This course takes historical and thematic approaches to studying the complex phenomenon (or phenomena) of Islam. Students in this course seek to understand the development of Islam over time--from the earliest communities in seventh century Arabia through the present day. The course will ask questions about the meaning of prophesy, scripture, and ritual. Additionally, the course will focus on the towering achievements of Islamic thought, including law, literature, and philosophy.

An in-depth study of feminist theory, theology, and ethics, and the role such theories have played in western social and religious thought. Among the issues explored are justice, violence, the body, sexuality, knowledge, power. Prior work in religion, gender studies, comparative sociology, philosophy, or feminist political theory is helpful, as well as a facility with writing.

This course examines multiple configurations of and debates about gender and sexuality in Muslim societies. Topics covered include gender in the Qur'an, sex in Sufi poetry, Islamic laws on sexuality and gendered difference, masculinity, non-binary genders, and queerness in disparate Muslim contexts. The course will also explore links between some feminisms and imperialism, the ways that colonialism has shaped gendered discourses, and the ties between Islamophobia, homophobia, and foreign interventionism.

This course approaches the subject of sexuality in the Christian tradition by focusing on three broad periods ' early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and today. Within each era, students investigate questions of virginity, chastity, marriage, and non-normative sexualities (such as homosexuality). Students enlist a diverse selection of primary and secondary sources ' theoretical and historical. Through this fascinating exploration of Christianity and sexuality, students witness a dizzying variety of ways that sexualities have been lived, accepted, utilized, and interpreted.

This course explores the intertwined histories of religion and sexuality in the twentieth- and twenty-first century United States, with attention to transnational contexts and global politics. These two categories--religion and sexuality--are often portrayed as oppositional forces, with sexual progress pitted against religious resistance. This course reappraises this relationship of opposition through a series of historical case studies, which highlight the plurality of religious investments in changing constructions and practices of sexuality.

Notwithstanding the many attempts around the world to separate them, the spheres of law and religion repeatedly overlap in their histories and will continue to intersect into the foreseeable future. Both spheres reflect the deepest of humanistic concerns; both serve as arenas for contesting and projecting the authority of individuals, institutions, and texts within all human contexts.

How does social change happen? Religious groups were central to many instances of transformative social activism like the Civil Rights movement, Feminism and Occupy Wall Street. This course addresses how religious beliefs, identities, affiliations, and practices shape social activism and justice in the United States and the world. The class examines the multiple ways that religion intersects with power and resistance with particular attention to how religion acts as a resource and identity for enacting both reformative and radical social change.

This course examines various religious, cultural, legal, feminist, and ethical issues surrounding reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. It analyzes tensions related to curtailing or enhancing fertility in the United States. The course surveys how religious beliefs, cultural contexts, and laws have influenced patients' reproductive decisions, clinicians' medical decisions, and the reproductive healthcare system. Moral issues surveyed in this course may include Dobbs v.

This course examines Western philosophical and religious understandings of moral issues brought on by advances in health care, science and technology. In this course, students will learn the "Principles approach" to bioethics, as well as other ethical approaches to the difficult moral issues raised by contemporary medical science and its clinical applications. To that end, case analysis will be used extensively in this course.

This course is an introduction to public health ethics in health policy and bioethics. It explores a broad spectrum of legal and public health contexts to demonstrate how religious and cultural factors affect health. Students analyze religion and culture as social determinants of health in various case studies. Case studies range from tobacco control laws to public health in religious communities.