Religious Studies

3 semester credits. This course will approach Christianity both as an institution and as an intellectual tradition from a historical point of view. Course topics will focus on the roots of Christianity, Christianity during the Roman Empire, the Medieval church, the Papacy, monasticism, the schism between the Western and Eastern Churches, the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, as well as the challenges faced by contemporary Christianity. The course will include visits to churches and monasteries in Florence.

3 semester credits. This course offers students an examination of different religious concepts and some of the methods used for studying religious behaviors and beliefs. The course has strong focus on the relationships between values and beliefs within different religions. Religious ethics, biomedicine, human sexuality, and social justice will be examined through the analysis of issues such as euthanasia, abortion, and poverty. The course will also study various festivals, rites, sacrifices, diets, and fasting practices of certain religions to better understand their backgrounds and cultural influences.

3 semester credits. History has demonstrated that saints would not have existed without sinners and vice versa. The course will examine the encounters and interrelationships between “saints” and “sinners” over the course of Italian history. In many cases, the Saint was also a former Sinner but rarely the other way around. The great Saint Augustine, for example, is a testament to former sinners as seen in his famous Confessions in which his vivid, at times red-light experiences as a young man are described and redeemed by a saintly life. The texts, at times, almost hint at a subtle vein of regret and faint whiffs of nostalgia for the “dolce vita” of Augstine’s past. The same can be said of Saint Francis, who was known for conducting a dissipated, playboy-oriented lifestyle in Assisi conveniently financed by his rich father Bernardone. In other cases, history has documented epic clashes between sinners and saints-to-be. Between the dying Lorenzo il Magnifico and the future saint Savonarola, for example, in which the latter refused to absolve the former who had refused to confess his sins. Saint Bellarmine, Galileo’s inquisitor, condemned the scientist for demonstrating the error of the Sacred Scripture regarding the geocentrism, demonstrating yet again a saint’s victory. Another topic that will be examined by the course is the posthumous redemption of sinners such as the Giuseppe Verdi’s Lady of the Camellias in La Traviata and the lovers Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Divina Commedia.

3 semester credits. This is an introductory comparative study of the world's major religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the religions of China and Japan. The course will examine a significant number of specific themes in all religions studied: the nature of this world and universe, the relationship between the individual and the transcendent, ultimate reality, the meaning and goals of worldly life, the importance of worship and rituals, the importance of devotion to the master or guru, ethics, and human action. Excerpts from important texts of each tradition will be analyzed .