I Am Larry David: Are You Qualified to Teach Edition

Following the comments on Adam’s recent post, “Relationship Learning,” I felt compelled to tell this story.

I long while back, shortly after I began my Ph.D. program at Drew, I had a student formally challenge my ability to teach an introduction course to the adminstration of Laughable Community College, mainly because the student was caught plagiarizing twice in my course.  The dean took this complaint from the student quite seriously–I have stories about this dean to share another time–and she went through my file.  As it happens, no one asked me to provide transcripts to prove that I in fact have a master’s degree from the University of Chicago.  So she summoned me to her office and acted as if I was in big trouble, and they were going to withhold my pay for the summer course I was then teaching until I could provide an official graduate transcript.  She assured me that this had nothing to do with quality of instruction, but “we must take concerns about the faculty’s reputation seriously.”

Fair enough, I don’t have a problem sending transcripts.

So the transcripts came a week or two later, and I was again requested to meet to her office.

Shimer Syllabi

Classes start on Tuesday, so I thought I’d post my Shimer syllabi thus far, with a little commentary.

Philosophy of Religion syllabus

I have posted the syllabus for my Philosophy of Religion course on Scribd. This is the last course I’ll be designing for Kalamazoo College, and it is also (somewhat strangely) my first time actually teaching philosophy.

Certain commenters will probably be gratified to see that I’m finally teaching Mary Daly, albeit not in the Feminist Theologies course — she does say, after all, that Beyond God the Father is an attempt at feminist philosophy.

Syllabus for Roman Catholic Theological Thought: Nature and Environmental Ethics from Aquinas to Liberation Theology

After my post last week, on the advice of Mark William Westmoreland, I added a text by Joseph Ratzinger to fill out the early section of the course on Roman Catholic Social Thought. Thanks for the discussion about Cusa, including a friendly warning from Jake Sherman. I feel quite happy now to have him on the syllabus and I think he’ll work well with the theme I have of nature as creation in theological thought. I’ve posted the penultimate draft of the syllabus (a few things to iron out out once I’ve met with the head of department) for those interested.

Syllabus Crowdsourcing: Roman Catholic Theology of Nature and Environmental Ethics

This Fall I’ll be teaching a course at DePaul University. The title of the course is “Roman Catholic Theological Thought: Nature and Envrionrmental Ethics from Aquinas to Liberation Theology” and I plan to give the students a solid survey of the various positions within Roman Catholicism, from the view of the Magisterium to those who are often in conflict with them like Boff and Ruether. The underlying idea that holds the course together is that there your ethical stance towards the environment is greatly determined by how you understand the being of nature, God, and society. I think I have a good reading list for the course, but wanted to throw out my current plan to see if readers had any thoughts.

I thought I would begin the class reading two Papal statements, John Paul II’s 1990 statement on World Day of Peace and Benedict’s Caritas in veritate, and the “Renewing the Earth” statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The idea being we quickly identify the official teachings of the Roman church in relation to the environment. The question is then to examine what ideas about nature lie behind these teachings and then we’d more into more heavy lifting:

• Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. This would also include some supplementary reading from Pope Leo’s exhortation to teach Aquinas and a chapter from Willis Jenkins’ Ecologies of Grace.
• On Learned Ignorance by Nicholas of Cusa. Still not quite sure about this one, but I think he might teach a bit better than Aquinas and his reading of the structure of God into the universe fits with the theme.
• Then St. Francis’ “Canticle of the Sun” and “Sermon to the Birds” along with two chapters from Roger D. Sorrell’s St. Francis of Assisi and Nature.
• Leonardo Boff’s Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
• Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Gaia & God

I’ve not taught in the US before and the difference between the US and the UK in reading expectations is radical, so I’m hoping my average of 40 pages per class is reasonable. Obviously, if this weren’t a strictly Roman Catholic theology course I’d take a very different approach, but I think this set of readings works well. Are there any major CST documents I’m missing or books you’d recommend? Thoughts on the Cusa?

Syllabus: Medieval Christian Thought (Fall 2010)

For those who are interested, I have posted the revised syllabus for my Medieval Christian Thought class this fall. The first time around was one of my most successful classes last year, and I’m very glad to be able to refine it. I’ve decided to stick with my decision to start with Augustine’s Confessions, providing background on pre-scholastic Latin theology with lectures that match the topic of that day’s reading. The main change is in the Aquinas text I’m using; the first book of Summa Contra Gentiles really dragged last time, so I am just using the Library of Christian Classics selection from the Summa Theologiae to give them some more variety. The rest is basically shuffling the mystical texts I was using and covering monasticism and sacraments in lecture rather than through texts, because the texts I used didn’t work and because the students honestly didn’t seem to care — so sharpening the focus on scholasticism and mysticism seemed like a better use of time.

On assignments: after experimenting last year with using lectures as pure background — which I think was actually really good and allowed the students to direct the lectures more toward their areas of interest through their questions, etc. — I’m following student advice by quizzing them over the lectures as well as the reading, though I’ll make sure they know that I will come up with the lecture question the night before so that they won’t stress out about asking questions that might direct attention away from the quiz question. Also on student recommendation, I’m stepping up the “engagement level” of the second paper, which last time around was still in the analytical summary format. Especially given that it’s on the ontological argument, getting them to hold back from critique and response was very difficult — why not let them go with their gut? I’ll get better papers to read, and they’ll feel like they delved in more: everybody wins.

(I already have the selections from Julian and Hadewijch in mind, but if anyone can remind me of which specific Eckhart sermons would work best, that would save me a little legwork — but if not, I think I can find time in the next three months to track the good ones down.)