90 courses with the subject PAR, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
PAR 101The Big Questions: Introduction to Philosophy3
Introduction to various philosophers and philosophical problems from historical, critical, and other perspectives. Addresses the big questions of human existence, such as: What is right and wrong? Does God exist? How do we know anything about the world around us? Students learn what a philosophical question is and discover just how pervasive philosophical assumptions are in life.
Introduction to the academic study of religion. Explores the many diverse religions practiced around the world and the ways practitioners construct religious experiences through scriptures, art, gender, race, and community.
PAR 105Critical Reasoning With Artificial Intelligence
Introduction to the principles of proper reasoning through the use of generative AI. Exploration of how to assess the reasoning of AI and how to use AI to improve one’s own argumentation. Study of the contrast between good and bad forms of reasoning as manifested by both humans and AI.
Introduction to the principles of logic including the rules of deduction, the categorical syllogism, induction, and fallacies. Initiation in computer logic programs.
Introduction to the history and composition of scriptures of the world’s religions from oral stories to words, images, objects, books, performances, sounds, and texts. Examines how scriptures in major Eastern and Western religions have constructed historical, political, social, and cultural realities through various forms of art from antiquity to today.
PAR 201Ancient and Medieval Philosophy: Plato to Aquinas3
Survey of Western philosophical thought in ancient and medieval times. Emphasis on the Greek origins of the philosophical tradition. Readings from the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Roman philosophy and such Christian thinkers as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Introduction to the major topics of Western philosophy during the modern period, including skepticism, the existence of God, and the source of our ideas. Analysis of the thought of philosophers such as Descartes, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.
A survey of American philosophical thought from colonial times to the present. Readings from such American thinkers as Jonathan Edwards, the Federalist authors, Thoreau, James, Dewey and Quine.
A survey and evaluation of past and present theories of human nature; to include such topics as nature and culture, freedom and rationality, issues in gender identity, and theories of education and human development.
An introduction to major themes in existential thought such as freedom, authenticity, death of God, the meaning of life. Primary source readings from existential authors, e.g., Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel.
Introduction to philosophical issues in race and social justice. Topics include race and identity, discrimination, multiculturalism, affirmative action, anti-racism.
Introduction to mindfulness and its application to racial justice issues and efforts. Explores mindfulness as a contemplative practice and discusses its similarities and differences with religious contemplative practices of meditation, prayer, silence, and stillness. Adopts an intersectional approach that considers interlocking systems of oppression in the United States.
Examination of the contemplative life in global philosophical and religious traditions from past and present, including Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism and Stoicism. Discusses the goals and methods of contemplative practice and includes experiential learning opportunities to explore contemplation beyond the classroom throughout the semester.
Introduction to the study of gender in religious studies. Examines how constructions of gender have influenced the practice of religion and definitions of agency, power, and liberation among religious people. Topics vary.
Survey of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from their origins in the Middle East over 3,500 years ago to their diverse practices, scriptures, art, and communities around the world today.
Historical study of the Hebrew Scriptures and their cultural background; focus on the values, problems, and perceptions of the human condition reflected in these texts and archaeological data related to them.
Historical survey of the canonical Christian literature; illustration of contemporary methods of text-criticism, literary-criticism, form-criticism, and redaction-criticism; focus on results of modern scholarship in appreciating the Gospels and their function in the early Christian community.
Exploration of race and racism in the United States through theoretical, historical, political and religious constructions during slavery, colonialism, and Jim-Crowism. Examination of white supremacy, anti-Black oppression, the resistance to racism, and impacts on contemporary social life.
Study of religion in American history from the colonial era to the present-day United States. Examines the religious practices of Native Americans, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and others by interrogating the relationships between religion, material culture, race, gender, and politics.
PAR 245Political Theology & Race: Religious Racism and Religious Anti-Racism3
Study of political theology, with a focus on race. Complex exploration into the ways of religion and politics in the West and the reimagined conceptions of religion and politics found in alternative/otherwise imaginaries of Black (religious) experience.
Explores textual and material interpretations of the Bible in Black and White Christian communities in the United States, including: the Bible’s role in arguments for and against slavery; the Bible’s role in the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement; the Bible as song, performance, and object; and the Bible’s role in constructing gender, race, and politics in American life.
Examines the relationships between philosophical inquiry and motion pictures, including how philosophical ideas have influenced film as well as the use of film as a medium for expressing and analyzing philosophical issues. Readings include great works of philosophy from ancient, modern, and contemporary times.
Instruction in a variety of philosophical writing styles and strategies used to communicate philosophical concepts, including but not limited to: use of primary and secondary sources, style in scholarly essays; literary devices such as analogies and metaphors; argument and construction and refutation; methods of inquiry.
