I teach undergraduate and graduate classes in social and environmental ethics, religion and society, and Latin American religion.  Here is a list of some I teach regularly.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

IDS 1114:  ETHICS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE (QUEST 1)

* To be offered Fall 2023 *

This interdisciplinary Quest 1 course explores the how the methods and traditions in the humanities provide resources for approaching publicly relevant ethical issues.  The topics we will address include freedom of speech, economic inequality, and sex and gender justice.  Philosophical and legal arguments, laws, papal encyclicals, pastoral letters, historical analyses, and news articles will be incorporated into our course readings.  The crucial skills we will emphasize throughout the class include identifying the moral dimensions of legal, political, and economic problems; critically evaluating traditions and perspectives; appreciating the diversity of perspectives on these controversial issues; thinking beyond one’s own interests; and approaching disagreement with open-mindedness and a willingness to be rationally persuaded.  The class is thus for students from any major who want to explore public moral challenges in rigorous, creative ways.  Syllabus here: IDS 1114 Ethics and the Public Sphere Syllabus- fall 2023

IDS 2935: RELIGION, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND SOCIAL CHANGE (QUEST 2)

This class explores the role of religion in movements for social change.  We will address core questions in the study of social movements – how movements emerge, why people join, how they mobilize resources, what strategies and tactics they employ, and what goals they seek – by examining a range of case studies, including civil rights and anti-racist organizing, environmental protection, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, immigration reform, and gender justice. We will pay particular attention to the distinctive ways in which religion enters into the formation, identity, practices, and outcomes of various movements. Here’s a syllabus: IDS2935.SocialMovements.Fall2022

REL 3082:  GLOBAL ETHICS

This class explores the ethical dimensions of global social, political, and environmental issues. It will pay particular attention to the roles of religion and cultural traditions in the ways people address concrete problems, including human rights,  war and peace, climate change, and public health.  Here’s a recent syllabus: REL3082.GlobalEthics.Spring2023

This class examines the relationship between religion, science, and philosophy in different religious traditions, focusing on the West. For several thousand years, at least, religious, scientific, and philosophical ways of thinking have interacted in complex, varied, and sometimes conflictive ways.  This class surveys a range of issues, thinkers, and approaches to some of the most important ways in which religion and science interact.  The course will be divided into three sections.  The first will cover philosophical issues related to scientific understandings about the natural world and human life, including cosmology, the origins of life, and evolution by natural selection.  The second section will address various ethical issues, including those related to environmental problems, cloning, and scientific methods and procedures.  The third section will focus on the way science is being used by contemporary scholars of religious studies, with particular attention to cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.  Here’s a recent syllabus: REL3160-Summer2020-3.

REL 3148:  RELIGION AND VIOLENCE

The relationship between religion and violence has long posed a challenging problem both for contemporary politics and for the academic study of religion.  Religions sometimes contribute to violence or justify it, but they can also help achieve peaceful solutions to violent conflicts.  Religious rituals themselves can be extremely violent, and some scholars argue that violence lies at the heart of religion itself.  This class explores violence within religion, religiously motivated violence, religious justifications of political violence, and religious rejections and resolutions of violence.  Throughout the course, readings will address a variety of religious traditions in different regions and historical periods.  We will also explore a variety of approaches to religious studies and to comparative ethics, including both descriptive and normative studies.  Here is a recent syllabus:  ReligionViolence.SummerB2016

REL 3171: ETHICS IN AMERICA

* To be offered Spring 2024*

This class examines the ethical dimensions of current issues in US society, including religious pluralism, immigration, racial justice, and the culture individualism. It is open to all students with sophomore standing, and it fulfills the GenEd “D” requirement.  Here’s a syllabus: Syllabus.REL3171.Spring2022

REL 3492:  RELIGION, ETHICS, AND NATURE

This course examines the ethical dimensions of humans’ interactions with the environment.  We will look at materials from a variety of religious traditions in order to explore the ways different religious traditions and philosophical approaches answer questions about how and why people value nature. The diverse perspectives offered in the readings will provide a framework for thinking both about social-political ethics and about contemporary environmental issues, both practical and theoretical.  We will examine the ways different problems have been approached, the assumptions underlying those approaches, and their strengths and weaknesses.  We will also use the readings to evaluate specific local and regional environmental issues.  Here’s a recent syllabus:  REL3492.S13

ADVANCED UNDERGRADUATE/GRADUATE COURSES

REL 4188: ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES AND PRACTICES

* To be offered Spring 2024*

This course explores the relationship between attitudes and actions regarding the natural environment. We will ask how people connect their values to their actions (or not), what motivates people to change, how different ethical theories relate to (and shed light on) environmental behavior, the ways that material structures constrain or enable moral actions, and the challenges of environmental practice at different geographic scales. We will draw on interdisciplinary sources including ethics, conservation behavior, and moral psychology. In spring 2022, this course will also have a section for CURE (Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience) students. Here’s a syllabus: REL4188.spring2022

