This course continues Asian Studies 212, Second Year Chinese I. A continuing emphasis on the facility in daily life interactions will be supplemented and expanded by increasing discussion of broader issues in society, including education, employment, etc.

This second half of the year-long course continues to introduce the basics of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It covers vocabulary for everyday use and essential communicative skills with regard to real-life and task-oriented situations. Students will concentrate on speaking and listening skills, as well as on learning the various forms of verbs, roots/patterns, and sentence structures.

First Year Korean II is the second half of elementary Korean. It is designed to consolidate and solidify the language skills acquired in First Year Korean I and to continue developing students' proficiency in Korean speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. The course will continue to cover the foundations of Korean vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation and how ethese can be used in context. Students will also develop their ability to communicate about topics related to everyday events and situations.

First Year Korean II is the second half of elementary Korean. It is designed to consolidate and solidify the language skills acquired in First Year Korean I and to continue developing students' proficiency in Korean speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. The course will continue to cover the foundations of Korean vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation and how ethese can be used in context. Students will also develop their ability to communicate about topics related to everyday events and situations.

This course examines Islamic religious beliefs and practices from the origins of Islam to the present, focusing on such central issues as scripture and tradition, law and theology, sectarianism and mysticism. Attention will be given to the variety of Islamic understandings of monotheism, prophethood, dogma, ritual, and society.

This course examines the representation of religion and religious communities in science fiction. We will read works that speculate on the nature, origin, and function of religious beliefs and practices, and on the place of religion in imagined futures and universes. We will also explore science fiction-based religious movements, the use of science fiction to communicate religious ideas, and Afro-futurism. We will focus on mostly American novels, short stories, film, television, and music. Readings will include works by Ursula. K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Joanna Russ.

This course examines the following key texts from the ancient world that treat significantly the problem of knowing God and the mystery enveloping such knowledge: Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Plato's Phaedo, Cicero's Concerning the Nature of the Gods, Job, Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and others. Attention is also given to the different ways of thinking about the divine and human natures in these works, which are broadly reflective of Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian value systems.

This course examines gender as a key category in Jewish thought and practice. We will examine different theoretical models of gender, concepts of gender in a range of Jewish sources, and feminist Jewish responses to those sources.

Can women become Buddhas? Why is the Buddha called a "mother"? Who gets to ordain? Why would anyone choose celibacy? Who engages in religious sexual practices and why? This course examines the centrality of gender to Buddhist texts, practices, and institutions. We pay particular attention to the challenges and opportunities Buddhist traditions have offered women in different historical and cultural contexts. Throughout the course we consider various strategies of empowerment, including feminist, postcolonial, queer, trans*, and womanist.

The subject of this course is the book, from its invention in the late antique era to the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, in Western Asia, Europe, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. We will study books made for devotion, instruction, entertainment, and pleasure, from the earliest accounts of Christ's life, to jewel-encrusted books painted with gold for emperors, to student-copied textbooks of the oldest universities, to vernacular literature, legends, and histories.