Religion

First-Year Studies—Year | 10 credits

RLGN 1026

The concept of a “thing”—an entity that exists in and of itself, separate from all other things—is nothing but a useful fiction; in the real world, there actually are no “things” that meet that description. This, in a nutshell, is the startling proposition advanced by the Buddhist doctrine of śunyatā—or “emptiness,” as the Sanskrit term is usually translated. Often misconstrued by critics as a form of nihilism (“nothing exists”), idealism (“all that exists are mental phenomena”), or skepticism (“we can never know what really exists”), the emptiness doctrine is better interpreted as a radical critique of the fundamental conceptual categories that we habitually use to talk about and make sense of the world. This course will have several aims. In general, it is designed to help students develop the kind of research, writing, and critical thinking skills that are needed for academic success in college and in whatever career paths they may pursue thereafter. More specifically, the course will aim to impart a clear, accurate understanding of the “emptiness” doctrine as it developed in the context of Buddhist intellectual history and found expression in various genres of classical Buddhist literature. Another aim of the course will be to explore ways in which the emptiness doctrine, if taken seriously as a critique of the mechanisms and inherent limitations of human knowledge, may be fruitfully brought to bear in a number of different disciplines—academic and otherwise. In the fall semester, the class will read and discuss a number of Buddhist texts—primary sources in English translation from the original Sanskrit or Chinese—that advocate the philosophy of emptiness, as well as some secondary scholarship on the subject. Students will also be given a series of homework assignments that target basic academic skills in the humanities and social sciences (e.g., how to do bibliographic research and evaluate the reliability of sources; how to annotate scholarly writing). Individual conference meetings with the instructor in the fall will be devoted to learning and improving those skills. In the spring semester, the class will read and discuss a number of scholarly works written in English that deal with Western (non-Buddhist) traditions of historiography, literary theory, and scientific inquiry. The readings are designed to introduce students to some of the main intellectual trends in the humanities, social sciences, and “hard” sciences that they are likely to encounter in other college courses. At the same time, the class will learn how to use the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness as an analytical tool to critique the conceptual models employed in the various academic disciplines treated in the readings. For individual conference work in the spring, each student will be required to use that tool to analyze the fundamental nomenclature—the way of dividing up the world into “things”—employed by some particular field of human endeavor, which may be an academic, artistic, or athletic discipline or any other endeavor (e.g., political or economic) in which they are especially interested. At the end of the semester, each student will have half of a class meeting to introduce their particular field of inquiry to everyone else. They will select some representative readings that the class will do in advance, lead a discussion of those readings, and present their own critical analysis of the nomenclature used in the field in question. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly. 

Faculty

• Griffith Foulk

First-Year Studies—Year | 10 credits

RLGN 1025

This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to the foundational texts of Islam, the historical development of different Muslim cultures, and the contemporary issues that animate Islam’s ever-evolving manifestations. We will begin with the Qur’an, a book whose juxtaposition of narrative fragments, apocalyptic imagery, divine voice, and sociopolitical themes conveyed in rhymed Arabic prose has both entranced and confounded readers. We will look at the historical roots of the “isms” used today to describe the orientations of Sunnism, Shi‘ism, Sufism, and Salafism. Looking beyond the Middle East, where only about 20 percent of the current global population of Muslims reside, we will examine how migrating people, concepts, texts, and practices both transform and are transformed by existing traditions in different geographical locations. Contemporary preoccupations such as the status of women in Islam and the relationship between Islam and politics will be examined from a variety of perspectives illustrating the intricacies of Muslim and non-Muslim acts of interpretation and their relationship to power and authority. Whether you are an insider or an outsider to the worlds of Muslim thought and practice, the universal value of Muslim traditions is undeniable; we will be taking everything we read seriously as applicable to our everyday lives. What does the Qur’an have to tell us about visible and invisible worlds? How can an understanding of Sharia law and Sufi ethics help us with our own urgent moral dilemmas? What does it mean to cultivate a sense of the sacred and what spaces are opened up through this way of being in the world? How do commitments to certain metaphysical claims relate to our engagements in social and political acts? To address these and other questions we will study not only religious texts, but also how Islam and Muslim practices are represented in autobiographies, fiction writing, films, music and art. In fall, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; in spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.

