REL 334
Imagining Joseph
Last Offered Spring 2016
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed COMP 334 / JWST 334 / ANTH 334
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

Beloved son, rival brother, faithful servant, dreamer, seer, object of desire, lover, husband, bureaucrat, Joseph is one of the most fully-limned and compelling figures in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural traditions. The story of Joseph unfolds over fourteen chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and is the subject of the fourth longest sura in the Qur’an. Through millennia, the story of Joseph has inspired a wealth of interpretations, commentary, apocrypha, re-tellings, and back-story, including an apocryphal book of scripture about Joseph and his wife, Asenath, Sufi poetry about Joseph and Zuleikha (Potiphar’s wife), a trilogy by the 20th century German novelist Thomas Mann, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber, and many expressions in Western visual art. The course will explore these various expressions, looking to them for the ways in which Joseph has captured the imaginations of peoples and cultures across time and space. The course will be organized as a collaborative seminar in which the class will read the foundational scriptures together, followed by thematic discussions to which students will contribute insights from their own readings of particular peripheral texts. Students will learn the pleasures of close and intense exegetical reading in approaching the Hebrew Bible and Qur’an, as well as the more expansive pleasures of linking post-scriptural expressions together.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 12
Expected: 10
Class#: 3357
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: 3- to 5-page weekly response papers; 15-page final paper; class participation
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: based on responses to a questionnaire
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Notes: meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under ANTH, JWST, or REL; meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under COMP
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
COMP 334 Division I JWST 334 Division II REL 334 Division II ANTH 334 Division II
Attributes: JWST Core Electives

Class Grid

Updated 9:58 am

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