This upper-level course examines how “Eastern wisdom” has been articulated, translated, and contested at the intersection of world literature, religious studies, and philosophy. Focusing on texts available in English translation, the course brings together Mesopotamian epics, Vedic hymns, Upanishadic dialogues, Buddhist teachings, Zoroastrian gathas, and Sufi poetry, alongside modern and contemporary literary responses from regions stretching from South and East Asia to the Balkans. Students practice close reading across genres (epic, hymn, dialogue, lyric, novel, essay) in order to analyze how these works formulate ethical, metaphysical, and existential claims.
In dialogue with these primary materials, the course studies how Western writers, scholars, and popularizers have constructed “the mystic East,” “Oriental spirituality,” and “World Religions” in novels, stories, essays, poems, and scholarly monographs. Students critically evaluate these portrayals through the work of major theorists in the humanities and the study of religion, including Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Hamid Dabashi, Mark Sedgwick, Richard King, Jeremy Carrette, and Tomoko Masuzawa. Using historical, sociological, anthropological, literary, and philosophical approaches, the course asks how so-called Eastern religions have been framed through Eurocentric lenses, how these framings intersect with race, gender, class, and empire, and what decolonial and comparative ways of reading become possible.
Assignments are structured to build upper-level competencies expected in Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and Philosophy: students analyze ethical and moral arguments in primary texts; compare and interpret representations of religious lives and practices; deconstruct and critique familiar binaries such as East/West, mystic/political, and spiritual/secular; and design a research-based term paper or podcast that advances an intersectional, theoretically informed argument about “Eastern wisdom” in contemporary debates. All required readings are available in English, and no prior knowledge of any “Eastern” language is required.