Faculty

• Kristin Zahra Sands

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 3321

The Christian Apostle Paul has left a profound legacy to the history of Western thought. His theology is preserved for us in a handful of letters which are included in the canon of the Christian New Testament. We will study Paul in the context of the Hellenistic culture of which he was a part in order to better understand his ideas and appreciate their place in the emerging world of Christianity. This will include studying Greek Religion, the Mystery Cults and religious gender roles in ancient Greece. In this course we will learn to read ancient texts closely, practice exegesis, and exercise the hermeneutical art. How can a modern reader access the world of a writer separated by nearly two millennia, a writer whose thoughts have been continually reinterpreted and sown into the fabric of Western culture to such a degree that any reading necessarily embodies this complex interpretive tradition—blurring the world of the Apostle with the interests and agendas of the succeeding centuries?

Faculty

• Ron Afzal

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 3227

Note: Same as ARTH 3227.

From its beginnings as a loose-knit group of wandering ascetics in ancient India, Buddhism developed into a monastic religion that diversified and spread across Asia, producing great buildings and monuments of wood and stone and furnishing them with a rich array of paintings and sculptures. This course will focus on the Buddhist art and architecture of South, Central, and East Asia, seeking to understand and interpret it within the specific social, institutional, mythical, and ritual contexts in which it was produced and used. Thus, for example, when examining the ground plans and architectural features of Buddhist monasteries in different parts of Asia, we will also study the internal organization and operation of those institutions, reading the rules of individual and group discipline that regulated them and learning about the various religious practices and ceremonial observances that took place in them. The aim is to explore the complex connections that exist between architectural forms and social and religious functions and meanings. By the same token, when looking at works of Buddhist art, we will not only concern ourselves with matters of iconography, style, provenance, and dating. We will also learn about the various iconic and non–iconic functions that Buddhist art has had in a wide range of cultic and social settings, and will study the religious doctrines, ideology, mythology, and folklore that has informed its production and use at different times and places.

Faculty

• Griffith Foulk

Open, Lecture—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 2229

What impact has religion had on the fight for racial equality in the United States? This lecture course will introduce students to the role of religion in shaping the histories of Black Americans from slavery through to the present. As a class, we will interrogate whether religion helped or hindered the struggles for freedom and equality. We will look at how religion was utilized by enslaved individuals, ordinary people, and civil rights activists to find dignity in an unequal world, build organizing spaces, and create social and political networks. At the same time, we will analyze the ways in which religion was deployed to justify slavery, racial segregation, and inequality. Topics will include: religious practices under enslavement; the use of scripture by abolitionists and enslavers; the growth of the Black church; the use of religion throughout the long civil rights movement; the writings and activism of African American Protestant clergy; the role of Black religious women as organizers; the religious influence on non-violent civil disobedience; the role of the Nation of Islam within the Black Power movement; Jewish responses to the civil rights movement; and fundamentalist Christian defenses of racial segregation. The course will end by asking what role does religion play today and in the future for the fight for racial equality in the United States?

Faculty

• Gabriel Raeburn

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 3164

For over a century, scholars predicted that religion’s influence in the United States would decline due to the forces of modernization and secularization. They were wrong. As recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion, prayer in public schools, and education funding demonstrate, religion’s impact on American politics remains far from marginal. Religion shapes laws, influences voting patterns, and impacts how many Americans view pressing social and economic issues. This seminar will explore the relationship between religion and politics in the United States from a historical and contemporary perspective. Starting at the beginning of the 20th century and moving roughly chronologically, we will analyze how different religious groups and individuals have influenced and responded to a range of topics, including, but not limited to, abortion rights, civil rights, the economy, the environment, foreign policy, immigration, public education, and the sexual revolution.

