REL 2210 - Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors (3)

When Offered: Fall. Alternate years
This course introduces students to the main religious traditions of China and the enduring religious themes and philosophical issues which have informed traditional Chinese literature, society, culture and politics. Students will examine the origins, rise, and endurance of Chinese popular religion, Confucianism in its social and political forms, Daoism as a philosophical movement and as a series of religious innovations, and Buddhism’s transmission into China and its subsequent flourishing and transformation of Chinese culture and society. In each instance students will examine a broad array of phenomena, from scriptural texts to hagiography, from ritual manuals to medical texts, from miracle stories of talking animals to poetic flights into the starry heaven and beyond, from tales of ghosts and ancestors to accounts of the deeds of shamans and sages.
(Global Learning Opportunity course)