Religion-General Religion

Examines classic and contemporary discussions of problems in the philosophy of religion.

The Proseminar for MA students in Religion, Politics & Conflict meets monthly each semester to discuss student research, to integrate methods and themes in the field, to facilitate professional development, and to deepen relationships with colleagues.

How do, might, or ought the aesthetic dimensions of human experience inform engagement with religion in the public life of a pluralistic society? Employing the theological aesthetic principles of foregrounding and interlacing to structure our investigation, our study examines philosophical, theological, and ethical (both religious and theological) responses to this question.

How is a religiously pluralistic society to pursue a societal common good? This graduate seminar explores responses to this question within religious ethics at local, national, and global levels. Readings will address major contributions to this topic within political philosophy before pivoting to responses in religious and theological ethics, including broadly Augustinian, Thomistic, and critical theological approaches.

This course introduces graduate students to classic and major recent scholarly texts in the field of African American religious history, from transatlantic slavery to the civil rights movement and Black Power.

Over the past decade, Sylvia Wynter has emerged as one of the most influential voices in Black Studies, Decolonial Studies, and Religious Studies.  Her distinct oeuvre has occasioned multiple edited volumes, collections, special issues of journals, conferences, and more.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject of general religion.

Caring well for an aging population is among the greatest challenges facing both the United States and the world. Significant gaps persist between the health and social systems that older adults need, and those to which they have access. This course uses a multidisciplinary approach--encompassing history, public health, ethics, the social sciences, and literature--to explore these gaps, their impact, and their meaning

This course offers MA students in Religious Studies resources for conceiving and executing a major research project or thesis. By the end of the semester, each participant will have completed a well-organized, detailed prospectus. The prospectus will reflect the guidance of one's thesis advisor as well as the scrutiny of the instructor and input from peers. Each student will thus be poised to begin writing his/her thesis the following semester.

A study of key texts by G. W. F. Hegel and their impact on philosophical, theological, ethical, and religious thought in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Topics considered include philosophical method, the relationship between philosophy and theology, the meaning of Spirit, dialectical materialism, critical theory, and key topics in Christian theology (God, Christology, pneumatology, etc.).

An interdisciplinary course that includes the following elements: studies in the textual traditions of particular religions; studies in literary theory; studies in literary traditions; the application of literary theory to studies in religious text traditions; and the application of the history of religions to the study of literary canons.

This monthly seminar explores methods and issues vital to the combined study of literatures and religions. It brings all MA students together, under faculty guidance, to attend to the broad range of individual projects and to foster a rich conversation that traverses the emergent field of study.

This course familiarizes students with a range of ways of studying practice in religions as it is evidenced in sacred texts, religious artifacts, images and locations; as it is chronicled in historical documents; as it is reflected in literary and artistic creations; and as it revealed in contemporary practice.

This course will explore the interrelations between evil and suffering of 20th- and 21st- century European and American thinkers, theologians, and theorists, as well as literary authors and artists, with particular attention to the Holocaust and American slavery.

The modern state is often depicted in irreparable conflict with visions of sovereignty and ethical goals of diverse religions, earthy and transcendent. However, recent research has pointed not only to shared genealogies between state and religion, but also how both have come to shape one another. Readings will consist of ethnographic and micro-historical cases of religions within and beyond the state from the dawn of modernity to the present.

What is "spirituality" and why has it become such a pervasive term in contemporary American culture? This course explores this question through historical interrogation of the category and its development since the early nineteenth century. The encounter of historic religious traditions, especially Protestant Christianity, with the intellectual, cultural, economic, and social currents of modernity will form the larger background for our analysis.

Given the multidisciplinary character of religious studies, it is imperative for new scholars to gain a basic sense of theoretical and methodological options in the field. By way of an examination of landmark texts, this course surveys the formation of religious studies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and considers some important contemporary approaches.

This interdisciplinary class acquaints graduate students with landmark texts that consider the place, significance, and purpose of religion in late modernity. Focusing on works written over the last few decades, it draws on multiple genres of study: philosophy, anthropology, social science, religious studies, and theological inquiry.

Examination of a major topic in modern religious thought--e.g., religious imagination, ethical and religious subjectivity, metaphor and religious language, religious and ethical conceptions of love.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Religious Studies.

Examines ways in which tragedy (and other forms of imaginative literature), scripture and theology, and hermeneutics and criticism portray and reflect on aspects of suffering and evil.

Tutorial on important themes, topics, and context of one or more major Christian Thinkers.

Examination of twentieth-century American religious autobiography.

This one credit seminar introduces students the Scriptural Interpretation and Practice (SIP) program to recent approaches to the comparative study of scriptural sources and scriptural traditions.

Examines current historiographical issues in the interpretation of religion in American history. Prerequisite: instructor permission.