New Courses
Fall
The Abrahamic Community Internship is designed to enable students to serve cross-culturally in and with Abrahamic communities and organizations, based on respectful understanding of their beliefs and practices, engendering humanitarian contributions to local and global cultural goals. The internship is a structured field experience where students utilize, integrate and/or apply information from their previous coursework in Abrahamic studies. The internship involves both instructional and cross–cultural experiential components, providing mentoring throughout the process. It will focus on providing skills and modifying behavior and attitudes through engagement with people of a significantly different Abrahamic culture or religious tradition, helping the student to attain readiness for service in Abrahamic communities.
Spring
In light of scriptural and anthropological principles, this course explores the nature, dynamics, scope, challenges, and approaches in appropriate and effective service in Muslim contexts.
The Abrahamic Community Internship is designed to enable students to serve cross-culturally in and with Abrahamic communities and organizations, based on respectful understanding of their beliefs and practices, engendering humanitarian contributions to local and global cultural goals. The internship is a structured field experience where students utilize, integrate and/or apply information from their previous coursework in Abrahamic studies. The internship involves both instructional and cross–cultural experiential components, providing mentoring throughout the process. It will focus on providing skills and modifying behavior and attitudes through engagement with people of a significantly different Abrahamic culture or religious tradition, helping the student to attain readiness for service in Abrahamic communities.
Students develop their language skills by reading extended passages of Old Testament texts of different genres in Hebrew. In this particular class students will focus developing their skills in analyzing complete poems in Hebrew in order to explain the functional meaning and pragmatic effect of the Hebrew text. Completion of this course will include translating a text from the Hebrew Bible, writing explanatory notes highlighting points of interest in the exegesis and translation process, and transforming the passage into an artistic product suitable for another linguistic and cultural environment.
This course is a comparative study of parallels between Ancient Near Eastern civilizations, their texts and the Hebrew Bible. Students will explore non-biblical sources that contribute to understanding the linguistic, historical, socio-cultural, political, and religious contexts of the ancient Old Testament. Specific focus is given to epic, social, and religious language sources from civilizations of the Ancient Near Eastern world, particularly those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel.
Craft and tell culturally appropriate stories!
Summer
The Abrahamic Community Internship is designed to enable students to serve cross-culturally in and with Abrahamic communities and organizations, based on respectful understanding of their beliefs and practices, engendering humanitarian contributions to local and global cultural goals. The internship is a structured field experience where students utilize, integrate and/or apply information from their previous coursework in Abrahamic studies. The internship involves both instructional and cross–cultural experiential components, providing mentoring throughout the process. It will focus on providing skills and modifying behavior and attitudes through engagement with people of a significantly different Abrahamic culture or religious tradition, helping the student to attain readiness for service in Abrahamic communities.
This course asks, What role does popular culture play in our lives? What role do we play in the formation and maintenance of popular culture? We will explore these questions by examining popular culture particularly in the 21st century with reference to cross-cultural and historical examples. Students will consider the development of popular culture in the digital age. Topics include advertising, music, film and media, and digital devices and software. Students will learn to identify and explain the nature of cultural values manifested in popular culture.
The focus of the Biblical Cultural Studies course is basic knowledge of the people and events of the Bible in their geographical, historical, and cultural contexts. From the Ancient Near Eastern perspective, students will be able to explain biblical descriptions of the biblical God. Guidelines for reading different types of biblical literature will also be considered and acquired by students.
Students are introduced to key principles of First Aid, the sequence of steps to respond to emergencies, and the steps for patient assessment. Key aspects of CPR are learned along with wound care, musculoskeletal injuries, and first aid for poisoning, bites, and stings. Special attention is given to first aid for specific injuries in remote locations.
