Search Results

Open Courseware

Science, Magic, and Religion

Professor Courtenay Raia lectures on science and religion as historical phenomena that have evolved over time. She examines the earlier mind-set before 1700 when into science fitted elements that came eventually to be seen as magical. The course also question how Western cosmologies became “disenchanted.” Magical tradition transformed into modern mysticisms is also examined as […]

Open Courseware

Course Introduction: Science, Magic, and Religion

Open Courseware

Biblical Religion in Context

In this lecture, the Hebrew Bible is understood against the background of Ancient Near Eastern culture. Drawing from and critiquing the work of Yehezkel Kaufmann, the lecture compares the religion of the Hebrew Bible with the cultures of the Ancient Near East. Two models of development are discussed: an evolutionary model of development in which […]

Open Courseware

Identity and Difference

This free online course from MIT delves into the theories behind identity creation and belonging, and ideas of “normal” and “different,” for both individuals and entire societies. If you’re patriotic, active in a religious community, or just engrossed in a particular subculture, you probably understand the powerful role identity plays in your life. Being part of […]

Open Courseware

Elizabeth Bishop (cont.)

In the final lecture of the course, Elizabeth Bishop’s “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance” is considered with an emphasis on Bishop’s ambivalence towards the notion of home. The idea that modernists use poetry to do the work that religion no longer does is reflected upon, and connections are drawn between Bishop, Frost, Eliot, […]

Open Courseware

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens is considered as an unapologetically Romantic poet of imagination. His search for meaning in a universe without religion in “Sunday Morning” is likened to Crane’s energetic quest for meaning and symbol. In “The Poems of Our Climate,” Stevens’s desire to reduce poetry to essential terms, and then his countering resistance to this impulse, […]

Open Courseware

The Literature of Settlement

Featuring discussions of oral vs. written literary cultures; Native American creation stories; typological hermeneutics; the covenants of works and grace; original sin; John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion; the Synod of Dort; and TULIP.

Open Courseware

Frankish Society

Professor Freedman considers the Merovingians as an example of barbarian kingship in the post-Roman world. In the absence of a strong government, Merovingian society was held together by kinship, private vengeance, and religion. Kings were judged by their ability to lead men in war. Gregory of Tours believed that the violence characteristic of Frankish society […]

Open Courseware

The Christian Roman Empire

The emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity brought change to the Roman Empire as its population gradually abandoned the old religions in favor of Christianity. The reign of Julian the Apostate, a nephew of Constantine, saw the last serious attempt to restore civic polytheism as the official religion. The Christian church of the fourth century was […]

Open Courseware

Constantine and the Early Church

Professor Freedman examines how Christianity came to be the official religion of the Roman Empire. This process began seriously in 312, when the emperor Constantine converted after a divinely inspired victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Constantine’s conversion would have seemed foolish as a political strategy since Christianity represented a completely different system […]