Instructions with regard to reading requirements will be provided in class.

Week 1: No Readings

Week 2

Beier, Ulli. Yoruba Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Archive. 1980, pp. x–xiv.

Joseph M., and Mei-Mei Sanford. "Introduction." In Osun across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas. edited by Joseph M. Murphy   and Mei-Mei Sanford, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2001, pp.      1–9.

Temisanren, Ebijuwa. "Views of Women in Yoruba Culture and Their Impact on the Abortion Decision." Women & Health 22, no. 3 (1995): 1–8.

"The Secret Book of John." In The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Revised and   Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume, edited by Marvin Meyer, New York: HarperOne, 2009, 103–32. 

King, Karen. "Reading Sex and Gender in the Secret Revelation of John." The Journal of Early Christian Studies 19, no. 4 (2011): 519–538.

Week 3: Abstinence and Excess: Discourses of Regulation

Staples, Ariadne. From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion. London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 129–156.

Augustine: ‘Adolescence'. Translated by Henry Chadwick. In Confessions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 24–34.

Week 4: Queering Traditions

Wilcox, Melissa M. "Queer Theory and the Study of Religion." In Queer Religion. Volume 2: LGBT Movements and Queering Religion. edited by Donald L. Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson, Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012, pp. 227-   251.


Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 29–58.

Lefkovitz, Lori Hope. "Passing as a Man: Narratives of Jewish Gender  Performance." Narrative 10, no. 1 (2002): 91–103.

Week 5: Androgyny, Celibacy and the 'Sexless' Individual

Michael F. Brown, ‘Toward Sacred Androgyny,’ in The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 93-114.

Raine, Susan. "Reconceptualising the human body: Heaven's Gate and the quest for divine transformation." Religion 35, no. 2 (2005): 98–117. 

Week 6: Philosophies of Desire & Sexual Difference

Irigaray, Luce. "Sexual Difference." Translated by Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Ithaca: Cornell University   Press, 1993, pp. 5–19.

Irigaray, Luce. "Spiritual Tasks for Our Age." In Luce Irigaray: Key Writings. London and New York: Continuum, 2004, pp. 171–185.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. "The Body without Organs." Translated by      Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983, pp. 9–16.

Protevi, John. "The Organism as the Judgement of God: Aristotle, Kant and Deleuze on Nature (that is, On Biology, Theology and Politics)." In  Deleuze and Religion. edited by Mary Bryden. London and New York: Routledge, 2001, pp. 30–41.

Week 7: Eros: From Greek Myth to Modern Theory

Bataille, Georges. ‘Mysticism and Sensuality’ in Eroticism (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957), reprinted Mary Dalwood, trans.London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1987, pp. 221-251.

Week 8: 

Blain, Jenny. ‘Ergi Seiðman, Queer Transformations?’ in Nine Worlds of Seid- Magic: Ecstasy and Neo- Shamanism in North European Paganism. London and New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 111-141. 

Pinch, Geraldine. Handbook of Egyptian Mythology.  Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002, pp. 78–80.

Week 9: Desire and Mysticism

Amy Hollywood, ‘Mysticism, Trauma, and Catastrophe in Angela of          Foligno’sBook and Bataille’s Atheological Summa’, inSensible Ecstasy:  Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands of History,Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 60-87.

Week 10: Tantra, Sacred Sex and Sex Magic

David Gordon White, ‘The Blood of the Yogini: Vital and Sexual Fluids inSouth Asian Thought and Practice,’ in Kiss of the Yogini: “Tantric Sex” in  its South Asian Contexts, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 67-93. 

Urban, Hugh B. "India’s Darkest Heart: Tantra in the Literary Imagination." In Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 106–133.

Djurdjevic, Gordan. "Solve et Coagula: Attitudes toward the Ambrosial Aspects of Human Seed in Certain Yogic Traditions and in the Sexual Magick of Aleister Crowley." Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 10, no. 1 (2010): 85–106. 

Week 11: Sexual Energies: Self and World

Yao, Xinzhong. "Harmony of Yin and Yang: Cosmology and Sexuality in    Daoism." In Sexuality and the World’s Religions. edited by David W. Machacek and Melissa M. Wilcox. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003, pp. 65–99

Rita M. Gross, ‘Gender and Buddha-Nature: Feminist Comments on Third-Turning Teachings and on the Vajrayana,’ in Buddhism after Patriarchy:  A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 185-206. 

Week 12: Gender and Supernatural Beings

Barnes, Nancy J. "Lady Rokujō's Ghost: Spirit Possession, Buddhism, and Healing in Japanese Literature." Literature and Medicine 8, no. 1(1989):106–121.