This seminar examines selected topics and issues in human judgment and decision-making. Drawing largely from primary sources, the course considers various approaches to the study of decision-making, as well as descriptions and theories of human decision-making derived from those approaches. Students are led to reflect on the relevance and application of such issues to real-world choices in arenas such as economics, politics, business and marketing, health and medicine, and at individual, organizational, and broadly social levels.
This seminar course will review questions and controversies in current theory and research on human sexual behavior. The focus of class discussion will be the scientific literature within the field.
Religious Studies
An examination of the origins, nature, and content of representative literature from the New Testament and Hellenistic literature. Attention is paid to issues of critical reading and theological interpretation of Christian scripture. Not open for credit to students who have completed RELG 141.
An examination of the origins, nature, and content of representative literature from the New Testament and Hellenistic literature. Attention is paid to issues of critical reading and theological interpretation of Christian scripture. Not open for credit to students who have completed RELG 141.
This course explores Buddhist contributions to global conversations on poverty, environment, racism, capitalism, and gender. The central questions examined will be: what should the world look like and how do Buddhists engage to make that vision a reality?
How does religion make sense? How do we make sense of religion? Drawing on the rich array of meanings evoked by the word "sense," this course introduces and examines these "sensational" dilemmas. Drawing on a variety of case studies in the sensory cultures of religion, it explores how religious images, artifacts, practices, and spaces are historically connected to and help reproduce a dynamic human sensorium, and it investigates religion as a sensual practice, as a sensationalized contention, and as a category through which humans endeavor to make sense--of themselves and of the world.
This class examines how death, dying, and grief are ritualized and understood in different cultures. Exploration will also be made of current challenges, personal and societal, related to death such as advance directives (living wills), grief, hospice care, mortuary services, and bodily disposal. Attention will be paid to eco-death and issues of social justice related to death, too. Students will engage in a semester-long community- based project.
An examination of the letters of the Apostle Paul in their cultural and social-historical contexts. Attention is paid to Paul's religious thought and the reception of his writings in emergent Christianity.
Draws on an archive of American religion and culture to study gender and religion with an intersectional eye toward historical and contemporary dynamics of power. Introduces students to feminist, womanist, transgender, and queer scholarship in study of religion.
This seminar explores the ways concepts of "race," "religion," and "scripture" have mutually constituted each other over the course of modern European and American history. The course pays particular attention to the central, and sometimes hidden, role "the Bible” has played in the racial formation of citizens and subjects. To that end, the course draws upon several different disciplines and fields, including but not limited to: critical race theory, intersectional feminism, postcolonial theory, liberation hermeneutics, American religious history, and critical biblical studies. The course's overarching goal is to critically understand how “race” shaped and shapes interpretations of biblical texts as scripture and how the scriptural framing of racial categories imbues social hierarchies with religious authority.
Rhetoric
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Topical survey of the major questions and controversies in rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice, including rhetorical situations, classical canons of rhetoric, the role of rhetoric in civic life, and the relationship of rhetoric to power, politics, law, education, and ethics. Students consider the rights and responsibilities of speakers and critics. Accordingly, readings include selections from a wide array of rhetorical theorists and critics as well as a diverse and open canon of orators and speakers.
In this survey of the expectations for successful speaking across several disciplines, students will explore the techniques, strategies, and precepts peer and professional tutors may employ to help student speakers and listeners attain their goals. Participants will examine samples of student speaking and listening, discuss possible responses, and develop model interactions between and among tutors and students.
History of rhetorical theory and practice from Homer to Augustine. Primary focus on the relationship of rhetoric to politics, law, religion, philosophy, liberal education and culture in ancient Greece and Rome, along with an examination of the influence of ancient rhetoric on medieval rhetoric. Readings include selections from the Iliad, the sophists, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Philodemus, Cicero, Quintilian, Tacitus, Augustine, and others. Texts are read in English translation.
A study of the discursive and non-discursive aspects of protest from 1974-2024. Focus on the forms and functions of rhetorics and counter-rhetorics in U.S. controversies over civil rights, women’s rights, LBGTQIA+ rights, the environment, anti-war protests, and disability rights, among other social movements. Prerequisite: One course in rhetoric.
Concentrated study in a single area, topic, controversy, movement, or figure in rhetoric. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs. Prerequisites will vary by topic.
Russian
An introduction to the fundamentals of the language and culture with emphasis on communicative proficiency, clarity of pronunciation and basic skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Use of language laboratory required. Four hours of class each week, plus an additional conversation meeting with a native speaker.
Completion of grammar; intensive readings from authentic materials in Russian with emphasis on continued development of conversational and writing skills. Required weekly conversation meeting with a native speaker.