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In Part I, after covering Native American religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam during the first two months of the course, students range from the op-ed page to the arts section of THE NEW YORK TIMES in order to discuss what they have learned about Judaism from the news of the day. They talk about anti-Semitism, relations between Muslims and Jews, the concept of sacred space, and the connection between religion and the arts in coverage that touches on Buddhism and Catholicism as well as Judaism.
In Part II, students continue their study of Judaism and discuss examples from the news of the diversity of Jewish experience, what it means to be a Jew, religious observance in Judaism, comparisons between Judaism and Islam, and the role that interpretation and conflict play in religion itself and also in news coverage of religion.
In Part III, students meet with THE NEW YORK TIMES religion reporter Laurie Goodstein. They have read her stories during the semester and ask questions about reporting on religion, especially the issue of covering religion after September 11 and what makes religion a news story.
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In a bonus interview, religion professor Christopher Vecsey and political science professor Timothy Byrnes talk about using the news to show students how people's religious lives are played out in the real world. They discuss the role religion plays in politics and politics in religion; how to integrate reading the news into teaching about religion; using the news to convey to students religion as a contemporary phenomenon that is subject to interpretation and point of view; the increase in religion reporting since September 11; how students learn from the news both about their own religious traditions and about how people around the world define their lives in religious terms; and finding the religion angle in all aspects of the news.
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In a second interview, Professors Vecsey and Byrnes describe the variety of news coverage that is available for teaching with depth and breadth about world religions. They talk specifically about the diversity of Judaism, covering anti-Semitism, religious conflict as news, and the coverage of religious observance and ritual through arts reporting. They make observations about reporting on Catholicism and describe the intersection in the course between reading about religion in books and reading about it in the newspaper. Finally, they discuss what the news reveals about religious argument, religion's concern with ultimate questions, religion and modernity, and how the news makes the vitality of religion obvious to students in a current and contemporary way.
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Christopher Vecsey is the Charles A. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Native American Studies at Colgate University and the author and editor of many books on North American Indian religions. Most recently, he is coeditor of THE CROSSING OF TWO ROADS: BEING CATHOLIC AND NATIVE IN THE UNITED STATES (Orbis Books, 2003).
Timothy A. Byrnes is professor of political science at Colgate University. He is coeditor of RELIGION IN AN EXPANDING EUROPE (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the author of CATHOLIC BISHOPS IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Princeton University Press, 1991).
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