In-Person if the course requires attendance at a specific location and time for some or all course activities. These courses will have section codes starting in 0 or 4.
Online – Asynchronous if the course has no requirement for attendance at a specific time or location for any activities or exams. These courses will have the section code starting with 61.
Online – Synchronous if online attendance is expected at a specific time for some or all course activities, and attendance at a specific location is not expected for any activities or exams. These courses will have the section code starting with 62.
Hybrid if the course requires attendance at a specific location and time, however 33-66% of the course is delivered online. If online attendance is expected at a specific time, it will be in place of the in person attendance. These courses will have the section code starting with 31.
Some courses may offer more than one delivery method please ensure that you have the correct section code when registering via ACORN. You will not be permitted to switch delivery method after the last date to add a course for the given semester.
The linguistic turn and the interpretive turn in twentieth-century philosophy play a role in many cultural controversies and academic debates. This seminar examines representative texts from three schools of thought: German philosophical hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer), French poststructural feminism (Julia Kristeva), and Anglo-American analytical philosophy of language (John Searle).
Defined by Plato as lovers of truth, philosophers have long debated what truth is. Recently they have disagreed about how important truth is. This seminar examines prominent theories of truth since 1900, as proposed by such thinkers as Pierce, Heidegger, Davidson, Putnam, and Habermas. Feminist, deflationist, and postmodernist critiques of truth theory will be considered and an alternative proposed.
How does pragmatism's central tenet that the meaning and worth of ideas lies in their practical consequences comport with religious forms of life and the understandings of morality they fund? Does pragmatism's suspicion regarding traditional "supernaturalist" theologies leave any space to think alternatively about God and the human relationsip with God? What role do pragmatists see for religion in a democratic society, if any? In addressing these questions, this seminar will focus on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Jeffrey Stout.
How does pragmatism's central tenet that the meaning and worth of ideas lies in their practical consequences comport with religious forms of life and the understandings of morality they fund? Does pragmatism's suspicion regarding traditional "supernaturalist" theologies leave any space to think alternatively about God and the human relationsip with God? What role do pragmatists see for religion in a democratic society, if any? In addressing these questions, this seminar will focus on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Jeffrey Stout.
This course will explore current contributions to the field of feminist social thought. We will read from figures such as Gloria Anzaldu, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, and Chandra Mohanty on various ways of understanding the relationships between gendered identities and sociopolitical states of affairs.
The goal of the course is to study significant accounts of the nature of human beings in 20th-century French continental philosophy. It will begin by investigating the existential-phenomenological conceptions of human nature developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Persons, on such accounts, should be understood as being in the world, as embodied, as essentially defined by relations to others and relations of language, and as characterized by existential problems of anxiety and authenticity. We will then take up the development and transformation of this story in Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, who oppose to the humanist model of the well-formed and autonomous individual the model of persons as dispersed into networks of language and power.
Readers of Paul's letters have long noted the diversity of the Christian communities to which he writes and the different approaches he takes towards their problems and questions. This course will study Paul's letters from the point of his role as a pastor and theologian. Paul's theology does not develop out of a philosophical or theological "system" but from the everyday encounters with the problems of the communities and people of different historical and social context whom he meets while preaching the gospel.
Everyone participates in the arts and culture, but who can say why? This course asks why the arts are important and addresses issues that face contemporary creators and interpreters of culture. Our aim is to develop imaginative, faith-oriented participation in the arts and culture. We will consider such topics as artistic freedom and social responsibility; communication through the arts and culture; the impact of globalization on cultural communities; the ethics of mass entertainment; the aesthetic quality of urban environments; and the role of arts in worship and interreligious dialogue. In addition to class sessions, we will attend various events in the city. Lecture, discussion, class presentations, attendance of public events, paper writing. Class participation: 20% / Seminar presentations: 30% / Research project: 50%.
This course will reflect on the nature of the social world in a way that emerges from and is integrally linked with Christian faith. Challenging the common view that individuals are fully independent and self-made, we will look at the different kinds of communities that define us, in both restrictive and enabling ways: family, political society, religious community, and groups formed on the basis of other kinds of shared identities. We will look at the way in which we emerge as individuals only through these primary identifications, and at the conflicted way in which our individuality is essentially an attempt to understand and even overcome them. We will also explore the tensions that arise between these various communities and the claims upon us?between family and social membership, between religious community and political membership, between formal legal identity and concrete group identification, and so on. The course includes readings from diverse philosophical, religious, literary, and social-scientific texts. It aims to develop an existentially and philosophically rich Christian sensitivity to the complexity of social relationships that shape us and make claims on us.