This course will explore the history of gossip throughout the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Gossip, or chatter about other people and their affairs, has been undervalued both as a historical force, but also as an object of study. We will thus be engaging in a relatively new intellectual adventure, reading old texts but with an eye to new ways of interpreting and understanding them.
The course will show that even though gossip is often dismissed as unserious or harmful, few communities can function without it, and gossip has frequently been the motivator and guiding force behind things that are supposedly more “serious”. For instance, therapeutics, psychology, and politics have all secretly built upon the knowledge provided by gossip.
In this course we will ask what “gossip” means, what it does, and how it has been understood in religious contexts. Beginning with an exploration of what gossip is, we will then move through a series of units covering: the role of gossip in the creation of religious movements; the demonization of gossip by religious authorities; the way gossip allows the creation of communities of resistance; and, finally the role of gossip in the formation of intellectual and theological cultures.
