Death, Dying, and Religion
This course explores death practices around the globe from cremation rituals in India to recent attempts to legalize body composting in Seattle. Through this exploration, students will consider how death practices are intertwined with cultural assumptions about the environment, sickness and health, what it means to be human, and individual autonomy. Engaging with death positivity, untimely deaths, and the process of decomposition, this course blurs disciplinary lines in order to consider how thinking about how we die helps us live.
Introduction to Medical Ethics
This course draws on case studies and asks students to reflect on their experiences as a foundation for exploring moral problems associated with medical practice with a focus on religious difference. Topics covered include health-care access, use of life-sustaining treatments, right to die, and informed consent.
Sex, Gender, and Religion
This course examines religious understandings of sex and gender in Christian and Muslim
communities, as well as in the Bible and Qur’an, exploring the relationship between religious and social
understandings of sex and gender. No prerequisites.
Religion Outside of Religions
This course introduces the study of religion by using methods commonly used to study religion in order to explore activities and institutions usually considered separate from organized religion. Case-studies may include professional sports, dieting, the free market, medical expertise or self-help culture. Three credits.
