Religion & Gender
Prerequisites: THEO 100, THEO 107, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
This course will study the role of women in at least one (if not more) of the major world religious traditions.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the influence of religion on gender roles, and how women in the contemporary world are reinterpreting their religious traditions.
Prerequisites: THEO 100, THEO 107, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
This course will study the role of women in at least one (if not more) of the major world religious traditions.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the influence of religion on gender roles, and how women in the contemporary world are reinterpreting their religious traditions.
Restricted to Rome Center students
Prerequisite: THEO 100 or THEO 107 or equivalent.
Tier 2 Theological Knowledge
Women & Gender Studies
This class is restricted to Rome Center students.
In Theo 278 you will be introduced to contemporary gender theory, and discuss how it can be applied as a critical tool for examining religion past and present. Contemporary perspectives are woven consistently throughout the course with analysis and discussion on sexualities, gender identities and feminist critique.
In the first part of the course we focus initially on the Garden of Eden in biblical narrative, and study its history of interpretation in relation to constructed female and male gender roles. Further biblical texts that relate to this narrative will be analysed, as well as how its content has impacted on Christian beliefs down the centuries. This text is foundational, providing archetypes that both consciously and unconsciously inform gender identity in Western and Post-Colonial contexts. We will continue by exploring a selection of biblical texts that divulge how some biblical authors utilized gender in order to destabilize the given tropes of their times. You will be shown how these texts are interpreted in art and sculpture, and be encouraged to study examples in Rome and across Europe.
For the remainder of the course we move outside the biblical and Christian worlds to observe how gender has been constructed in a selection of the world¿s major religious traditions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Indigenous traditions. These foci will provide a broad global perspective of religious beliefs and practices.
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