Undergraduate Programs

Introduction to the principles of proper reasoning through the use of generative AI. Exploration of how to assess the reasoning of AI and how to use AI to improve one’s own argumentation. Study of the contrast between good and bad forms of reasoning as manifested by both humans and AI.

This course is an introduction to philosophy through the study of its origins in ancient Greece. We will discuss questions that have puzzled and intrigued human beings ever since thinking began—about the relationship of science to understanding human life, about the meaning of freedom, about human desire, and its relation to thinking about happiness, excellence, and friendship.

This class is an introduction to American philosophy through the study of some of its major artists, philosophers, and political thinkers. We will discuss questions that have puzzled and intrigued Americans throughout our history—about the relationship of faith and science to one another, and to understanding human life, about the meaning of freedom and its relation to thinking for oneself, about our country’s ideals, and how we achieve and fall short of them.

This course introduces students to the study of religion and gender in American history from the 1600s to today. We will examine constructions of gender in Native American religions, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam from colonial America to the present-day United States.

This course will survey of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from their origins in the Middle East over 3,500 years ago to their diverse practices, scriptures, art, and communities around the world today. We will discuss the history, beliefs, and practices of the three Abrahamic religions.

This a Basic Studies Course that explores the diverse phenomena of the religious beliefs, practices, material culture, and institutions, indigenous to peoples of sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on the impact of slavery, colonialism, foreign religions, and globalization, and by critiquing post-colonial theories of Africa, religion, and race. Those traditional African Religions will include the Ashanti, Fon, Dogon, Ewe, Igbo, Yoruba, and the Mende of West Africa, and excerpts of the peoples of Central, Eastern, Southern Africa, and the Island nations.

“Gospels, Ghost Texts, and the Making of Christian Scripture”

Explore the New Testament alongside the other books that once rivaled it—and the communities who read them.

What did early Christians actually read? This course explores the formation of the New Testament—how certain books became “canon” or official, while others were left out. Alongside the Gospels and letters that made it into the New Testament, we’ll also study apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and other writings that circulated widely in the first centuries of the Christian movement.

Students will learn how modern scholars analyze ancient texts using tools like text criticism, literary analysis, and redaction theory. Together, we’ll explore what these writings meant to early communities and how they continue to shape religious imagination today.

In recent years, there has been remarkable technological progress on a certain form of artificial intelligence: large language models (LLMs).  This class will focus on ethical questions surrounding this technology, such as: what are the  ramifications of transferring high-level cognitive work from humans to machines? How might LLMs shape how we experience art? How might LLMs shape how we understand ourselves as human persons? Can an AI model have moral values or moral status? Could someone have a genuine friendship with an AI model?  What risks do we face as this technology continues to develop?

What is power?  Who has it?  What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate forms of power?  Does democracy in our constitutional republic distribute power evenly across society?  Should it?  If it doesn’t, what factors play the greatest role in concentrating power?  This seminar appeals to research in history, political sociology, and philosophy to try to answer these and other related questions.

What is power?  Who has it?  What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate forms of power?  Does democracy in our constitutional republic distribute power evenly across society?  Should it?  If it doesn’t, what factors play the greatest role in concentrating power?  This seminar appeals to research in history, political sociology, and philosophy to try to answer these and other related questions.

This course will introduce students to main philosophical questions and themes of the early modern period (from Descartes to Hume). Is there an external world? If so, what is the nature of material objects? How do material bodies interact? How do the material world and the mind interact? Does God exist? The goal is to provide students with a rigorous, non-caricatured overview of the philosophical systems of a variety of philosophers from the early modern period. Students will develop philosophical writing as well as their ability to reconstruct philosophical arguments.

This course will provide a survey and evaluation of past and present theories of human nature, including such topics as nature and culture, freedom and rationality, issues in identity, and theories of education and human development. It partially satisfies the following University Studies requirements: Approaches and Perspectives/Historical and Philosophical Approaches and Common Requirements/Critical Reasoning.

This course examines how constructions of gender have influenced the practice of religion and definitions of agency, power, and liberation among religious people. The course objective is to provide students provide a basic overview of the major religious traditions of the world and gender roles therein.

This course will survey of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from their origins in the Middle East over 3,500 years ago to their diverse practices, scriptures, art, and communities around the world today. We will discuss the history, beliefs, and practices of the three Abrahamic religions.

This course explores a range of issues and inquiries related to the Bible regarding its nature, origin, composition, history, culture, setting, people, and their stories, and its teachings. Students analyze and analyze approaches to interpreting the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, how it impacts people’s lives, how the study of the text developed, and the reasons for its enduring presence. Students will examine the range of literary genre, symbolic metaphors, figures of speech and religious and theological themes

Social and political philosophy can be the most interesting branch of philosophy to study. It is much less abstract and highly relevant to our lives. It draws from other branches of philosophy, namely ethics and legal theory. Our interdisciplinary study also draws upon history, economics, religion, psychology, geography, military power, science and technology.  We will also focus on the foundations of American democracy.  Although philosophers traditionally approach social and political philosophy from an ideal theory standpoint, we will also examine it from a practical, real-world, non-ideal perspective.

This multi-disciplinary seminar investigates four questions that concern power relations.  First, what is power?  Can we give a single definition?  Are there many (overlapping) definitions?  Second, how should considerations of human nature inform the study of power relations?  Are humans naturally hierarchical or egalitarian?  Competitive or cooperative?  Self-interested or altruistic?  Should these qualities be understood as conventional and not natural?  Third, how is power distributed?  Is power concentrated, say, in the super-rich and/or the political elite?  Does democracy promote an uneasy balance of power?  Does capitalism tend to concentrate power?  Third, how does power operate and what are its effects?  What are the primary vehicles of social control: laws, police, economic structures, schools––all the above, something else?  What roles do information and disinformation play in reinforcing and altering power relations?

Explore the intersection of religion, technology, and the human spirit with one of the pioneering scholars in this emerging field. This course examines how rapid technological change is reshaping the ways we understand immortality, the soul, and what it means to be human. Includes topics such as the rise of technological immortality and how it impacts traditional religious notions of immortality, new religious movements rooted in UFO sightings and extraterrestrial contact, the impact of social media and digital networks on human consciousness and physiology, and the history of AI and how its early pioneers grappled with questions of morality and religion.

Fun fact:  one and the same individual (at one and the same time) can be alive in one U.S. state but dead in another.  Why?  Because we have not answered this fundamental question:  What is it to die?  In this course we’ll ask:  What is the nature of death?  Is death the end of our existence?  If death is in fact the end, how (if at all) could death be bad for the deceased, since the deceased cannot suffer at all?  Is it then irrational to fear death?  The very inevitability of our death prompts this question: What is the point of life?  Does life have meaning?  If so, what is it?