Course Schedule for Summer 2020

MALS FND: Humanities

Note: This course is required for all MALS students who matriculated during and after the fall 2019 semester. MALS students only.

Nation-State &the; Islamic Veil

cThis course will take a ‘government and international affairs’ approach to examining the geopolitics of the veil in three nation states, with the primary focus on Turkey. We will examine 1. Secularist rationales for eliminating the veil in nation-states and what it cues to nascent nationalistic groups, 2. The forces of modernity and Westernization in MENA countries, 3. Turkey’s half-European half-Central Asian cultural foci, 4. France’s colonial policies in Algeria and their impact on current events.

Note: This course is open to MALS and DLS students.

Secularism & Church/State Rel

This course discusses theories about regulating engagements between religion and politics. Religious organizations and governing powers can benefit from neutral restraints preventing each side from dominating the other. Secularism in principle offers a third option besides the government controlling religion (tyranny) and a religion controlling government (theocracy). A variety of secularisms are surveyed around the world, where types of separations between church from state have developed within different socio-cultural contexts. The experiences of France, USA, Turkey, Israel, India, and China, along with a selection of additional nations, are represented. Historical, anthropological, sociological, political, philosophical, and theological perspectives contribute to studies of secular institutions adopting religious functions and religions responding to rising secularity. By our time, the civil peace promised by secularism has only been partially realized. Religious adherents can use voting in elections, mobilizing in protests, and even terrorizing violence to get preferential treatment from their governments. Secularist voices can sound intolerant towards all religion and hostile to religious freedoms, thereby threatening rather than defending core democratic values such as individualism, diversity, and pluralism. Re-designed compromises between religious and secularist agendas now require global attention.

Note: This is a hybrid course. Please connect with program staff via ls-advising@georgetown.edu if you have questions related to modality. This course is open to MALS and DLS students.

Pilgrimage, Travel, and Tourism

“Only thoughts reached while walking have value,” wrote Nietzsche. Religions seem to have a similar view. Pilgrimage has been a wide-spread aspect of most religions, through most historical periods. This course will examine the relation of travel (in its many guises) to religion from pilgrimage to common tourism. Classic and contemporary theories of pilgrimage will provide the backdrop. The majority of the course, however, will focus on the present day and on contexts that are not explicitly religious by reading travel accounts by Henry Miller, Alphonso Lingis, and Jack Gilbert, as well as five films. The point of the course, then, is to examine why travel is so important religiously and how all travel, even tourism, is religiously significant.

Note: This course is open to MALS and DLS students.

Understanding Terrorism and Countering Terrorists

This course examines the terrorist threat and government responses. It has been designed in the context of events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and subsequent actions in response to those attacks. The course initially considers the international environment from which terrorism emanates, and then proceeds to focus on the definitions of terrorism, terrorist group's motivations and tactics, US policies and defensive mechanisms to counter terrorism, and terrorism's future. Students will develop an understanding of the dynamics of terrorism and counterterrorism. The course objective is to provide students a solid foundation upon which further expertise can be developed on an issue which will confront the United States and the international community for the foreseeable future.

Note: This course is open to MALS and DLS students.