SPECIAL TOPICS IN RELIGIOUS

A collection of courses covering a broad range of topics in religious studies, offered according to student need and interest.
Life & Social Reality: This course, developed specifically for use on the La Roche Rome campus is designed to facilitate the exploration of the meaning of life and the nature of social reality, through critical-minded engagement on a variety of levels. It will include the experience of sharing in service learning opportunities, and in opportunities for spiritual experience through participation in reading and discussing common texts and reflecting upon media experiences with particular emphasis on economic justice and environmental sustainability. To be conducted as a seminar, students’ input into the discussion will shape what happens in the course. We will especially reach for different and contradictory perspectives, challenging our sources through a process of “tearing apart” and/or defending and/or making creative use of them. All of the written and video/film sources used, as well as the experiences engaged in, and also the course itself, will be subjected to such a process of critique, out of which useful insights may emerge. Participants will work on the together – striving, at the same time, for independent perspectives (not some kind of conformist “group-think”).