Please prepare before class week:
Film – “Star Wars: Part IV, A New Hope” (Lucas, 1977; i.e., the original film)
Reader: “The Magic of Star Wars” (38pp)
Reader: Margaret Miles, “Moving Shadows: Religion and Film as Cultural Products” (20pp)
Reader: Bruce Lincoln, “The Politics of Myth” (12pp)
Reader: Sandra Sizer Frankiel, “Structures of the Christian Life” (28pp)
Reader: selections from On The Passion of the Christ, Paula Fredriksen, ed.. (60pp)
Reader: selections from After the Passion is Gone, K. Shawn Landres and Michael Berenbaum, eds. (22pp)
Reader: Wendy Doniger, “Other Scholars’ Myths” (15pp)
Reader: David Jasper, “On Systematizing the Unsystematic: A Response” (10pp) 

Please prepare the night before class:
Reader: Bill Moyers, “Of Myth and Men” (4pp)
Reader: Nikos Kazantzakis, from The Last Temptation of Christ (4pp)
Reader: selections from popular media coverage of The Last Temptation of Christ (20pp) 

We will watch these together in class:
“The Last Temptation of Christ” (Scorsese, 1988)
“The Passion” (Gibson, 2004)

Please prepare before class week:
Film – “Inherit the Wind” (Kramer, 1960)
In the Beginning (432pp)
Summer for the Gods (Introduction, chs. 1-7) (267pp) 

Please prepare the night before class:
Reader: Genesis chs. 1-16 

We will watch these together in class:
“Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (Jones, 1979)
“Contact” (Zemeckis, 1997)

Please prepare before class week:
Film – “The Message” (Akkad, 1976)
Reader: John Esposito, “Muhammad and the Quran: Messenger and Message” (31pp)
Reader: from Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger (400pp)
Reader: Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam” (13pp)
Reader: Edward Said, “Islam and the West” (33pp)
Reader: Fadwa El Guindi, “Ideological Roots to Ethnocentrism”
Reader: Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Islam and Gender: Dilemmas in the Changing Arab World” (25pp)
Reader: Orville Schell, from Virtual Tibet (30pp) 

Please prepare the night before class:
Reader: Jonathan Z. Smith, “Fences and Neighbors: Some Contours of Early Judaism” (19pp)
Reader: Margaret Miles: “Not without My Other” (10pp)
Reader: Pico Iyer, “Lost Horizons” (3pp) 

We will watch these together in class:
“Not Without My Daughter” (Gilbert, 1991)
“Seven Years in Tibet” (Annaud, 1997)

Please prepare before class week:
Film – “Left Behind: Pt 2” (part 1 is recommended)
Reader: The Revelation of John
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (110pp)
Reader: H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (60pp) 

Please prepare the night before class:
Reader: from The Laws of Manu (18pp) 

We will watch these together in class:
“Blade Runner” (Scott, 1982)
“The Matrix” (Wachowski brothers, 1999)

Flease prepare before class week:
Film – “The Godfather” (Coppola, 1972)
Reader: Roy M. Anker, “Utterly Lost” (42pp)
Reader: Bruce Lincoln, “Culture” (12pp)
Reader: Talal Asad, “Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair” (20pp)
Reader: Talal Asad, “Religion, Nation-State, and Secularism” (15pp) 

Please prepare the night before class:
Reader: James D. Tabor, “Religious Discourse and Failed Negotiations” (16pp)
Reader: David Koresh, “The Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation” (10pp)
Reader: “Transcript: David Koresh and FBI Negotiators, April 16 and 18, 1993 (10pp) 

We will watch these together in class:
“The Apostle” (Duvall, 1997)
“My Son the Fanatic” (Prasad, 1997)

Please note (again): most readings and some films must be completed before the week of class.  Please note the questions posed at the beginning of each reading list as these should read each book or article partly in an effort to answer these questions for yourself.