the work Howe reads, to reading and rereading Howe's work, and to thinking about the archive itself and its relationship to possible futures.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3089

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Semester:

SP23

This course focuses on the social movement and practices utilized by spiritual, faith based and ethically communities to understand and engage in reparations as a healing, constructive and decolonial process. This journey will provide an introduction to reparations through its history and major figures and frameworks; it then explores economic, experiential, theoretical and legal bases for understanding reparations as articulated in academia, social movements, and in advocacy arenas. We will examine historical calls for reparations and the current movement and the possibilities toward reparations for Blacks in the U.S. Building on the key histories,theories and ideas that inform reparations, we will frame this contemporary discussion through the lens of spirituality and decoloniality to understand slavery, reconstruction, civil rights, truth and reconciliation, restorative and transitional justice. We will explore various understandings and approaches to reparations from organizations and individuals at the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, National African American Reparations Commission, Caribbean Reparations Commission,Reparations4Slavery, UHURU solidarity, and many others.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3181

BTI Category:

Hinduism Studies

Semester:

SP23

Goddess figures are central to South Asian religions. This course will introduce students to a variety of Hindu goddesses-- their myths, iconography, representations, powers and roles-- along with their worship in India, their significance for the South Asian diaspora, and the goddess's complex links to sacred ecology. Interrogating several methodological controversies in the understanding of the goddess in her roles as divine mother, wife, lover, victim, and partner, the class will explore the gendered traumas that makes goddesses into ghosts. Close reading of translations of Sanskrit epic poetry, critical analyses and ethnographies of encounters with the goddess we will explore questions of worship, illness and pilgrimage. Together, we will come to an understanding of the divine feminine in South Asia, illuminating questions about the changing roles of women in religious communities and beyond, to examine the sources of cultural beliefs about female leadership, authority, and gendered power, and offers resources to consider a critical feminist Hindu theology. In sum, the course considers the increasingly vital task of self-understanding through the social and cultural implications of the divine feminine.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3311

BTI Category:

Interreligious Learning

Semester:

SP23

Since the Paleolithic period, birds have appeared in art and ceremony as emblems of the soul, the spirits, and the gods. They found cities, locate graves and oracles, and dive or scratch to create the world. They descend to kings, queens, and messiahs; journey to find God; inspire the shaman's journey; and in their flight, reveal the future. This course surveys some of the renowned birds that fly through the history of religion, evolution, epic, and mythology. We will consider how these tiny, winged dinosaurs have come to mean so much, and how we can attend to their struggles, lives, lifeways. Enrollment is limited to thirty students by application.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3357

BTI Category:

Interreligious Learning

Semester:

SP23

An estimated 450 to 500 million Muslims live in Africa, close to a third of the global Muslim population. The overwhelming majority of them lives in the northern half of the continent, above the equator. The spread of Islam increased the contact between the peoples of North Africa, the Sahara, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The course is designed to provide an understanding of the spread of Islam and the formation and transformation of Muslim societies in Africa. It is organized in two parts. The first part of the course will focus on the history of Islamization of Africa, and topics will include the ways in which Islam came to Africa, the relationships of Islam to trade, the growth of literary in Arabic and Ajami, the rise of clerical classes and their contribution to State formation in the pre-colonial period. The second part of the course will feature guest lecturers who will present cutting edge research on the transformation of Islam in postcolonial Africa.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2966

BTI Category:

Interreligious Learning

Semester:

SP23

Change and adversity can impact one's spiritual life in challenging ways. Spiritual loss, trauma and resistance to change during such times can hinder one's potential for spiritual growth or a deepening of faith. By drawing on Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, impermanence, the nature of mind, and considering recent advances in positive psychology, this seminar will explore how spiritual counselors or others in caregiving roles can apply these perspectives in theory and practice to interfaith counseling settings, as well as how mindfulness practice can help foster spiritual resilience in those experiencing life change, adversity or spiritual crisis.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3160

BTI Category:

Interreligious Learning

Semester:

SP23

What is Religion? Why does it show up everywhere? Using archaeology, religious studies and social thought, this course will study the major themes in the history of religions including 'encountering the holy', sports' and ritual', 'crossing borders', 'sacrifice as creation', 'pilgrimage and sacred place', 'suffering and quest for wisdom', 'music and social change', 'violence and cosmic law'. Readings from Native American, African American, Latinx/+, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu traditions. Focus on the tension between individual encounters with the holy and the social construction of religion. Readings from Gloria Anzaldua, Toni Morrison, Judith Sherman, Arthur Kleinman, Popul Vuj, Mircea Eliade, Michael D. Jackson.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3063

BTI Category:

Islamic Studies

Semester:

