Wolf Seminars in Religion, Science, and Technology

Instructor: Yousef Casewit

Winter 2027

An exploration of the growing body of literature on Islamic psychology. Relevant premodern approaches to mental well-being, rooted in scriptural, theological, philosophical, scientific, and mystical sources, will be examined alongside contemporary literature that integrates insights from modern psychology with Islamic teachings. No Arabic required. 

Instructor: Curtis Evans

Winter 2027

This course begins with the Scopes Trial in 1925, a pivotal moment in the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism and anti-evolution in the United States. It follows protracted and prolonged debates about the meaning of evolution, science, and expertise in the US. Some attention is devoted to foundational questions about the meaning of science in modern society and the religious and cultural bases of anti-evolution in the US. We also look at the internal divisions within conservative Protestant Christianity on how to reconcile faith and science.

Instructors: Matthew Harris and William Schultz

Winter 2027

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James identified the fundamental religious impulse as: “Help! Help!” This seminar will examine 1) how humans have addressed that question to nonhuman powers and 2) how they have interpreted the answers they received. Our particular concern will be traditions of divine healing in the lands which became the United States, ranging from root work to the anointing of the sick to attempts at resurrecting the dead. We will consider “healing” in the broadest possible terms, to include liberation from mental as well as physical pain. Through the careful reading of historical and ethnographic work, we will explore how practices of divine healing cut across theological and denominational lines and reveal unexpected continuities between very different faith traditions.

Instructor: Professor Sarah Fredericks

Winter 2027

This course will examine answers to four questions that have been foundational to environmental ethics: Are religious traditions responsible for environmental crises? To what degree can religions address environmental crises? Does the natural world have intrinsic value in addition to instrumental value to humans, and does the type of value the world has imply anything about human responsibility? What point of view (anthropocentrism, biocentrism, theocentrism) should ground an environmental ethic? 

Since all four of the above questions are highly contested questions, we will examine a constellation of responses to each question. During the quarter, we will read texts from a wide variety of religious and philosophical perspectives, though I note that the questions we are studying arose out of the Western response to environmental crises and so often use that language. Some emphasis will be given to particularly influential texts, thinkers, and points of view in the scholarship of environmental ethics. As the questions above indicate, the course prioritizes theoretical issues in environmental ethics that can relate to many different applied subjects (e.g., energy, water, animals, climate change) rather than emphasizing these applied issues themselves. Taking this focus will give you the background necessary to work on such issues later. 

Course Note: Undergraduates may petition to enroll.

Instructor: Sarah Fredericks

Winter 2027

This course will examine the development of environmental justice theory and practice through social scientific and ethical literature about the subject as well as primary source accounts of environmental injustices. We will focus on environmental justice issues in Chicago, including, but not limited to, waste disposal, toxic air and water, the Chicago heat wave, and climate change. Particular attention will be paid to environmental racism and the often understudied role of religion in environmental justice theory and practice. Throughout the course, we will explore how normative commitments are expressed in different types of literature as well as the basis for normative judgments and the types of authorities authors utilize and claim as they consider environmental justice.

Instructor: Kristine Culp

Spring 2027

This seminar explores the intersection between theological symbols of creation and human creatures. How have human and other living creatures and nature served as reference points, exemplars, even counterexamples for interpreting God, creation, and the enhancement (or diminishment) of life? We will examine relations among theomorphism, anthropomorphism, and biomorphism, and ask how macrocosm and microcosm are drawn into theological reflection. Explorations will include traditional theological themes of human creatures as imago Dei and of nature as a mirror of God’s providence and majesty, as well as contemporary texts by Ivone Gebara, Michael Fishbane, Erazim Kohak, Virginia Burrus, and Amitav Ghosh on human and animal nature, the moral sense of nature, and cultivation and devastation. PQ: A prior course in theology or history of Christianity or theological ethics.

Instructor: Daniel A. Arnold

Spring 2027

One often hears it said that “Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a […],” with the ellipsis filled in with expressions including “philosophy,” “mind science,” “spiritual path,” and “therapeutic practice” (among others). What does it mean, though, to say that Buddhism is or is not a “religion”? Why does it matter whether or not it is, and for whom are the stakes significant? And why in the first place does this question tend to arise only with regard to Buddhism? It turns out there is a complex and interesting history behind familiar ideas of Buddhism as somehow exceptional among the world’s religions (if it is one…)—a history involving colonialism and empire, power and representation, science and religion, tradition and conversion, and the life of a 2,500-year-old tradition in the modern and postmodern worlds. This course will variously explore the origins and function of the “Buddhism isn’t a religion” meme, entertaining, along the way, questions like: What is a “religion” anyway, and who gets to say so? Does it make sense to characterize Buddhist practice as itself “scientific,” or to claim that Buddhist thought is basically more compatible with a scientific worldview than that of any (other) religion? What might any of the various parties to a discussion of these issues have at stake in the answer’s coming out one way or the other?

Instructor: Sam Baudinette

Spring 2027

Has psychology replaced religion? Is there something inherently “religious” about psychotherapy? What are the similarities and differences between priests and psychiatrists, between sorcerers and psychoanalysts? In recent decades in the Global North, the discipline of psychology has been on the rise, but so have esotericism, astrology, and spiritualism. This raises interesting questions about how these discourses intersect and which accounts of the human psyche best capture the complexity of our lives. In this course we will attempt to examine this problem through an historical and comparative analysis of the religious traditions of the premodern West and the psychological and psychotherapeutic discourses which arose in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We shall do so in order to explore how the stories we tell about the past and the present affect the ways we understand the relationship between religion and science, as well as how we describe the relationship between the internal and external world or the forces that influence human behavior. Topics covered will include asceticism and demonic possession, the practice of confession and the discernment of spirits, divine revelation and mystical experience, alchemical healing and astral magic, as well as mesmerism, hypnotherapy, psychoanalysis, and existentialism.

Instructor: Russell Johnson

Spring 2027

What makes us human? Is it our bodies or our souls? Our propensity to reason or our capacity for love? Or is it our ability to select all squares containing bicycles?

In this interdisciplinary course, we consider what it means to be human by contrasting the human with the non-human. We think with sci-fi authors about how humans are different from androids and aliens. We think with scientists about how humans are different from animals and algorithms. We think with religious traditions about how humans are different from angels and abominations. Topics to be discussed include what we owe to our creators and our creations, what dehumanization is and why we do it, how people throughout history have tried to transcend their physical forms, and what monsters have to tell us about the good life.