Spring 2025 Religious Studies Courses

Electives & General Education

Leadership Ethics: Early China (RELG 206, AILT, IFWC)
TR 1:30–2:45 (01); 3:00-4:15 (02)
Jane Geaney

Two questions lie at the heart of classical Chinese texts: how to live and how to lead. This course explores moral visions of life and leadership composed in China two millennia ago and still influencing China’s leaders today— from the uniquely Chinese “Non-Action” method to Chinese Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, and Divine Command Theory. Topics include Confucian, Daoist, Legalist, and Mohist treatment of Heaven’s Mandate and the ancestral Dao, as well as Sunzi’s Art of War, and contemporary Chinese Social Justice Leadership and Transformational Leadership.

Law & Order in China: Ancient Roots, Modern Impact (RELG 206, AILT, IFWC)
M 3:00–5:40 (03)
Jane Geaney

The concept of the Rule of Law invites comparison across cultures, and “Law & Order in China” approaches the development of law in Early China through this lens. Distinct from morality and custom, the idea of law emerged as a consistent impersonal standard for governance. Though later associated with authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism, Chinese legal thinking arose in response to historical change, challenging the notion of an idealized past and divine mandates. This course encourages students to critically examine the foundations, advantages, and limitations of the Rule of Law, while exploring how early Chinese legal ideas might shape global issues today.

Sex & Salvation in Nineteenth-Century America (RELG 210, AIHS, IFWC)
TR 3:00–4:15 (01); 4:30-5:45 (02)
Doug Winiarski

Why are contemporary American evangelicals fascinated with promoting family values and policing the boundaries of human sexuality? This course looks back to a period in which the most radical Protestants in the young United States questioned everything: family structures, gender roles, sexual identities, and marital arrangements. Topics include the innovative and often controversial sexual and marital practices of the Shakers, Mormons, and Oneida Community. We’ll also pay close attention to the fascinating life and career of the Publick Universal Friend, the first nonbinary religious leader in American history.

Religion, Sports, and Social Justice (RELG 222, AIHS, IFPE)
MW 10:30-11:45
Mimi Hanaoka

This course explores the intersection of religion, sports, and social justice, focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries.  We will examine the connections between sports and religion and ask these types of questions: do some sports have their origins in religious movements?  How and why have athletes used their platform to advocate social justice, and what does that have to do with religion?  What are the intersections between race, gender, religion, and social justice in sports?  We will consider examples from basketball, tennis, judo, baseball, boxing, and football.

Religious Studies Seminars

Nature Religion (RELG 302, AMER)
W 3:00–5:40 
Doug Winiarski

Life in the Anthropocene demands that we humans radically rethink our relationship to nonhuman animals and the physical environment. More than an ethical imperative, this engagement is more akin to a religious or spiritual calling. In this immersive reading seminar, we’ll study classic works of nineteenth-century American nature religion in art, literature, and philosophy alongside essays by contemporary writers such as bell hooks, Gary Snyder, and Annie Dillard. We’ll learn the fundamentals of American environmental history and dive into contemporary issues: eco-spiritual activism, back-to-the-land communities, re-enchantment, the new animism, and religious controversies involving the science of climate change. Writing assignments will encourage personal reflection and the cultivation of aesthetic, ethical, spiritual, and/or theological values. Class activities will include at least one hiking excursion to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Islam (RELG 303, GSCP, WGTP, AIHS, IFPE)
MW 12:00-1:15
Mimi Hanaoka

This course explores Islam and Muslim traditions through the prisms of women, gender, and sexuality, exploring how authority and power interact with these phenomena.  We will ask these types of questions: How is authority gendered in Islam in its social, religious, and domestic dimensions?  Where do the utopian ideals of equality create dissonance with the lived reality of gendered societies and communities?  Are these issues of women, gender, sexuality, and authority unique to Islam, or do they manifest across a variety of religions and communities across time and place?