Course URL: https://bit.ly/3nBfRqw
Instructor: Prof. Jeri Wieringa
Office: PRH 315-B
Office hours: By Appointment
Email: [email protected]
Meeting Time**:** 12:30 - 1:45pm, Tu/Th
Welcome to REL 120 - Religion and Science.
Fair warning - this is not a history of science or an overview of how different religious groups view science.
Rather this course is focused on the creation of the categories of “religion” and “science,” how they developed over time, and what people are doing when they claim something as “religion” or as “science.”
In this course you will learn about the academic study of religion, philosophy of science, and the murky middle where the categories of “religion” and “science” fail. You will also be learning discourse analysis, the study of words and their use and shifting meanings over time, one of the core methods of the humanities.
The goal for this course is to introduce you to the academic study of religion and to a particular method (discourse analysis) for interpreting the ongoing tensions between “religion” and “science” in western culture. To that end, we will do a lot of reading, writing, and talking.
My goal is to provide regular constructive feedback on your work to help you improve your ability to identify arguments being made, evaluate those arguments, and construct your own using different types of evidence and rhetorical strategies.
You will be asked twice during the semester to reflect on your work and learning to date. This along side the writing that you do for the class, are the primary ways that I will gauge your learning over the course of the semester. In these self-evaluations, you will be asked to assign yourself an overall grade for your work through the term. While I make no guarantees, I will use your self-assigned grade as a guide in assigning your midterm and final grade for the course.
I expect you to attend class regularly and to participate through your writing and through contribution to the class discussion. This course, while listed as a lecture, is not one where you can sit back and absorb. We will be doing numerous in-class exercises and discussing the readings, in addition to short lectures.