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I'll list them alphabetically, in three sections: Secondary Books, Bibliographies and Dictionaries, and On the Internet:
Baha'u'llah: King of Glory. H.M. Balyuzi. Oxford: George Ronald, 1991. 539 pages. Also Eminent Baha'is in the Time of Baha'u'llah, with some historical background. H.M. Balyuzi. Oxford: George Ronald, 1985. 381 pages. These two books are volumes one and two of what was intended to be a four-volume study of the life and times of Baha'u'llah. The first one is, of course, the definitive biography of Baha'u'llah and is indispensible for this course for the historical context of the Tablets and explanation it provides. The second volume might be less useful for this particular course, but it does contain much important information.
The Covenant of Baha'u'llah. Adib Taherzadeh. Oxford: George Ronald, 1992. 473 pages. This lengthy book can be used almost as a companion volume to Taherzadeh's Revelation of Baha'u'llah series. Though topically only about the covenant, the length and amount of detail included renders the book widely useful--it contains much historical information.
God Passes By. Shoghi Effendi. This book needs no introduction; I just include it for the sake of completeness. If you don't have a copy, get one. The most recent hardcopy edition, partially underwritten by the Baha'is of the United States (I believe), costs only US$13.00.
Miracles and Metaphors. Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani, trans. Juan Cole. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1981. 211 pages. While all of Mirza Abu'l-Fadl's works are good and would be relevant for your study in this course, this particular book not only sheds light on Christianity and Islam from a Baha'i perspective, but also contains much insightful commentary and philosophy about the nature of revelation and symbolism in the Writings and Their interpretation.
The Ocean of His Words. John Hatcher. Oxford: George Ronald, 1997. 388 pages. This is one of the longest extended studies of the written revelation of Baha'u'llah, and one of the best ones that examine in any depth the literary qualities of the Writings. It includes many insightful commentaries on some of the Writings we'll be reading in this course.
A Resource Guide for the Scholarly Study of the Baha'i Faith. Robert Stockman and Jonah Winters. Wilmette: Research Office of the Baha'i National Center, 1997. 229 pages. This book was written/compiled as a comprehensive resource tool for educational and academic approaches to the Baha'i Faith. It contains numerous detailed bibliographies sorted by subject (e.g. "Baha'i History," "Holy Places, Baha'i," "Mysticism," "Psychology," "Religious Dialogues with Islam," "Unity in Diversity," etc.). It also contains sample curricula for Baha'i college courses, a Baha'i glossary, lists of Baha'i publishers' addresses, lists of Baha'i videos, etc. It is available online, at http://bahai-library.org/books/rg.
Sacred Acts, Sacred Space, Sacred Time (Baha'i Studies, volume I). John Walbridge. Oxford: George Ronald, 1996. 322 pages. This is a very useful collection of articles on the Faith and its history. It includes sections on, for example, Baha'i Law, pilgrimage, many Baha'i Writings, mysticism, the Baha'i calendar and holy days, etc. It is useful partly because the author has often found information lacking elsewhere, such as more exact dates of revelation for certain Tablets and the context in which They were revealed. These essays were originally written for the Short Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith but were published separately in advance.
Scripture and Revelation (Baha'i Studies, volume III). Moojan Momen, ed. Oxford: George Ronald, 1997. 369 pages. This is a collection of talks given to the Haj Mehdi Arjmand colloquia, rewritten and edited as essays. Included are useful papers such as Robert Stockman's "Revelation, Interpretation, and Elucidation in the Baha'i Writings," Ross Woodman's "The Inner Dimensions of Revelation," and essays on mythology, love in Baha'i mysticism, religious exclusivism, and Zoroastrianism.
Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Religions. Anthony Lee, general ed. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982-. I don't list any one specific volume of this series, which now has nine volumes in print, because each volume is useful in its own way but none of the nine stands out as especially relevant for this course. I highly recommend looking at the tables of contents for the series, either by requesting a catalogue from 1-800-788-4067 or visiting Kalimat's website, http://www.kalimat.com.
The Babi and Baha'i Religions: An Annotated Bibliography. Denis MacEoin. Not yet published. Available only on the internet, at http://bahai-library.org/resources. With approximately 7,500 entries, this bibliography is the second largest available. It includes languages other than English, whereas Collins', though larger, only lists English texts. It has faults, most obviously that it is an unfinished work in progress which has not yet been edited and the online edition contains minimal formatting. While some have disagreed with elements of MacEoin's scholarship and articles, this is simply a list of publications classified by subject which draws no historical or ideological conclusions.
