REL 111 - Environmental Spiritualities

This course is organized around four main questions: 1) How does the natural world impact or show up in different religious traditions and spiritualities? How do religious traditions and spiritual practices attend to and interpret nature? 2) How does environmental crisis impact religious practice and experience? 3) Does spirituality have a role to play in responding to environmental harms? and 4) What might we learn about the natural world by engaging religious and spiritual thought and practice? Over the course of the semester, we will engage religious traditions and voices to ask and answer these questions, from Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures.

The course will center close reading of primary sources, developing individual and shared intellectual practices of conversation and reflection, and diverse writing practices, from journaling to academic papers to creative writing. The course is particularly geared toward first-years and sophomores, as entree to religious studies and to humanistic inquiry and practice, but is open to all years.

Satisfies Religious Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Environmental Studies- Humanities track- major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Philosophical and Religious Perspective requirement.