Winter

An exploration of the visual arts of East and South Asia from ancient to modern times, in their social, religious, literary and political contexts. Analysis of major monuments of painting, sculpture and architecture will be organized around themes that include ritual and funerary arts, Buddhist art and architecture across Asia, landscape and narrative painting, culture and authority in court arts, and urban arts in the early modern world.

The Song dynasty (mid-10th to late 13th c.) was a period of extraordinary diversity and technical accomplishment in Chinese painting, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture and sculpture. Artistic developments emerged within a context of economic dynamism, urban growth, and competition in dynastic, political, cultural and social arenas - as between Chinese and formerly nomadic neighboring regimes, or between reformers and conservatives. This course will consider major themes and topics in Song art history, including innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of Song, Liao and Jin court regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery.

The Song dynasty (mid-10th to late 13th c.) was a period of extraordinary diversity and technical accomplishment in Chinese painting, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture and sculpture. Artistic developments emerged within a context of economic dynamism, urban growth, and competition in dynastic, political, cultural and social arenas - as between Chinese and formerly nomadic neighboring regimes, or between reformers and conservatives. This course will consider major themes and topics in Song art history, including innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of Song, Liao and Jin court regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery.

What does one need to know about Islam to do business effectively in an Arab country? How can understanding the Protestant ethic help Mexican managers deal with U.S. partners? How does Confucianism influence Chinese business ethics? What are the business advantages of knowing how different countries rate on the spectrum of individualist versus communitarian values? These are the kinds of issues discussed in this course, which seeks to help students who will be engaged in international business during their careers. It aims to examine the deeper levels of attitudes and beliefs, often unconscious, which lie beneath the way business is done in various countries. Information will be provided on major religious and philosophical traditions like Confucianism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Some cross-cultural frameworks will also be considered. Case studies and background readings are set in nations like China, Japan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Mexico and the United States. The class will be discussion-based, drawing on students' own life experiences as well as the cases and readings. The hope is to provide a competitive advantage, both theoretically and practically, to students through understanding certain unspoken rules of the game in global business.

How does a 2,500-year-old tradition respond to the urgent challenges of our contemporary world? This course examines Buddhist communities' and teachers' creative engagement with issues ranging from climate change and environmental degradation to questions of social justice, gender equality, racial reconciliation, and economic inequality. Through careful study of the contemporary applications of classical Buddhist sources, we will explore how Buddhism functions as a living, adaptive tradition that both offers resources for addressing modern challenges and at times presents structural obstacles to progressive change. Through global case studies, we will investigate how Buddhist communities worldwide have responded to contemporary crises, while critically examining the tensions between traditional spiritual goals and social activism, as well as the secular appropriation of Buddhist practices. Students will develop skills in cross-cultural interpretation, critical analysis of religious responses to social issues, and understanding of Buddhism as a dynamic, multiple tradition shaped by historical and contemporary contexts.

Buddhism often figures in the popular imagination not as a religion, but as a philosophy, or a way of life. But why is such a distinction made? Does Buddhist thought and practice make sense as a philosophy? What do Buddhists actually mean when they say there is no self? Is this a philosophical claim? And what about the Buddhist arguments that everything is empty, projected by the mind, or the result of past karma? Is meditation on such theories philosophical practice? This course explores these and other questions by studying the perennial ideas that have made Buddhist traditions distinctive, the implications of these claims for living a meaningful life, and how these ideas and their associated practices have been received in contemporary secularized societies.

This course introduces students to the esoteric traditions of South Asia and their complex systems of medical knowledge and healing practices. We will explore the connections between contemplative practices, healing rituals, spirit possession, and the various understandings of physical and mental well-being in the esoteric streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. What can the esoteric (tantric) religious traditions of South Asia contribute to medicine and healing today? How did the tantric traditions understand immortality, and how can it be attained? How do these traditions differently construe the relationship between mind and body, and how can these models contribute to our understanding of illness and health? We will approach these and other questions related to healing through primary sources (sacred texts) and studies that reconstruct the traditional understanding of health and medicine in Tantra.

For two thousand years, Chinese people have written, talked, and thought about Buddhism, contemplating the workings of karma and rebirth, the nature of the self, and the social ramifications of monasticism. They made images, copied scriptures, formed devotional societies, made offerings in temples, worried about the future of the world, and at times even took the radical step of swearing off children, sex, meat and alcohol to become monastics - all in response to Buddhist ideas and practices. At the same time, critics of Buddhism, from the early days up until the present, have ridiculed its doctrines as preposterous, its origins as barbaric and its institutions as leeches on society. In this class, we will attempt to cover the full range of Chinese Buddhist history, reading a combination of scholarship and primary sources in translation, including scriptures, travel diaries, novels and autobiography from the first century of the Common Era to the present. The course will trace themes in three broad spheres: Buddhism at court, Buddhism in the monasteries, and Buddhism in the countryside. Along the way, we will cover the first Buddhist nuns, the discovery of medieval manuscripts at Dunhuang, the creation of monumental art, depictions of hells and paradise, the rise of Chan and the Buddhist encounter with modernity. Prerequisite: at least one course that treats either Buddhism or Chinese religion. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Required of all majors and combined majors. The study of religion reflects upon itself. Representative modern and contemporary attempts to "theorize," and thereby understand, the phenomena of religion in anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy. WIM.

For two thousand years, Chinese people have written, talked, and thought about Buddhism, contemplating the workings of karma and rebirth, the nature of the self, and the social ramifications of monasticism. They made images, copied scriptures, formed devotional societies, made offerings in temples, worried about the future of the world, and at times even took the radical step of swearing off children, sex, meat and alcohol to become monastics - all in response to Buddhist ideas and practices. At the same time, critics of Buddhism, from the early days up until the present, have ridiculed its doctrines as preposterous, its origins as barbaric and its institutions as leeches on society. In this class, we will attempt to cover the full range of Chinese Buddhist history, reading a combination of scholarship and primary sources in translation, including scriptures, travel diaries, novels and autobiography from the first century of the Common Era to the present. The course will trace themes in three broad spheres: Buddhism at court, Buddhism in the monasteries, and Buddhism in the countryside. Along the way, we will cover the first Buddhist nuns, the discovery of medieval manuscripts at Dunhuang, the creation of monumental art, depictions of hells and paradise, the rise of Chan and the Buddhist encounter with modernity. Prerequisite: at least one course that treats either Buddhism or Chinese religion. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.

Graduate Independent study in Buddhism. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required supervised internship for PhDs.