Courses and Syllabi

In this menu please find links to recent syllabi of courses I offer in the Divinity School (RETH) and the College (FNDL/RLST). I organize each of them around a thesis or intellectual narrative to justify my selections for each course. All of these courses aim to interrogate the topics and literatures under review by carrying out close and careful readings of the assigned texts. One aim is to provide material that can inform research projects, dissertation ideas, and teaching portfolios. Another aim is to ensure that students in Religious Ethics have a solid and enduring foundation for their future research and teaching, regardless of their specific areas of interest.

Note that two “trios” of courses each comprises a separate mini-curriculum in the Religious Ethics Area.

One trio is: Contemporary Religious Ethics I, II, and III. Contemporary Religious Ethics I and II are described in their respective syllabi, and each has its own thematic and time period. I plan on offering “Contemporary Religious Ethics III: 2010-20 (Peril and Responsibility)” in AY 2022-23. This set of course offerings aims to provide an arc of signature works in contemporary religious ethics, starting in 1970, and to track patterns and scholarly initiatives over the past 50 years. Students are not required to take any one class to enroll in another, but those who do will see how contemporary religious ethics has taken shape as a distinct subfield in the study of religion and ethics, and how it has sought to define and expand its self-understanding.

Another trio is: “Contemporary Political and Social Ethics,” “Religion and Democracy,” and “Rights and Justice.” Here again, students are not required to take any one class to enroll in another, but those who do will see how ideas of some key figures on one syllabus inform topics and issues that appear on the others. These three courses examine modern and contemporary authors on matters of social justice, broadly conceived. Understanding their ideas can be deepened by taking “Religion and the Political Order,” a course in the history of Western political theory that is designed to support the RETH Qualifying Exam reading list of the same title.

I also offer two courses on religion and practical ethics, namely, “The Ethics of War: Foundational Texts,” and “Religion, Medicine, and Ethics.” These courses aim to ensure that students in Religious Ethics are trained to reckon with concrete problems in religion, ethics, and public life—and to do so in ways that are both historically informed and sophisticated about matters of theory, method, and comparison.

There are other syllabi in this menu as well. One course that has been especially popular is “Augustine, Kierkegaard, and the Problem of Love”; another is “The Ethics of Belief.”

Current University of Chicago Courses:

Graduate (with some undergraduate enrollment):

DVSC 51000 Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion

RETH 30802 Contemporary Religious Ethics I: Method and History (1970-1990)

RETH 30803 Contemporary Religious Ethics II: Identity and Difference (1990-2010)

RETH 30804/RLST 25804 Contemporary Religious Ethics III: Peril and Responsibility

RETH 36002 The Ethics of War: Foundational Texts

RETH 42902 Rights and Justice

RETH 43302 The Ethics of Belief

RETH 43900 Religion and Democracy

RETH 44802 Contemporary Political and Social Ethics

RETH 45102 Religion, Ethics, and Medicine