Religion

Exploring the history of chocolate production, we will examine Quaker faith and practice. We will also examine Quaker ethics, and how Friends weave ethical commitments into the fabric of our understanding of how we are called to live in right relationship with God and God’s creation. And we’ll play Monopoly

Are you interested in meeting college students from another culture? In this course, you will virtually join an Interfaith Dialogue course based at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, to learn more about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  We will first study each other’s religious traditions, history, beliefs, and practices, and then apply essential communication and dialogue skills in a series of one-on-one conversations across geographical and cultural differences. 

This course introduces students to the Study of Religion by focusing on a single issue of importance to the field and to contemporary society at large. Potential topics include the body, death and dying, cults, ritual, the sacred, and so on.

The Bible is the foundational sacred text for more than 2 billion people — and a source of political conflict, ethical dispute, and cultural inspiration. This introductory course focuses not only on the historical and geographical contexts in which the Bible arose but on its "afterlives" as well. This course will consider the variety of ways in which the Bible is employed in contemporary political and geopolitical conflicts and its influence on modern literature.

This course examines the Nazi racial state and the genocide perpetrated against Europe's Jews and other so-called "racial enemies." Using primary sources including laws, identity papers, diaries, photographs, maps, testimonies, and much more, we will consider many voices and experiences from this era. 

Explores major intellectual, political, and historical movements that define the modern Jewish experience in Europe, America, and the Middle East. Considers topics like emancipation and assimilation, Zionism, race, migration, and the Holocaust to understand the radical shifts of the Jewish diaspora.

This course will explore the history of Jewish migration and settlement in the Americas. We will begin with the Spanish colonial period, when Jews first came to the New World and move through Westward Expansion, when Central and Eastern European Jewish refugees became into pioneers, merchants, and cowgirls. This course will consider the unprecedented history of Jewish participation in American public life, including military service, religious institutions, and popular culture, as well as encounters with antisemitism, Zionism, and the Holocaust. 

We will consider notions of gender, sexuality, and purity in the Hebrew Bible as well as Talmudic and later rabbinic sources. Reading through a critical-historical lens, we will explore the innovations and controversies that exist in Jewish texts and traditions regarding issues like women's leadership, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and interfaith marriage.

From “convivencia” among Jews, Christians and Muslim to the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion of 1492, this course will explore the explore the history and culture of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula from the medieval period through the modern day.