Faculty

• Gabriel Raeburn

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 3140

Jewish mystics have left us with a vast corpus of imaginative literature that raises vital questions about the creation of the universe, the place of humans in the cosmos, the relationship of humanity to God, and the role of human agency in salvation and soteriology. This course will provide an overview of the development of Jewish mysticism, with a particular focus on the esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought known as Kabbalah. The course will approach mysticism not as a marginal or esoteric curiosity, but as a recurring and generative mode of Jewish religious creativity, deeply embedded in textual traditions, historical experience, and cultural imagination. We will begin with the hekhalot and merkavah literature of late antiquity, examining early Jewish mystical ascent narratives, ritualized practices of visionary experience, and the theological challenges posed by proximity to the divine. These texts will introduce key themes, such as sacred language, secrecy, embodiment, danger, and authority, that reverberate throughout the later history of Kabbalah. From there, we will turn to the emergence of medieval Kabbalah in 12th- and 13th-century Provence and Spain, focusing on the development of the sefirotic system, symbolic theosophy, and new conceptions of God, Torah, and human action. A central portion of the course will be devoted to the Zohar, the foundational work of Kabbalah. We will read extended passages closely, attending to its mythic imagination, narrative form, and radical reconfiguration of biblical interpretation, gender, and divine plurality. The seminar will then move to the Lurianic Kabbalah of 16th century Safed, exploring how doctrines of cosmic rupture and repair became powerful frameworks for understanding exile, history, and ethical responsibility. The course will then continue with Hasidism, analyzing how earlier mystical ideas were reshaped into devotional practices, charismatic leadership, and new models of religious subjectivity in early modern Eastern Europe. We will examine both the continuity and tension between elite esotericism and popular spirituality. We will also look at the rise of Christian Kabbalah, and Christian thinkers who reinterpreted Kabbalah according to a Christian framework. In its final section, the seminar will turn to modern and postmodern reinterpretations of Kabbalah, including both literature inspired by Kabbalah, and modern pop cultural appropriations of Kabbalah. Readings will include writers who draw on Kabbalistic motifs to grapple with trauma, language, identity, and the limits of meaning. Throughout the course, students will engage primary texts in translation alongside critical scholarship, developing skills in close reading, historical analysis, and theoretical reflection. The seminar will invite sustained attention to how mystical traditions endure, adapt, and provoke new questions about religion, interpretation, and the imagination.

Faculty

• Joel Swanson

Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

RLGN 3301

As a method of analyzing human beings through the lens of unconscious mental processes, the field of psychoanalysis has long had much to say about the topic of religion and the divine, as foundational influences on human experience and the human condition. This seminar will explore how psychoanalytic theory has grappled with religion, myth, ritual, and the idea of the divine from the late 19th century to the present. Rather than treating religion solely as belief or doctrine, the course will approach it as a set of symbolic practices, narratives, and affects that shape subjectivity, desire, and social life. Psychoanalysis will provide a distinctive lens through which to ask why religious ideas persist, how they are experienced, and what psychic work they perform. The course will begin with Sigmund Freud, whose writings on religion, most notably Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, and Moses and Monotheism, frame religion as a response to unconscious wishes, anxiety, and authority. Freud’s controversial reduction of religion to illusion and neurosis will set the stage for later debates about whether psychoanalysis undermines, explains, or transforms religious meaning. From there, we will turn to Carl Jung, whose depth psychology offers a contrasting account of myth, symbol, and the sacred, emphasizing archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the religious dimensions of psychic integration. Mid-century figures such as D. W. Winnicott and Erich Fromm will allow us to think about religion beyond repression and illusion. Winnicott’s concept of transitional phenomena will open new ways of understanding ritual, prayer, and religious objects as creative spaces between inner and outer reality, while Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis will help us to reconsider religion in relation to ethics, freedom, and social critique. We will then examine Jacques Lacan, whose reworking of Freud through language, structure, and desire raises difficult questions about God, law, absence, and the symbolic order. The seminar will also foreground feminist psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, who challenge masculinist assumptions in both psychoanalysis and religious traditions. Their writings will invite us to rethink embodiment, maternity, sexuality, and alterity, and to ask whether new imaginaries of the divine are possible beyond patriarchal symbolic systems. In the final portion of the course, we will engage postcolonial psychoanalytic perspectives, considering how religion, colonial power, race, and trauma intersect. These approaches will allow us to question the universality of classical psychoanalytic models and explore how religious myth and practice function within histories of domination, resistance, and cultural translation. Through close readings of theoretical texts and sustained discussion, students will critically assess psychoanalysis as both a critique of religion and a resource for reimagining it. The course will encourage reflection on enduring questions about belief, meaning, desire, and the unconscious in modern and global contexts.

