Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

“Religion is never without its monsters. Whether demonized or deified or both, no matter how many times we kill our monsters they keep coming back for more… Maybe they keep coming back because they still have something to say or show us about our world and ourselves.” “…we are all, in a way, children of Lucifer.” Principally in cultural regions of the world where the influence of singular-god ideology has been most deeply felt, folk of various persuasions (“religious” and/or otherwise) and from different times (then and now) have encoded some of their most profound problems—related to all manner of perceived threats to personal, social, or cosmic order and security—by giving them voice, story, name… Ahriman, Samael, Asmodeus, Belial, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Shaytan, Iblis, the Devil? Mephistopheles, Old Horny|Hairy|Nick|Scratch, Gentleman Jack, Dickens, Robin Goodfellow? One of the “Sons of God”? Satan. Through vast stocks of literary forms—temptation narratives, esoteric cosmogonies, morality dramas, epic mythologies, Faustian dilemmas, social satires, moral panic paradigms, and countercultural resistance scripts—the imaginary of (and discourse on) ha-satan (Job 1:6 [Hebrew: the accuser/adversary”]), it seems, has been compellingly productive: Satan is “good to think with” (then and now). But what, now, is (a|the) “Satan,” and what does/can Satan do—especially in terms of imagining “our” [human] order/security, an indispensable part of a structure of reflecting on “our” [human] problems, discourses of/on “our” (adversarial) Otherness, within? This course employs transdisciplinary approaches to an investigation of the contours and functions of the (sometimes mundane, sometimes magnificent, always interesting) satanic imaginary as it is literarily voiced throughout time. Beginning with some ancient (then) expositions from Abrahamic traditions (Judaism | Christianity | Islam)—especially foregrounding questions related to translation —and concluding with select (now) [more] contemporary expressions, we explore the host of positions and interests such voices bring to their discourses on Satan (and the satanic). How might we contextualize the diverse ways that “then and now” folk relate to the satanic? What discourses and relations of power are at work in “then and now” satanic musings? More broadly, how might we imagine the relationships we have with the “then and now” satanic imaginary, while growing in (self-)critical awareness of the ideological/contextual nature of engaging with the past, present, and future? Come and see!

Student Outcomes

This course is aligned with the following departmental student outcomes. By the end of the term, you will be able to… • Understand how religious traditions have shaped—and are shaped in turn by— historical-cultural contexts. • Read, understand, and critically analyze religious texts (both oral and written) and artifacts from a number of different genres, registers, regions, epochs, languages, and cultural traditions. • Write clearly and cogently about religion as a mode of cultural production.

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