Society & Culture

This course explores Native American experiences with and responses to Christianity, as well as European and American efforts to use Christianity to understand and dominate Native Americans and dismantle their cultures from 1492 to the present. In doing so, we will think about how religion intertwines with national, political, and economic goals and socially-constructed ideas of race and gender, as well as how the absorption of American values such as democracy, freedom, individualism, capitalism, and progress, led to creating American Christianity. We will also learn basic concepts and practices of both Christianity and traditional Native American spiritual ways of life. RT, HUM

Using our humble resources, humans have always endeavored to shape our most profound experiences, our deepest desires, and our highest ideals in forms and textures that resonate with the world we inhabit. In this respect, the arts give outward expression to those experiences at the heart of religion. The arts can reveal a level of religious and cultural reality that cannot be approached or engaged otherwise. This class therefore explores the world’s religions through the arts. RT, HUM

This course introduces students to the vital role of religion in human experience and in a religiously plural society by, first, reading the memoir of Eboo Patel, a pioneering interfaith activist; second, exploring the core dimensions of several major religious traditions, and, third, using and enriching this baseline knowledge through personal narratives and case studies. In case studies, students will explore accounts of religious conflicts and complications in specific social contexts in order to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills and to demonstrate their ethical decision-making process. RT, HUM

An exploration of the interrelations between religious faith and scientific study, focused on the Christian doctrine of creation and scientific descriptions of cosmology and evolution. Historical readings addressing these issues will include Galileo and Charles Darwin, and reactions to these thinkers. Faculty members from the College of Science and Engineering will contribute their own reflections on the relation of religious faith and scientific study. HUM, WEM

This class looks to religion and art to understand how meaning is made. This is because we do not demand that religion or art speak in the calculative language of pure rationality. Rather, in religion and art we ask and answer questions of meaning, purpose, and value that transcend the practical calculus of utility. We do not ask art to serve a utilitarian function just as was we do not ask religion to provide simple pragmatic life-lessons. Rather, both domains offer profound expressions of authenticity, meaning and purpose. (This class meets in museums and galleries across Fort Worth.) WEM

In this course we will examine the fascinating world of goddesses and sacred female powers within Indian religious traditions. Through primary and secondary sources, we will explore the ways in which goddess-centric worldviews and goddess worship intersect with localized cultural understandings of medicine and ritual healing, gender identity, sexuality, politics, and activism. The course introduces students to postcolonial feminist and gender studies perspectives. NOTE TO RELIGION MAJORS: Experimental Courses can carry credit in any of the three Religion course categories. Please submit requests for particular category designations to the department chair.