Course Syllabus

Instructors: Jeffrey Mahan and Eric Smith

Course Description: Imagining Christian Practice explores Christian bodily practices, and the ways in which Christian identity is created in art, architecture, and other media across times and places. Examining both ancient and contemporary contexts through lenses both visual and lived, this course also intends to introduce the graduate study of religion and scholarly practices. The course focuses on 1) image, 2) spaces and material objects, and 3) practices as expressions of religion and suggests that particular religions and religious communities are most fully understood by paying attention to the way they use or resist images, by the spaces and material objects they create, and by their bodily practice of faith. Students will be invited to experience how particular communities are formed by and expressed in their art, architecture, worship spaces and objects and practices, and to read works by scholars who have thought about these things, to engage in classroom discussion and written reflection on both the theories and experiences.

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