Course Catalogue 2026-2027

Terrorism, war, genocide, sexual abuse, murder: how can the human mind make sense of these horrors without reducing them to the 'obscenity of understanding', of trying to imagine the unimaginable? How can we possibly try to imagine the mind of perpetrators of violence, sexual abuse and terror? Yet these phenomena are becoming more pervasive and immediate and the destruction of human bodies and minds is worsening. How is it possible to sustain hope and faith in human goodness when our capacity for evil grows more sinister and ingenious? We will explore these and other questions comparatively and cross-culturally, examining the perspectives of religious, philosophical and psychoanalytic thinkers who represent Western and non-Western cultural and religious traditions.

Are people innately evil, or do they become evil due to negative life experiences? Can a universal internal moral imperative rooted in an innate good will exist independently of self-interest? Contemporary theorists from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and sciences argue that human beings are motivated by amoral internal forces that are shaped into moral action through diverse cultural learning processes. Notions such as the nature of subjectivity, agency, relationality, and capacities for critical self reflection are brought into question. These and other issues are explored through the lenses of philosophy, social theory, psychoanalysis and religion in dialogue with relevant classical and contemporary thinkers.

Adolf von Harnack imagined the origin of Christianity as a "timeless kernel" which, over the centuries, grew into a mighty tree. But Gilles Deleuze would argue that Christianity resembles a rhizome more than it does a tree. A rhizome possesses no pure beginnings and it resists all tree-like structures, favoring instead a nomadic system of growth. This course will explore the growth of early Christianity from a rhizomatic perspective, based on the theoretical tools of Deleuze and Felix Guattari, with whom he co-authored Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Topics for discussion will include Christ groups as 'desiring-machines,' the 'body of Christ without organs,' apparatuses of capture, destratifying early Christianity, resisting forms of Capitalist social production through nomadism, the New Testament as several regimes of signs, becoming-woman, and how to start your own molecular revolution. If Christianity's claim that that it is derived from a "timeless kernel" impedes interfaith dialogue and global cooperation, then perhaps a Deleuzian rhizomatic theoretic will facilitate interfaith dialogue and new forms of planetary thinking.

Readings in feminist theology, ethics, and critical theory to provide advanced resources for linking spiritual life and struggles to transform vast structures of injustice and violation with responsiveness to women's diverse lives, needs, and communities. Attention to challenges and methods central for feminist and Christian faith-and-justice ethics as applied to specific movements for transformation and to the development of collegial skills in discussions and scholarship.  Collaborative seminar format, presentations and responses, major paper.

Inquiry into the role and meaning of religion in a post/metaphysical, post/secular time within the frameworks of critical theory, psychoanalysis and ethics. Authors include Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Habermas and their theological/religious interlocutors, i.e. Charles Davis, Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Hent de Vries. Major paper.

Inquiry into the role and meaning of religion in a post/metaphysical, post/secular time within the frameworks of critical theory, psychoanalysis and ethics. Authors include Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Habermas and their theological/religious interlocutors, i.e. Charles Davis, Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Hent de Vries. Major paper.

Inquiry into the role and meaning of religion in a post/metaphysical, post/secular time within the frameworks of critical theory, psychoanalysis and ethics. Authors include Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Habermas and their theological/religious interlocutors, i.e. Charles Davis, Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Hent de Vries. Major paper.

Inquiry into the role and meaning of religion in a post/metaphysical, post/secular time within the frameworks of critical theory, psychoanalysis and ethics. Authors include Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Habermas and their theological/religious interlocutors, i.e. Charles Davis, Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Hent de Vries. Major paper.

This course will challenge the prevailing view that the thought of Sigmund Freud and Theodor Adorno are so deeply pessimistic as to be devoid of hope. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories are widely (mis)interpreted in the register of a crude pansexulaism and biological determinism. Adorno’s critique of society and the individual is often (mis)interpreted as so ruthlessly pervasive that it forecloses on any possibility for emancipatory transformation. This is a distorted view of both thinkers, that misses the hopeful, utopian currents that motivate and shape psychoanalysis and critical theory. The course will explore the emancipatory currents in Freud and Adorno, and their implications for potentialities of individual, social and ecological transformation.

Inquiry into the role and meaning of religion in a post/metaphysical, post/secular time within the frameworks of critical theory, psychoanalysis and ethics. Authors include Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Habermas and their theological/religious interlocutors, i.e. Charles Davis, Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, Hent de Vries. 

This course engages students with key Old Testament interpretive methods across a broad spectrum that may include historical-critical, literary, reader-oriented, theological, inter-disciplinary, and global approaches. Working with biblical texts together with readings from practitioners enables students to assess the assumptions, methods, development, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in each interpretive method.

This course engages students with key Old Testament interpretive methods across a broad spectrum that may include historical-critical, literary, reader-oriented, theological, inter-disciplinary, and global approaches. Working with biblical texts together with readings from practitioners enables students to assess the assumptions, methods, development, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in each interpretive method.