An important concept that has come up every single day of class is that of the Locative vs. Utopian worldviews. The locative worldview is something like, “I am in the place in society that I need to be and that is the way it needs to be. I can’t change it.” The utopian worldview, on …
Category Archives: Courses
The Sacred and Secular Histories
One of the questions that I find myself asking most in class is “Is this the secular or the sacred history?” This question is really, “Did this actually happen or is this what the members of the faith tradition believe?” However, this has become a very important topic as Islam has progressed through week two …
A History of God: Our First Text
So, one of the main texts that we started with in the first week of the block was A History of God written by Karen Armstrong, one of the most prolific authors of Biblical studies. This particular book was a best seller, and clearly from its title it is an ambitious project. This text does …
What is Religion and how do we study it?
In every introductory class that I have ever taken, we have discussed the basics of studying and framing religion in an academic way. For this class however, it was framed slightly differently, but effectively. Peter started with the idea that “religion is spilled poetry.” A poetic line, to be sure, but what does it mean? …
Re: 140 Islam- A Week of Foundation
RE 140: Islam taught by Professor Peter Wright began the way most 100 level religion courses do, full. The 100 level courses in the department are mostly introductory courses in the major traditions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Indigenous Religious Traditions, and Islam. They seem to be increasingly popular these days as all of them that …
Life of Colin
There was one day in class when someone mentioned an episode of the TV show Portlandia (a parody of Portland, Oregon) where a couple in a restaurant is so concerned about where the chicken on the menu came from that they drive to a farm 30 miles south of the city to see exactly where the chicken, …
Ignorance, Knowledge, Dejection, Power, and Contextualization of Self in Outer Space. A Cycle.
We’ve just come to the end of third week, which means that we are approaching the dreaded FOURTH WEEK. This is when students survive on pizza, candy, and coffee. Lots of coffee. The end for my class in particular involves a systematic organizing of the concepts we’ve learned. Part of this is asking questions: Have …
Hellenistic Poetry and Philosophy
Last week we moved on from Herodotus and began to read selections of poetry from the Hellenistic period in Greece from around the fall of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. up until the eventual conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 B.C. The selections included Appollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Theocritus’ Idylls, and the Epigrams …
DATA
I sometimes find quantitative, number- and statistic-based data to be like porcupines: prickly, pointed, and good to look at but not so good to touch. But for the past week, our class has been using a lot of data, and I like it. In groups of two or three we were assigned a city where …
Ancient Multicultures Week 1
This picture has been haunting me for the past week or so. Ancient Multicultures is the first class for which I have had to read substantial amounts of text or write a paper since seventh block of the last academic year. Coincidentally, that class was also with legendary Professor Owen Cramer. Interestingly enough the …
