Religion Across the Curriculum
At Georgetown University, religion is taught in creative ways across the curriculum in a variety of disciplines. Georgetown is a place where students engage with other traditions--religious and secular--both inside and outside the classroom. This dynamic environment creates new challenges for teaching about a range of subjects.
The number of religion-related courses taught across the University has increased sharply over the last several years—a reflection of changes in the world and shifts in student and faculty interest. Teaching about religion is exciting, but also difficult. Many disciplines have long marginalized religion and are now looking for ways to bring it in, theoretically and substantively. The topic is emotionally and ideologically charged, and engages students and shapes classroom interaction in new ways. The contested political contexts for work on religion raise interesting challenges for course design and execution.
In Fall 2007, we began a series of faculty seminars on Religion and Culture and Religion and Conflict designed to help faculty explore ways of teaching about religion across disciplines in this new pluralistic environment.
We also began, in collaboration with CNDLS, a multi-year, longitudinal study Undergraduate Learning and Interreligious Understanding, designed to deepen our knowledge about connections between undergraduate learning and interreligious understanding.