SP23

This course introduces students to practices of spiritual care from a Muslim Perspective. As we will survey spiritual care practices of different Muslim cultures, our focus will be the relevant application of these practices in North America with a special focus on contemporary issues. We will study meditative/ritualistic, medical, philosophical, counseling, and psychological practices that have relevance and meanings in personal journeys of Muslim spiritual experience in different settings such as hospital, prison, university, community, social, and professional settings. Through a combination of readings, class discussions, practical exercises and expert guest lecturers in each class, students will begin to develop their own approaches to spiritual care in different circumstances such as the issues involving spiritual crises, trauma, mental illness, marriage/divorce, refuge related mental and spiritual complications, substance abuse, and others. Different stake holders such as pastoral care/chaplaincy (minister) candidates, students in education, social work, counseling, psychology, and health sciences as well as medical school students will find much value and benefit in this course. Class format will include weekly expert guest speakers including medical doctors, counselors, social workers, psychologists, clergy, and chaplains, from different disciplines who provide service to Muslim clients, patients, students, or inmates followed by a class discussion.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3171

BTI Category:

Islamic Studies

Semester:

SP23

This course, as part of the new HDS Initiative on Islamic Spiritual Life and Service, is intended for students preparing for vocation in a variety of settings in which they will provide Islamically-inspired service and support. In addition it will explore ways in which spiritual-ethical cultivation has been fostered holistically in the lived devotion of Muslim communities across time, place, and culture, including in various manifestations of the Islamic science of Sufism (ta?awwuf) and its traditional integration within educational and religious life and institutions, with attention to topics such as spiritual mentorship, spiritual training (tarbiya), spiritual companionship, oral tradition and transmission, devotional arts, and the creation of spaces for spiritual connection and service across religious, cultural, and social differences engage the students in experiential-learning exercises to deepen their understanding of relevant concepts and practices. The course will acquaint students with Islamic pedagogy and practice on spiritual cultivation, highlighting the foundational importance of spiritual-ethical virtues in Islamic piety and the lifelong quest for nearness to and knowledge of God.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3034

BTI Category:

Judaic Studies

Semester:

SP23

Jews have been a religious and cultural presence in America since the colonial era, and the community of Jews in the United States today--some six million people--continues to make a significant contribution to the American religious landscape. This seminar will examine the history of the Judaic tradition in America and the vitality and variety of contemporary American Judaic life, from the arrival of the first Jews to the present, highlighting the emergence and continual development of the four branches: Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform. We will also examine the variety of ways in which Jews became part of the communal, social, and political landscape of America, and the roles they continue to play in American life today. We will then look at the practical aspects of working as Jewish professionals in American life and the different skills that are needed, whether one works in a congregational, campus, hospital, or organizational setting.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 3036

BTI Category:

Judaic Studies

Semester:

SP23

A wide-ranging introductory exploration of the Jewish religious tradition, from its inception in biblical Israel though its rabbinic, medieval, and modern iterations. The central focus lies on the literary meanings and existential questions of the classical tradition, as well as on the relationships between texts, religious claims, and practices. We shall also consider some of the restatements, reformulations, and challenges to tradition that have arisen in modern times.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4053

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

This course is a continuation of Elementary Pali I. The goal of this course will be to complete the study of the major elements of grammar found in Pali and to strengthen the student's familiarity with the language patterns found in standard prose works. The student will begin to gain experience in a wider range of literary styles. Prerequisites: Elementary Pali I or equivalent (with the permission of the instructor).

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4055

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

This course is the final part of a two-year program designed to allow the student to read Buddhist canonical materials in Pali independently. The readings are taken from the canonical collections and are chosen and arranged thematically, exposing the student to key aspects of the teachings of Theravada Buddhism. The course readings are chosen to enrich the student's understanding of these teachings, at the same time as strengthening language skills. The course will also introduce the student to commentarial material. The Theravada tradition has a rich body of material that explicates and comments on the canonical texts. Gaining familiarity with this style of writing will greatly benefit the student in subsequent reading of Pali material.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4102B

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

A thorough introduction to classical Syriac, a Christian dialectic of Aramaic. The first semester will cover the basics of grammar, and the second will introduce students to texts from the Syriac tradition. Daily preparation and active class participation mandatory. This is an indivisible year-long course. Students must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4158

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

A continuation of introduction to the native language of ancient Egyptian Christianity. Basic Sahidic Coptic grammar and syntax with selected readings from the Coptic Bible and other early texts. Prerequisite: HDS 4157 or equivalent.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4212

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

Continuation of 4211. Focus on the reading of portions of the New Testament, along with continued work in classical Greek grammar and syntax.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4221

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

Selected readings of early Christian and Hellenistic Jewish authors, selected from the Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, hagiographic, apocryphal, gnostic materials, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Philo or Josephus. Texts will be chosen to consolidate Greek skills and, where possible, to reflect the interests of the class; each will be set in its historical and linguistic context as an essential part of translation and interpretation. Designed both for those who wish to gain reading skills with a variety of authors and for those who plan further study of Greek, e.g., in Advanced Greek (4230).

