This Winter quarter, JSIS is offering two Calderwood Seminars focusing on religion in politics and public life: JSIS 498 – American Religion, Race, and White Supremacy and RELIG 590 –  Graduate Seminar: Writing about Religion, Freedom, and the Public Sphere.

The Calderwood Seminars are based on innovative curricula that equip students to write for the public and translate their academic knowledge to a broad audience. Calderwood Seminars also fulfill the Capstone Experience for the JSIS Global and Regional Studies major.

Learn more about the two religion-focused Seminars, and register by clicking the course title, below.

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JSIS 498 – American Religion, Race, and White Supremacy

5 credits
F 12:30 – 2:20 pm
James K. Wellman

American religion and politics are in crisis. At some points in our history American civil religion brought stability and equity to American lives, but now it brings dissension and violence. The state of our nation depends on how we think and write about these issues including addressing the state of American religion and race, as well as the rise of white Christian nationalism.

This Calderwood Seminar gives writing assignments that are both intensive and collaborative. Students will work together, alternately, as authors and editors. Whereas social science courses train students to write in academic prose, this seminar in public writing will empower students to write with equal rigor but for the wider public.

By the course’s end, students will have learned the history of several issues relating to U.S. religion and politics; will have developed the ability to connect this history to contemporary events; will have learned to place their opinions in dialogue with both peers and public intellectuals; will have improved their peer-review abilities; and will have developed the writing skills that enable them to communicate effectively, efficiently, and compellingly to both the public and elites.

RELIG 590 – Graduate Seminar: Writing about Religion, Freedom, and the Public Sphere 

5 credits, W
W 1:30 – 4:20 pm
Christian Novetzke