Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 10
Language
English
Description
How have religious traditions responded to sexuality with demonization, social constraint, and physical assault? What are some of the oldest, most outlandish forms of religious self-discipline? How has religious and political persecution worked to target specific issues related to sexuality and morality (specifically abortion and homosexuality)?
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 18
Language
English
Description
Trace the role of violence in and around Native American traditions. How common is land displacement or outright theft? What's the relationship between competing gods and vengeful ghosts? Is the story of indigenous peoples inseparable from colonialism and imperialism, which are often motivated to eradicate indigenous faiths?
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 1
Language
English
Description
What is the essence of religious violence? What are the historical trends that explain the relationship between religious beliefs and violence? What are some problematic ways we often frame the issue of religious violence? Begin your exploration of these and other perplexing questions about this complex subject.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 16
Language
English
Description
First, look at the historical relationship of religious ethics to public life in India. Then, consider the legacy of colonialism in contributing to the rise of interreligious violence (especially surrounding Sikhism). Last, examine the Hindu hyper-nationalism known as Hindutva and the widely-discussed phenomenon called Saffron Terror.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 14
Language
English
Description
Focus on the role of war gods in human cultures and sacred texts. Then, take an extended look at the medieval Crusades, as well as Cold War religious imagery. It turns out the roots of war gods aren't as removed from our present day as we'd like to think.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 7
Language
English
Description
For humans, the world is always about to end. Using examples like the People's Temple, the Branch Davidians, and Aum Shinrikyo, as well as 19th-century America, explore the meanings of apocalypticism as a form of human meaning-making, as well as its role in the phenomenon of religious violence.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 19
Language
English
Description
Study the key characteristics that make a group a "cult," including a desire for authenticity and a new pattern of life that breaks with mainstream culture. Then, use Mormonism, China's Falun Gong, and the Solar Temple as ways to explore why some new religions provoke violence and others practice it.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 20
Language
English
Description
In the first of two lectures on the power of stereotypes and misrepresentation to justify religious violence, look at how church reformers in Europe and the United States of America produced a series of enduring, negative images and stereotypes of Catholics: as degenerate, orgiastic, drunken, and power-mad.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 4
Language
English
Description
Sacrifice is one of the most fundamental building blocks of religion. Here, examine how and why people commit self-harm and sacrifice for religious purposes. Topics include animal sacrifice during India's Vedic period, self-denial and asceticism (such as vows of celibacy), and religious suicides from ancient Rome to the modern era.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 8
Language
English
Description
Focus here on a very specific aspect of Other-ing: the idea of different races as the objects of religious violence. First, examine how religions generate racial ideas. Then, take a closer look at two very different expressions of racial religion: white supremacist Christianity and the Nation of Islam.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 23
Language
English
Description
In this lecture, do more than just focus on how to define terrorism. Instead, try and understand how and why terrorists see the world as they do - a task worth undertaking if we're serious about understanding contemporary problems with religious violence. Your case studies here: Gush Emunim, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 24
Language
English
Description
How can we change a world that produces so much religious violence? Professor Bivins starts with tools for individuals and proceeding from there through communities, nations, and international institutions. The important thing: to think concretely about religious violence rather than be numbed into fear or inaction.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 2
Language
English
Description
Get a solid introduction to different ways of recognizing and studying religion as a way to start making sense of religious violence. Central to this lecture is the idea that religion and violence exist in a fluid relationship, which can make the boundary between religious and non-religious identities fuzzy as well.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 6
Language
English
Description
One of the most effective ways of demonstrating religious power is through trial and punishment. Examine the use of law and the meanings of public displays of violence as seen in historical cases of witch hunting and witch trials. Witches, it turns out, are in many ways more reviled than demons.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 22
Language
English
Description
Here, look at Islam and violence from different perspectives. Shed light on the negative stereotypes and representations common to discrimination against Muslims. Explore how Islamophobia depends on generalization and exaggeration, then consider Muslim theological sources of violence in the modern world, as well as significant examples of Islamic revolution.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 17
Language
English
Description
How have religions wrestled with - but also condoned - the brutal institution of slavery (especially in the United States of America)? What you'll learn in this eye-opening lecture is that, while some of slavery's most powerful critics have been full-throated religious practitioners, the same can be said of slavery's defenders.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 21
Language
English
Description
Turn now to one of the more glaring and persistent traditions of anti-religious violence: anti-Semitism. Why has this form of historical suffering become an intimate component of Jewish identity? How is it portrayed in scriptural stories like Exodus, as well as modern-day moments of persecution and social marginalization?
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 9
Language
English
Description
In this lecture, investigate the gendering of religious language and the treatment of women's bodies in religious practices like menstrual seclusion and self-sacrifice. Also, study the anxiety around women that occurred during the Salem witch trials, as well as competing interpretations of women's freedom and constraint in Islam.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 12
Language
English
Description
When is it permissible to go to war? Learn how Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all wrestled - morally, conceptually, strategically - with questions about how to balance religious ideals with real-world conflicts, and how religions define violence in the context of war as a necessary, limited evil.
Author
Series
Thinking about Religion and Violence volume 5
Language
English
Description
Discover how religious violence is almost always justified by portraying its targets as something other than human, or as malevolent. Professor Bivins explains how the social process of Other-ing has led religions to process and create fear through scapegoats, demons and monsters, false gods, and Antichrist figures.
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