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4239

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

In this course, we will read selections from a wide variety of ancient Greek forms of commentary--that is, texts which interpret other texts. Our readings will be primarily Christian, as there is a particularly rich literature of commentary in ancient Christianity. We will begin with the homily, one of the most abundant and readable forms of commentary on passages of the Bible. As the semester progresses, we will read other, more technical forms of interpretive literature as well, including commentaries, question-and-answer literature, and scholia, considering questions of genre, audience, and purpose. We will also move beyond Christian literature into Jewish (such as Philo) and "pagan" Greek literature (such as the commentaries on Plato and scholia on Homer), and show the way that genres of commentary transcend any one religious community. This course will thus not only build students' confidence in working with continuous Greek prose; it will also build a useful skillset for future research in ancient Hellenophone religious traditions.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4413

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

Second semester course to cover German grammar, syntax, and translation; reading and translation practice of selected texts at the intermediate level related to theological and religious studies.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4453

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

This course is designed to help students gain proficiency in reading and translating texts related to theological French and religious studies, as well as academic French more broadly, at the intermediate level. Grammar and vocabulary are reviewed as needed. The syllabus may be adjusted according to the specific interests of the students enrolled in the course.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4463

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

This course focuses on Spanish reading comprehension and translation at the intermediate level, with special attention to theological and religious texts from across time periods, traditions, and genres. Students will also review key grammatical structures with the goal of improving students' comprehension of written material in Spanish. In addition to the course readings, students will have the opportunity to work with and translate a text of their choice from their own research discipline.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 4465

BTI Category:

Languages

Semester:

SP23

An intermediate/advanced course to develop communication skills particularly suited to those planning to minister in Spanish-speaking environments. Exercises and exams center on outreach vocabulary as well as appropriate contexts for this field (congregations, counseling, hospital and/or correctional pastoral work, education, etc.).

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2034

BTI Category:

Preaching, Liturgy, & Ritual

Semester:

SP23

This course will explore the leadership of music in the public rituals of religious, liturgical, and social movements, drawing on historical research, current practice in local communities, and students' own experience to answer questions about the role of music across religious and spiritual traditions as well as in movement-based activism. How does music inspire, connect, celebrate, and console? Where is the boundary between performance and prayer/meditation/worship? How does a song interact with its text to enhance and define the ritual space? Students will learn practical tools in leading song with their voices or musical instruments through the study of hymns, psalm chanting, and other folk and popular music traditions. The course is designed for students interested in ministerial or other ritual leadership who would like to expand their knowledge of musical literature, its current practice, and the history of music in the development and practice of religious traditions.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2907

BTI Category:

Preaching, Liturgy, & Ritual

Semester:

SP23

Carrying forth the preaching pedagogy of Rev. Peter Gomes, this course focuses on the practice of textual preaching from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The course is taught by Rev. Daniel Smith (Senior Minister, First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, UCC). It emphasizes exegesis, worship context, sermon content and delivery. Participants will be expected to prepare and deliver three essays and three sermons. The course is limited to 8 students. If more than 8 students show for the first class and wish to take the course, a list of admitted students will be posted later that day.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2922

BTI Category:

Preaching, Liturgy, & Ritual

Semester:

SP23

This course engages students in historical, theological, and practical study of preaching and worship in the Black Church tradition. Readings in black homiletics and practical theologies of worship introduce students to a variety of approaches for the development and delivery of sermons and for the construction and ministerial leadership of worship within black Christian church contexts. The course considers these proposals for ministry practice against the backdrop of the social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics that shape the contemporary context of black communal life in the United States. The purpose of the course is to increase students' ministerial capacity through the incorporation of theological and practical wisdom from the Black Church tradition into their own understandings and uses of ritual and rhetoric.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 1826

BTI Category:

Scripture & Biblical Studies

Semester:

SP23

A close critical reading of the account of the early life of Moses in three contexts: (1) the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near Eastern world in which it took shape; (2) rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity; and (3) medieval Jewish commentary. Texts to be read in Hebrew include Exodus 2 and a selection of rabbinic midrashim and medieval commentaries on it. Includes a research-based paper.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2057

BTI Category:

Sociology/Ethnography/Research Methods

Semester:

SP23

An aesthetic exploration of national cinemas with an emphasis on filmmakers and their unique contributions to film form. How is cinematic language a refractive storytelling practice? How are filmmakers leveraging narrative storytelling as a vocational journey? We will explore the sociocultural and sociopolitical context of works, parsing out religious contexts more broadly and the intersectional meaning of vocation from various religious and non-religious traditions. This examination will give particular attention to women as filmmakers and their interrogation of the cinematic apparatus: inclusive of the gaze, spectatorship, race, class, and gender.

School:

Harvard Divinity School

HDS 2337

BTI Category:

Sociology/Ethnography/Research Methods

Semester:

SP23

An historical and ethnographic survey of many centuries-old Christian traditions in Africa. It begins with an outline of the trajectory of Christianity's origins and presence in Africa from its beginning in ancient Mediterranean lands through the early period of European missionaries to the contemporary period. The course provides the ethnography of the old mission churches, indigenous independent African churches, and contemporary evangelical and Pentecostal Charismatic movements. It explores the role of Christianity in relation to historical, cultural, social, and material realities of the African continent. The course examines a broad range of topical issues related to conversion, missionization, and the development and growth of Christian agencies in Africa in relation to the construction of social, theological, and cultural identities, as well as Christianity's response to cultural pluralism, nationhood, citizenship, and civil society.