Examination of the relation of religion to social and psychological forces, including feminist and post-modern approaches to religion, and issues related to globalization. Topics include addressing the academic study of religion as an enterprise occurring in specific moments of modern intellectual history, and examining ongoing conceptual developments in the field.
An examination of Aristotle’s philosophy through selected texts, supplemented with contemporary criticisms. Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato; problems of interpretation.
Survey of the history of American Islam from colonial America to the present day United States by examining the Qur’an’s influence on religious freedom in the nation’s founding documents, the religious practices of Muslims enslaved in antebellum America, the relationships between the Nation of Islam and the Civil Rights Movement, and Muslim women’s choice to wear (or not wear) hijab.
Survey of Black religions in and around the Cape Fear region from the 1800s to today. Explores how Black Americans have practiced Christianity, Islam, Conjure, Gullah-Geechee culture, and other traditions using images, objects, texts, memories, and stories to enact individual, communal, religious and political autonomy.
PAR 307Memoirs of Black Religion: Life-Narratives as Religious Sources3
Study of memoirs and autobiographical texts by Black people from slavery through the twenty-first century, focusing on the intersection of religion and race. Complex exploration into the ways of religion and spirituality in the history of Black communities in America, and their otherwise imaginaries of spiritual transformation, self-making, becoming, maturing, belonging, resisting, liberating, and dreaming.
An introduction to the nature, concept and sources of law and the various schools of jurisprudence. Topics treated include: natural law; historical, analytical and sociological jurisprudence; idealism, utilitarianism and legal realism; equity, justice, precedent, custom and law, and the relation of law and morality.
Introduction to major topics in the ethics of artificial intelligence, including the proper role of AI in moral decision-making, the potential for AI to have moral status, the relevance of AI to issues of academic integrity, and the potential for AI to engage in racial discrimination.
PAR 313Justice, Rights, and the Common Good: Philosophical Perspectives on Socio-Political Issues3
Exploration of philosophical issues and concepts central to an understanding of social and political life, for example function and cause, justice, liberty, equality, societal facts and laws, utopias, reason and political argument, political obligation, and the public interest.
Introduction to major topics from aesthetics and the philosophy of art, including the objectivity/subjectivity of beauty, the political significance of art, and art’s relevance to authenticity, self-expression, and moral education.
Detailed study of first-order logic (propositional logic and predicate logic), including relational predicate logic. Both semantic methods and syntactic methods are featured. At least one additional advanced topic will be addressed: identity and definite descriptions, meta-theory, the proof tree approach, the axiomatic approach, etc.
Selected readings drawn from classical and/or contemporary sources bearing on problems of the self, such as the issue of personal identity and the concept of a person, the problem of the relation of mind and body and the question of the nature of consciousness.
PAR 322Ritual Therapy and Health in Caribbean Religions3
Explores the Caribbean religious understandings of health and healing, ethnomedical and ritual therapeutics, and other metaphysical healing techniques and spaces, including Ebo healing of Ifa divination, Palo and Santeria (Lukumi) Botanicas. Familiarizes students with the different health and healing approaches, techniques, and spaces in the Caribbean communities.
PAR 325Prophetic Fire & Martin Luther King, Jr.: Spiritual Formation and Political Theological Vision
Study of the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., with complex exploration into the prophetic scope of his spiritual formation and political theological vision. As a Baptist pastor and more King has been an iconic figure in modern American history, one whose influence reaches well beyond America.
Study of religion in the long history of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Examines the practices, writings, thoughts, and actions of American Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and others regarding Black Americans’ fight for civil rights, as well as racism, anti-racism, gender, and politics in American life surrounding the movement.
Religions of Africa, including traditional and non-traditional religious systems, and their impact on African societies and Africanism in the Americas.
Analysis and interpretation of a particular part of the Hebrew Scriptures. Topics will vary from one course offering to another. (The Torah; the Prophets; the Writings).
Analysis and interpretation of a particular part of the New Testament. Topics will vary from one course offering to another. (The Gospels; the Acts of the Apostles; the Johannine works; the Letters of Paul).
Analysis of the major Jewish and Christian writings related to but excluded from the Bible, including histories, apocalypses, testaments, prayers, moral tales, and wisdom books.
Examination of the basic problems found in Western philosophy concerning religion, including efforts to prove the existence of God, the role of faith and reason, the problem of evil, immortality, religious experience, religious language, and religious pluralism.
Survey of beliefs, assumptions, and arguments of atheism and other varieties of unbelief. Examines major atheistic explanations for the phenomenon of religion, and atheism and unbelief within Eastern and Western religions.
Introduce students to major topics from the philosophy of science, including the nature of scientific explanations, the role of natural laws within scientific practice, the methods for revising scientific theories, and the proper interpretation of physical theories like relativity and quantum mechanics.
