PREVIOUS TEACHING PROJECTS

Fall semester 2002 provided me with an opportunity to develop a new graduate course on a topic which has long interested me: Religion, Healing and Spirituality. A grant from the Aslan Foundation enabled me to engage assistants to help plan the course as well as the public symposium (see below). As part of my many years of research in Africa I have witnessed many forms of healing, but my interest in the topic was peaked during my year at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. The new Religion, Health and Healing Initiative was just underway and I participated in several of their activities. We were able to bring down the current Director, Professor Susan Sered, for our class and symposium in October.

I confess to being one of those professors who got caught up in the millennial bandwagon. In fall 1999, I created a new course, on "Millennialism: Cross-Cultural and Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives."  This was then taught in Spring 2000 (with the superb assistance of two undergrads and two grads from that class--who were known by the class as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) as a large-enrollment University Studies (multi-media and multi-disciplinary) It was called "End of the World? Cross-Cultural and Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Millennialism" and I would be hard pushed to name a course I enjoyed being involved in more. One of the most meaningful courses I have ever taught was "Religion, Conflict and Violence" in fall 2001. How prophetic can a professor get? See a photo of students from the class in my garden as we were admiring the painting we had all just created! I have since taught that class on two separate occasions, and introduced material from the religious dimensions of the Rwandan genocide, as well as from the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government.

In the 1999 fall semester I co-taught with Dr. Janet Atwill (English dept.) our Hewlett Institute/Innovative Technologies Center-sponsored course on "The Internet and International Human Rights."