Faculty

• Joel Swanson

Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

RLGN 3101

The Hebrew Bible stands at the foundation of Western culture. Its stories permeate our literature, our art—indeed, our sense of identity. Its ideas inform our laws, have given birth to our revolutions and social movements, and have thereby made most of our social institutions possible (as well as the movements to remove them). What is this book? How was it written? Who wrote it? Who preserved it for us? Why has all or part of this body of literature been considered holy to the practitioners of Judaism and Christianity? Four thousand years ago, various groups from small tribe-wandering nomads would get together and tell stories. These stories were not preserved on stone tombs but in the hearts and memories of the people to whom they belonged. We will read the collection of traditions in a book called Genesis and compare these stories with other texts (written in mud and stone) such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Babylonian Creation Epic, which were contemporary with biblical traditions. We will read the Biblical epic of liberation, Exodus; the historical books that weave theology into a history of a nation; and the oracles of the great Hebrew Prophets of Israel—those reformers, judges, priests, mystics, and poets to whom modern culture owes its grasp of justice. We will trace the social, intellectual, and political history of the people formed by these traditions from the Late Bronze Age until the Roman Age.

Faculty

• Ron Afzal

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3005

There is perhaps no one who has not heard the name of a seemingly obscure carpenter’s son, executed by the Romans around the year 33 CE. Why? His friends and followers preserved the memory of his life and teaching orally and then, after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE, in written records we have today in the Christian Bible’s New Testament. This course will focus on the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why were they written, what do they have to say, and how were they intended to be read? To do this, we will immerse ourselves in the religion of the Holy Land—that is, the various forms of Judaism and the role of the dominant world empire of Rome. Our study will consist mainly of primary texts in the New Testament, but we will also have recourse to some rabbinic materials, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Faculty

• Ron Afzal

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3021

Note: Closed to students who have taken Buddhist Meditation (RLGN 4021).

Most branches of the Buddhist tradition throughout history have embraced the idea that a deluded apprehension of one’s “self” and the “things” that make up one’s world is the root cause of all suffering experienced by humans and other living beings in the round of rebirth (saṃsāra). On a more mundane level, Buddhists have generally held that regulating the “mind”—the deep-seated nexus of habitual responses, proclivities, and beliefs that filters our perceptions and directs our actions—is the key to achieving individual satisfaction and social harmony and justice. Thus, whether the aim is ultimate salvation, happiness in this life, or simply the attainment of material benefits, Buddhists have often prescribed some program of sustained mental discipline—some kind of “meditation” practice—as the best means of working toward the goal. But “Buddhist meditation” is only a loose rubric that covers a wide range of different practices as, for example, techniques for calming the mind and entering into trance; procedures for the systematic philosophical analysis of ultimate reality; mental exercises meant to suppress negative emotions (e.g., anger) and foster positive ones (e.g., loving kindness); the cultivation of “mindfulness,” in which one strives to maintain a constant, detached awareness of one’s own physical and mental states without trying to change them; mental exercises for recalling and repenting bad deeds done in the past; the visualization of deities, performed in conjunction with devotional prayer; the “investigation of words” attributed to Zen masters, also known as koan practice; and so on. In this course, we examine a selection of texts deriving from the Indian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions that treat these different types of meditation. Readings will be in English translation. 

