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This course offers a panoramic survey of the Islamic societies of the Middle East and North Africa from their origins to the present day. It will deal with the history and expansion of Islam, both as a world religion and civilization, from its birth in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century to its subsequent spread to other parts of western Asia and North Africa. Issues of religious practices, political governance and movements, gender, social relations and cultural norms will be explored in relation to a number of Islamic societies in the region. The course foregrounds the complexities and diversity present in a critical geographic area of what we call the Islamic world today. This course was also cross-listed as AFAM 20367, ANTH 20040, ASIA 20004, GSC 20425, IIPS 20714, LLEA 20605, and SOC 20041.

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This course serves as a broad survey of women's and gender issues within the contexts of multiple societies in the Islamic world. The first half of the semester will concentrate on the historical position of women in Islamic societies, defined by the normative values of Islam and by cultural traditions and norms that were sometimes at odds with religious prescriptions. We will discuss how the interpretations of these values in diverse circumstances and who gets to do the interpreting have had important repercussions for women's societal roles. The second half of the course will privilege women's voices in articulating their gendered identities and roles in a number of pre-modern and modern Islamic societies in different historical circumstances as expressed in memoirs, fiction, magazine articles, and public speeches. As part of the historical contextualization of such works, we will focus on how modern phenomena like Western colonialism, nationalist liberation movements, civil and other forms of war have fostered women's organized movements, and their socio-political empowerment in some cases and marginalization in others, with lasting implications for these developing societies. This course was also cross-listed as GSC 20178, and IIPS 20710.

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This seminar provides a look at immigration from diverse perspectives, principally through a week-long immersion at the Annunciation House on the border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This course was also cross-listed as CST 33966, ILS 30804, and THEO 33966.

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Sociology is the science – and the art – of understanding social relationships, human behavior, and the society that we live in. As a comprehensive introduction to the discipline, the goals of this course are to stimulate your fascination with sociology and to encourage you to recognize sociology’s practical value, as well as its unique perspective.

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This course will examine the development of Latino religion and theology in the United States and how U.S. Latina and Latino theologians have articulated the meaning and implications for Christian living of core theological topics such as Christology, worship, evangelization, and social justice. This course was also cross-listed as ILS 20801.

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