Università Roma Tre

Religion and Society in Global Perspective

Fabrizio Conti, PhD

faconti@johncabot.edu
fabrizio.conti@uniroma3.it

Readings

 All readings will be made available by the professor on Moodle. The Prof.’s lectures as well as class discussion will be based on those readings.

Assignments:

1. Paper (2000 words) (30%)
2. Research outline presentation (10-15 mins) with a ppt (25%)
3. Oral Final Exam (30%)
4. Class participation (15%)




Syllabus:

Two classes per week:

Thursday 15-17 and Friday 11-13


The course begins on Thursday, March 2, at 3pm



Part I: The Western World: Cultural-Historical Dynamics and Religion

Week 1

• Course Intro: Culture, Society, and Religion

- M. C. Lemon, Philosophy of History: A Guide for Students, pp. 290-303 (“The What is History Debate”)
- Alessandro Arcangeli, Cultural History: A Concise Introduction, pp. 1-17 (“In search of a definition”); pp. 30-48 (“Interwoven paths”)



• Popular Culture, Superstition, Religion

- Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, pp. 3-22 (The Discovery of the People)
- Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, pp. 78-103
(Popular Culture in the Mirror of the Penitentials)



Week 2

• Humanism and Christian Tradition

- Kenneth Bartelett, The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, pp. XIX-XX; 1-8 (Introduction; Quintilian); pp. 25-34 (Petrarch: Introduction; Letter to Posterity; The Ascent of Mount Ventoux; Letter to the Shade of Cicero)


• The “Universal Man” of The Renaissance and Religious Traditions

- Bartelett, The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 97-104 (Florentine Neoplatonism and Mysticism: Intro; Marsilio Ficino); pp. 104-108 (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola)
- Leonardo da Vinci, Selections from the Notebooks, in The Italian Renaissance Reader, ed. by Bondanella and Musa, pp. 185-195


Week 3

• Religion and Critical Thinking: Lorenzo Valla’s Reading of The Donation of Constantine

- Bartelett, The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 206-210 (Lorenzo Valla:
The Principal Arguments from the Forged Donation of Constantine)
- The Donation of Constantine: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/donatconst.asp



• Geographical Explorations and Religion

- Cristopher Columbus, Journal of the First Voyage, paragraphs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 50-54:
http://eada.lib.umd.edu/text-entries/journal/
- F. Rickey, “How Columbus Encountered America”



Week 4

• Witchcraft: Beliefs and Practices

- Brian Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, Ch. 2 (The Intellectual Foundations)
- Charles Zika, Images of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, in Levack, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America
- Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700, pp. 176-228 (“The Hammer of Witches”)
- Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, “Strix”, in Witchcraft in Europe, ed. by Alan Charles Kors
and Edward Peters, selected pp.



• Protestant and Catholic Reforms

- Lisa Jardine, Erasmus: Man of Letters, selected pp.
- Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility: https://history.hanover.edu/texts/luthad.html
- Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Querini, Booklet to Pope Leo X on the Reform of the Church, selected pp.




Week 5

• Science, Theology, and Authority

- The Index of Forbidden Books: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/indexlibrorum.asp
- Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds, selected pp.
- Galileo Galilei's Indictment and Abjuration (1633): https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1630galileo.asp




• Humanism, Religion, and Western Current Cultural Trends

- James Hankins, How Not to Defend the Humanities:
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/not-defend-humanities/
- Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, selected pp.





Part II: Religions in Global Perspective

Week 6

• Indigenous & Ancient Religions

- Nancy C Ring, Introduction to the Study of Religion, Ch. 2

- Duncan S. Ferguson, Exploring the Spirituality of the World Religions, Part II, selected pp.




• The Axial Age: A Cultural/Religious Revolution?

- Jan Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, Ch. 2 ("Monotheism: A Counterreligion to What?")



Week 7

• Indic and Chinese Religions

- Ring, Introduction to the Study of Religion, Ch. 3 and Ch. 5




• Judaism, Christianity, Islam

- Ring, Introduction to the Study of Religion, Ch. 6 and Ch. 7




Week 8

• Christianity and Christianization

- Van Engen, John, “The Christian Middle Ages as a Historiographical Problem”, The American Historical Review Vol. 91, No. 3 (Jun., 1986): 519-552




• Religious Change and Interreligious Dialogue

- Ring, Introduction to the Study of Religion, Ch. 9 and Ch. 11



Week 9

• Mysticism and Monasticism

- Thomas Merton, A Course in Christian Mysticism, selected pp.


• Conclusion and Final Exam preparation

All readings will be made available by the professor on Moodle. The Prof.’s lectures as well as class discussion will be based on those readings.