Faculty

• Griffith Foulk

Open, Lecture—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 2138

The sociologist Max Weber famously argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that Calvinism drove the rise of modern capitalism in western Europe and North America. Ever since Weber’s claim over a century ago, scholars across the humanities and social sciences have vigorously debated the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism and between religion and economy more broadly. This course will introduce students to the relationship between religion and capitalism in colonial America and the United States from the 1600s through to the present. From the Puritans to the Mormons, and from the Social Gospel to the Prosperity Gospel, religious life in North America has never been divorced from questions of economy, labor, and capital. How have religious individuals and communities affirmed or challenged capitalism? Was capitalism an outgrowth of religious belief or were religious ideas a justification for the economic order? Throughout the semester, lectures will be supplemented by readings from theorists of religion and economy, a range of primary sources from religious actors both supportive and critical of capitalism, and scholarly readings on American religious history.

Faculty

• Gabriel Raeburn

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3316

In recent years, streaming platforms have found a ready audience for shows such as Wild, Wild Country and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. At the same time, religious broadcasting networks such as Trinity Broadcasting Network remain a staple of cable and satellite television. This seminar will explore both the representation of religion in media and the use of media by religious communities and individuals over time. How were different religious groups and individuals represented in print media, television, and film? What role does media play in distinguishing between “cults” and “religions” in popular culture? How have religious actors utilized radio, music, and television to spread their messages, build their audiences, and influence American politics and culture? In what ways does the utilization of radio and television not just spread the gospel but fundamentally reshape it? How have new forms of digital media, such as the internet, influenced public perceptions of religion? Throughout the semester, we will interact with a range of different media, including film, music, print journalism, radio, and television, as well as reading several theorists on the intersection of religion and media.

Faculty

• Gabriel Raeburn

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3408

Muslim mystics have left us with a vast body of literature that explains the faculties and capabilities of human beings. These theoretical writings go hand in hand with the experiential dimension of Sufi practice, which includes the careful and diligent cultivation of spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical disciplines. The purpose of their path, as they often label their thought and practice, goes beyond that of religious salvation, at least as understood in the usual sense. Their goal might be best described as a desire to attain intimate knowledge of the true nature of reality, as in the saying of the Prophet Muhammad: “Our Lord, show us things as they really are.” Following another saying of the Prophet, “He who knows himself, knows his Lord,” Sufis have insisted that this deeper knowledge can only be accomplished by a greater understanding of oneself. This necessarily involves the deconstruction of any solid or static notions about what is perceived to be the self. According to Sufis, what we think of as ourselves is really a cacophony of forces from within and without that flow through and interact with different faculties within us. The spiritual disciplines in which Sufis immerse themselves are intended to destabilize the false self by enabling the practitioner to become more conscious of these forces and faculties. Furthermore, according to Sufis, there is a strong relationship between our level of awareness, our attitudes and behaviors, and the way in which we perceive reality. Changes within us change the reality that seems to be outside of us. Through a series of readings from Sufi figures in the past and present, this course will explore their systematic exposition of the “sciences of the soul.”