A Basic Baha'i Chronology. Glenn Cameron with Wendi Momen. Oxford: George Ronald, 1996. 540 pages. Though somewhat pricey at US$29.95, this exhaustive chronology is invaluable when it comes to looking up dates. The authors scoured every significant historical or biographical book on the Babi and Baha'i Faiths to extract or extrapolate the dates for all notable events, and included a brief bibliography for further reading after each entry (marked by abbreviations, e.g. "bkg 342").
A Basic Baha'i Dictionary. Wendi Momen. Oxford: George Ronald, 1989. 261 pages. This is the only relatively detailed dictionary of the Baha'i Faith, and as such is very useful. It can seem fairly superficial, since 261 pages is barely enough to offer even a fraction of the entries necessary for a Baha'i dictionary and it will be at least partly superseded by the eventual appearance of the Short Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith. Currently, though, it is very useful.
The Baha'i Faith: A Historical Bibliography. Joel Bjorling. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985. 168 pages. This bibliography, written by a non-Baha'i, is not very good but must be listed for the sake of completeness. It is lengthy and fairly comprehensive, but it contains a few errors and gives too much space to listing works by covenant breakers. If your local college library has a copy, however, it could make a useful supplement.
Baha'i Glossary. Marieh Gail. Wilmette: Baha'i Publishing Trust, first printing 1955. 56 pages. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only lengthy glossary of Baha'i terms. Includes pronunciation guide. This is currently out of print, but if you ask around your local community you might find someone with a copy.
Bibliography of English-Language Works on the Babi and Baha'i Faiths 1844-1985. William P. Collins. Oxford: George Ronald, 1990. 521 pages. This book, along with the two dictionaries listed above, is one of the indispensible additions to any academic Baha'i library. It is the most complete biblography available, and organizes works on the Faith by title, author, and subject. As the Library Director at the Baha'i World Centre from 1977 to 1990, Collins is perhaps the leading expert on Baha'i bibliography.
Lights of Guidance: A Baha'i Reference File. Helen Bassett Hornby, comp. New Delhi: Baha'i Publishing Trust, first edition 1983, fourth edition 1996(?). This is a standard Baha'i resource which I'm sure all of you are familiar with, but I list it to be complete.
The Association for Baha'i Studies of North America (http://www.bahai-studies.ca) contains abstracts and, in a few cases, even the text of all publications of the ABS. News such as conference information and registration, ABS bulletins, and a bulletin board is also included. I plan to reformat, reorganize, and expand this site before the end of 1998, so please bear with the site's current limitations.
The Baha'i Academics Resource Library (http://bahai-library.org), with thousands of individual essays, Tablets, and books, is the internet's most complete collection of writings of the Universal House of Justice, pilgrims' notes, academic articles, resource tools, bibliographies, theses, etc. Almost everything here is unpublished and perhaps not yet edited, so much of it must be used with the appropriate caution. It has all been screened and subjected to a cursory editing before being posted, though, so everything available there is at least useful and not too likely to contain errors. Work from previous students of the Wilmette Institute can also be found at http://bahai-library.org/students.
The H-Baha'i homepage (http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai) is the only academic webpage on the Faith sponsored by a non-Baha'i organization, in this case the University of Michigan in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Humanities. It features the internet's largest collection of original online publications of texts in Arabic and Persian, and as well contains a growing collection of academic articles and research notes.
The Leiden List to the Writings of Baha'u'llah, compiled by Sen McGlinn et al., is available online at http://bahai-library.org/resources. Though a work-in-progress which is but a fraction of the size such a list must oneday become, it is an indispensible resource tool. It lists much information about 340 major Tablets of Baha'u'llah, including (where known) publication and translation information, dates, and language and place of revelation.
The main Baha'i online search engine, used for finding keywords in the Baha'i Writings, is the True Seeker search engine at http://sunsite.unc.edu/Bahai/TrueSeeker. Casper Voogt's search engine, at http://www.bcca.org/~cvoogt, also allows one to search other online Baha'i homepages.
Descriptions of other Baha'i Internet Resources, such as listservs, the Usenet (newsgroups), ftp archives, and other homepages can be found at http://bahai-library.org/books/start.