REL4382: Religion and Politics in Latin America

In the past two decades or so, Latin America has been a fruitful research site for scholars interested in the interactions between religion and politics, understood in a variety of ways.  In the past, research focused on the relations between institutions (generally understood as church and state) and on theology.  “Religion” was generally understood as the mainstream Catholic Church, defined by its hierarchy and clergy.  This focus has been supplemented, since the 1980s, with explorations of grassroots communities, religious diversity, the growth of evangelical Protestantism, women’s participation, and a wide range of other issues.  Not only the choice of topics but also theoretical approaches have diversified considerably.  In this course, we will look at several main issues: the lingering impact of colonialism and religion’s role in political conflicts around it; the political implications of growing religious diversity; and the role of religion in contemporary social movements. Here’s a recent syllabus: REL4382.S2021

REL 4092/RLG 6095:  ETHICS, UTOPIAS, AND DYSTOPIAS

This course explores the ethical significance of utopian and dystopian ideas. Imagined societies, good and bad, serve both to criticize the present and offer visions of a better future.  We will read fictional utopias and also look at some efforts to put utopian ideas into practice, including religious communities and millenarian movements.  In addition to looking at specific utopian visions, we will examine theoretical discussions and critiques of the idea of utopia. Here is a recent syllabus: REL4092.Utopias.F2016

REL 4177/RLG 5495:  ANIMAL ETHICS

This class introduces students to a variety of ethical perspectives and issues related to nonhuman animals, both wild and domesticated.  We will examine the major theoretical frameworks for thinking about the value of animals and human duties toward them, including rights-based, Utilitarian, feminist, and religious approaches.  After learning about the major ethical frameworks used to think about the moral status of nonhuman animals, we will examine several case studies, including issues such as animal agriculture, hunting, biomedical research, meat-eating, ecological restoration, and animals in entertainment, among others. Here’s a syllabus: AnimalEthics.Fall2014

REL 4141/RLG 5945:  RELIGION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

* To be offered Spring 2023 *

This course explores religion’s role in both intentional social change (e.g., social movements) and other forms of cultural, economic, and political transformation.  We will focus on some key questions such as the following:  Is religion an anaesthetizing or motivating force in struggles for social change?  What can religion contribute to modernization and democratization?  What factors shape the social character and role of religion?  How does religion relate to other forces for or against social change?  And how do different theoretical frameworks help us understand all these different processes? Here’s a recent syllabus: REL4141.SocChange.Spring2023

REL 4177/RLG 5149:  CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ETHICS

This class is recommended for students seeking a background in the foundational thinkers and texts of Western social thought.   It will examine the ways influential Western thinkers have conceived of the relations among religion, ethics, and the social-political order.  Readings will be from primary texts, both classic and more recent.  We will begin with Plato and Aristotle, then move to early Christian thinkers, including Paul and Augustine. Readings continue through medieval, Reformation, and Enlightenment classics.  The course finishes with modern works, focused on neo-orthodox Protestantism, post-Conciliar Roman Catholicism, and contemporary feminist ethics. The course will focus on several main questions in social ethics.  First, what does a good society look like?  Second, what is the relationship between being a good person and participating in a good society?   We will also look at the relationship between religious faith and public commitments, in particular in the context of religion’s historical roles in Western society. Here’s a recent syllabus:  REL4177.S14

GRADUATE-ONLY COURSES

RLG 6035: METHOD AND THEORY IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES, PART I

This seminar reflects on the modern study of religion through careful readings of classical theories of religion, including sociological, anthropological, psychoanalytical approaches. Syllabus here: RLG6035-MTI.Fall2021.doc

RLG 6387:  RELIGIONS IN LATIN AMERICA

Latin American religions are diverse and complex, vastly different from the stereotyped image of a “Catholic continent.”  No single course could cover the entire range of religious experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, but this class will introduce graduate students to some of the more significant and interesting varieties of religious life in Latin America, with particular attention to contemporary religious diversity and change.  In the process, students will be exposed to and encouraged to evaluate a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of religion, past and present, in Latin America and the Caribbean. Here’s a recent syllabus: RLG6387.S2021

RLG 6183:  ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

* To be offered Spring 2024*

This seminar is open to graduate students from  religion and from other departments, as long as they have some background in environmental studies, environmental philosophy, or religion and nature.  Readings and discussions will explore classic and contemporary theoretical approaches and models in environmental ethics, as well as the possibilities of teaching, applying, and critiquing these approaches. Some of the approaches and topics covered include land ethics, theistic and non-theistic religious ethics, postmodernist critiques, evolutionary and ecological theory, ecofeminism, social ecology, bioregionalism, and others.  Although we pay special attention to thinkers and debates within religious studies, readings come from a wide range of fields, including philosophy, anthropology, environmental studies, education, and ecology. Throughout the class, we pay attention not only to theoretical issues but also to the real-world implications and applications of ethical theories.  Thus we explore areas such as environmental education, ecological restoration, and sustainable resource consumption, in addition to philosophically-oriented topics and readings.  Here’s a recent syllabus: RLG6183.EnvEthics.Spring2022