Course Syllabus

Course Description

This course invites first-year students at Iliff to consider the intersection of theological education and the contemporary movement for Black lives as an iteration of a long history of Black struggle for liberation within the United States. Through this class, students will be invited to explore existential questions regarding humanity and the theological doctrine thereof, race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will be encouraged to creatively engage diverse resources and will be introduced to activists who have been and continue to be engaged in the movement for Black lives. Students will begin to answer the following central question: How is this iterative movement for Black lives helping us to rethink or reconsider a Black theology, Black religiosity, and/or ministry?

Objectives

• Learning and engaging with the movement for Black lives.

• Creatively engage and participate in social justice thought and praxis.

• Explore the movement for Black lives as a contextualized struggle that intersects with history, social analysis, sacred texts, ethics, religious practice, and comparative religion.

• The development of critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Specifically, students will learn how to identify (in the writing of others) and articulate (in their own writing) a thesis, methodological approaches, context, argument contours, and the broader implications of the scholarship. Students will also learn how to cite diverse print and media resources.

• Students will hone library and online research skills in order to address a particular subject.  Specifically, students will learn how to curate and discern resources that are helpful and appropriate to given genres.

• Students will learn how to engage in constructive academic dialogue rooted in religious & social scholarship in online, classroom, and broader public forums.

• Students will be introduced to cutting edge religious thought to nurture their interest in religious and theological study.

Please see the full syllabus here.