Faculty

• Kristin Zahra Sands

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3124

Since the destruction of the Second Temple and the ensuing Jewish exile in 70 CE, most of Jewish history has been spent in a state of exile and dispersion. As such, Jewish thinkers have grappled extensively with how to understand exile and diaspora as foundational concepts of identity and meaning. This seminar will examine how the concepts of galut (exile) and diaspora have functioned as central, generative, and contested categories within Jewish intellectual, religious, political, and cultural history. Rather than treating exile simply as a condition of loss or punishment, the course will ask how Jewish thinkers have interpreted exile as a theological problem, a historical reality, a political framework, and a mode of identity, and whether diaspora may be understood as a productive and creative condition. The course will begin with rabbinic and Talmudic understandings of exile, exploring how the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of the Jewish people were reinterpreted through law, narrative, and ritual. We will examine how rabbinic Judaism transformed exile into a livable and meaningful condition, reimagining sacred space, authority, and communal life in the absence of sovereignty. From there, we will turn to medieval Jewish thought, focusing on figures such as Maimonides and Judah Halevi, whose writings articulate divergent theological and philosophical responses to exile, ranging from rational universalism to longing for land, language, and embodied collectivity. The core of the seminar will concentrate on 19th- and 20th-century Jewish thought, when exile and diaspora became urgent categories in the context of emancipation, nationalism, imperialism, antisemitism, and mass migration. We will read Jewish philosophers, political theorists, poets, novelists, and artists who grappled with alienation, homelessness, translation, and minority existence. Special attention will be paid to non-Zionist political projects, including the Jewish Labour Bund, Jewish Autonomism, and other diasporist movements that imagined diaspora as a site of political possibility, cultural autonomy, and ethical internationalism rather than solely as a problem to be overcome. Throughout the course, we will investigate the question of whether exile must be conceived solely in negative terms, or whether it can be understood as positive, generative, and critical, a condition that produces new forms of subjectivity, solidarity, creativity, and critique. We will also ask how Jewish diasporic identity has functioned as a lens for thinking about diaspora more broadly, including questions of race, displacement, colonialism, and statelessness. In the final portion of the seminar, Jewish texts and experiences will be placed in conversation with Black studies and postcolonial studies, exploring shared and divergent accounts of diaspora, memory, trauma, and resistance. These comparative perspectives will allow us to consider how exile and alienation challenge not only the nation-state, but also stable notions of selfhood, belonging, and political identity. Through close reading and sustained discussion, students will engage exile as both a lived condition and a powerful framework for critical thought.

Faculty

• Joel Swanson

Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits

RLGN 3445

As a far-right ultranationalist movement focused on social hierarchy, tradition, and the subordination of individual rights for the national collective, fascism has been deeply intertwined with religious themes and imagery since it arose in Europe in the early 20th century. As such, this seminar will examine the complex and often paradoxical relationship between religious ideas and fascist political movements in Central Europe during the first half of the 20th century. The course will investigate how religious traditions, symbols, and narratives were mobilized both to legitimize authoritarian, nationalist projects and also to inspire forms of resistance, dissent, and ethical critique in the decades leading up to, during, and immediately following World War II. Focusing on literary, artistic, philosophical, and political texts, the seminar will move beyond a singular focus on Nazi Germany to explore a wider Central European landscape shaped by fascist influence. We will examine responses to fascist movements and regimes in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Czechoslovakia, attending to both foreign occupation and homegrown forms of authoritarian nationalism. While Nazi domination and its catastrophic consequences will form an unavoidable part of the historical backdrop, the course will emphasize the diversity of fascist ideologies and the range of religious and cultural responses they provoked. Early in the course, we will consider how Christian, mystical, and quasi-religious concepts, such as sacrifice, redemption, mythic origins, and sacred nationhood, were appropriated by fascist thinkers and writers to naturalize violence, exclusion, and obedience. Alongside these pro-fascist or accommodationist texts, we will read religiously inflected critiques that challenged fascism from within theological, ethical, and spiritual traditions, including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and heterodox sources. A central focus of the seminar will be the work of dissident writers and artists who, in the face of censorship, persecution, and mass violence, turned to religious symbolism, spiritual language, and philosophical reflection as resources for resistance. Essays, novels, poetry, film, and visual and performance art from across Central Europe will be studied as sites where older traditions were reworked to confront dehumanization, preserve moral agency, and imagine alternative forms of community. These creative responses often forged new spiritual and cultural openings rather than simply returning to inherited orthodoxies. In the final section of the course, we will examine post–World War II reflections on fascism, focusing on how memory, trauma, and responsibility were negotiated in the aftermath of destruction. We will ask how literature, philosophy, and art participated in the construction of collective memory, and whether it is possible to sustain national or cultural identity without reproducing the exclusionary nationalism that fueled fascist movements in the first place. Through close reading, historical contextualization, and comparative analysis, students will gain a nuanced understanding of religion’s ambivalent role in both enabling and resisting fascism, and of the enduring challenges posed by this history for politics, culture, and memory. Along the way we will explore themes that remain as relevant as ever today – technology, power, evil, faith, hope, and the political – all with a view to asking what it might mean to live freely as a human being in modernity.

Faculty

• Joel Swanson