Study of Native American Religions before and after Euro-American colonization by focusing on the importance of land, spirits, stories, rituals, and objects, as well as indigenous responses to Christianity, new religious movements, politics, and gender. Introduces students to the study of Native American Religions using a material culture research method.
Examination of the role and significance of religion in early American culture and society. Topics include contact between Native American and Euro-American religious traditions, Puritanism, First Great Awakening, religion in the revolutionary era, separation of church and state.
The influences and meanings of religion in antebellum American society. Topics include Second Great Awakening, expansion of Protestant and Catholic churches, communitarian movements, religious responses to slavery.
Religious thought and action concerning social change in modern America. Topics include urban revivalism, labor, civil rights, and peace movements. Emphasis on differing interpretations of scripture, church teachings, and religious identity.
Study of religion in the American South from the colonial era to the present-day United States as it relates to gender, race, and politics. Topics include Native American religions, the religious practices of Black and white evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims, as well as religion and slavery, “The Religion of the Lost Cause,” and religion in the Civil Rights Movement.
Examination of philosophical issues found in the study of evolution: origins of the theory; impact on science; methodology of Darwinian and contemporary evolutionary studies; concepts of species, natural selection and adaptation and its mechanisms; application of evolutionary theory of human culture; and debates over creationism and sociobiology.
A critical analysis of the role of religion in holocausts and genocides from antiquity to the present. Emphasis on the destruction of aboriginal and ethnic peoples, the Jewish holocaust, African genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
Views of death and dying from a variety of religious traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism. For each tradition, we will consider the following questions: How do they understand the nature of death? do they ascribe meaning and value to death? Do they ascribe meaning and value to the death? Do they recommend a particular religious practice at the moment of death? What funeral rituals are advocated within their tradition?
Examination of a specific philosophical topic (such as aesthetics, reality, love, freedom, responsibility, morality, social class, race and gender) through film. Analysis of the topic under investigation will include reading primary sources in philosophy, lecture and discussion, and film screenings. May be repeated under different subtitles for up to 12 credit hours.
PAR 366Continental Philosophy: Early Jean-Paul Sartre3
An examination of Sartre’s early existential philosophy with a focus on the classical philosophical problems of personal identity, freewill/determination, negative existential statements, and the problem of other minds.
Survey of philosophical views of political power in Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Berlin, Nietzsche and Foucault. Addresses a series of interrelated questions: What is political power? What legitimates it? Who has it? How does is function? What strategies and tactics most effectively subvert and/or resist it?
Examination of the religions of India as seen in ethical and social thought, ritual and mediation practice, philosophy, and art. Includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism
Examination of the history, philosophies, practices, and institutions of Chinese religions through both primary texts and secondary scholarship. Focus mainly on the indigenous religions of China - Confucianism, Daoism, and ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ traditions. Course will make use of texts, films, online resources, and images.
Examination of Japanese religions and their roles in Japanese culture and society. Course will make use of texts, literature, film, anime, manga, and other media.
Study of the religious life and thought of Black American communities with concentration on independent traditions, sects, and a sampling of major thinkers and issues.
Religious diversity within the Caribbean, including established, non-traditional, and Afrocentric religious traditions, and their interaction with popular culture.
PAR 101 or PAR 115 recommended, not required. Introduction to the philosophy of drama. Includes studies of aesthetics, philosophical interpretations of classic plays, and philosophical thought in drama. Readings to include Aristophanes, Aristotle, Beckett, Critchley, Langer, Shakespeare, and Sophocles; films of plays.
PAR 101 or PAR 115 recommended, not required. Introduction to the philosophy of sports, to include studies of particular sports, philosophical discussions of the nature of sport, and of the ethics and aesthetics of sport. Includes readings from Paul Weiss, Randolph Feezell, and other contemporary philosophers; selections from films on various sports.
Explores how religions in the past and present are necessarily and inherently technological. Evaluates modern assumptions about the secular (i.e., non-religious) nature, digital nature, and passive work of technology. Topics vary by instructor.
An interdisciplinary investigation of various philosophical and religious questions. Themes for study: the problem of evil, the relations of faith and reason, symbolism and language, meaning of freedom, and concepts of determinism. Required of majors in junior or senior year; open to qualified non-majors.
An examination of rights theory and conceptions of human rights. Will explore the origins, meaning, nature and extent of human rights, including critical perspectives.
An exploration of fundamental issues in the areas of free will and moral responsibility. Related topics include personhood, agency, action, causation, determinism, fatalism, praise and blame.
Involves investigation under faculty supervision beyond what is offered in existing courses. For further information, consult the Directed Individual Studies section in this catalogue.
A program of work and study conducted with an agency and/or setting that provides practical experience with observation and application of philosophical or religious concepts. A maximum of 3 credit hours may be counted toward major degree requirements and graduation. Faculty evaluation of all study and on-site activity will be in consultation with sponsoring agency.
