4th Hour Seminar

Times for Fourth Hour Integrating Seminar SL1000:  Monday 3:00 - 4:15, 4:30 - 5:45. Tuesday 2:30 - 3:45, 4:00 - 5:15, 6:00 - 7:15.  Wednesday 3:00 - 4:15, 4:30 - 5:45, 5:30 6:45. Thursday 10:00 - 11:15, 1:00 - 2:15, 2:30 - 3:45.  Friday 12:30 - 1:45, 1:30 - 2:45.

Fall 2013 Courses

Courses Approved for SLC Fall 13.

Most of these courses will have at least 50% enrollment of SLC students.

Alternatives to these courses fulfilling the SLC requirements are not permitted in the FALL

Please check novasis for openings.  If you want to be on the waiting list for Ethics Courses contact Mary.aiello@villanova.edu

SOC 4000 - 003  21862 TOP: U.S. Society in Critical Perspective    Dr. Robert DeFina  (22) M/W 1:30-2:45

This interdisciplinary course critically examines key facets of American society, including capitalism, inequality and democracy.  Students will explore and contrast the idealized representations of society with how things actually work.  Within each major topic, several pressing concerns are studied, including the environment, consumerism, health care, and the continuing significance of social class, tax policy and militarism.  The course emphasizes a sociological analysis of the issues, although ideas from economics and political science are introduced and applied as well.

PJ 2500-001 CRN  21637 EDUCATION & SOCIAL JUSTICE  TR 11:30-12:45 (20-23) Carol Anthony  ( SLC students only)

This course will survey the landscape of education in the U.S., both public and private, and critically evaluate its strengths and weaknesses through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching.  We will explore how the content, context, and structure of education in the U.S. serves to perpetuate and intensify inequalities of race, class, and gender in such a diverse culture, and we will address the impact of technology and corporate sponsorship on the “goal” of education.    In light of this and in keeping with the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching’s emphasis on those most disadvantaged and devalued in society, we will also explore scholarship that addresses the potential of education to liberate people from such modal inequalities and injustices for whatever might be meant by “full human flourishing,” and to transform ourselves into a more equitable social democracy.  ATTRIBUTES: Diversity 1, Writing enriched.  May be approved for Core Social Science retroactively-later in spring or summer.

THL 4690 - 001 THM:The Option for the Poor Enrollment: 15 SLC seats   (upper level theology) Days: T/Th 1pm -2:15  Instructors: Suzanne C. Toton    Selected topics in Christian living. Course Attributes:  Advanced Theology, Cultural Studies, Theology & Religious Studies

Students who have been exposed to the Catholic social tradition are well aware of the fact that the Gospel calls us to make a preferential option for the poor, but not necessarily what a preferential option for the poor might look like today. Many equate opting for the poor with community service, volunteering for a year or two after graduation, charity, or sacrificing comfortable lifestyles and dedicating their lives to the poor.  This course will trace the origin and development of “the preferential option for the poor,” as a principle of the Catholic social tradition. Drawing on case studies, we will examine how the “Option for the Poor” has and can continue to inform the mission and work of the church, its affiliated institutions and agencies, and individuals and collectives as they engage in the struggle to create a more just, compassionate, and peaceful social order. Through group research projects, students will explore opportunities to opt for the poor that reach beyond service and charity.

Two sections of Ethics and one Honors Ethics –restricted to SLC students.

All Ethics Courses are full.  If you want to go on the waiting list, please check with Mrs. Aiello SAC 386

·         Ethics 2050  014 CRN  21491 Mark Wilson    MW----3-4:15  PM  25

·         Ethics 2050 10-11:15 CRN 21496  Peter Wicks, TR 10AM  25

·         Honors Ethics 2050 to Dr.  Mark Wilson  16   MW 1:30 (no honors ethics in spring)

·         ETHICS description:  The discipline of ethics, part art and part science, is an inquiry into fundamental questions about human existence: what it means to do good, live well, love rightly.  It is, above all, an examination of who we are, what we value, and how we come to share our lives with others.  To ‘do’ ethics is to learn to think critically, coherently, cautiously, and charitably about the good life and common goods, and to scrutinize our own answers as we welcome the questions of strangers.  A primary goal of a liberal arts education is to provide students with the skills necessary to examine the claims advanced by the various communities and traditions they share or encounter in their lives. Many of these traditions specifically respond to the question of how one should live or offer guidance for a good human life. They characterize right actions and their relation to human excellence; right relations with ourselves, others, our natural environment, and God; how these relations are expressed in human practices and institutions; the nature and sources of moral failure; the nature of practical reasoning; and so forth. Critical examination of such normative claims with respect to human activity is the domain of the academic discipline of ethics. A primary goal of the course is to understand the complexity of ethical debates and to appreciate the way that different visions of the good life relate to civic, professional, and personal integrity.

PJ 5000-001 TOP: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE ARTS       MWF 10:30-11:20 Strickler (8-10) there will be an option for students to work with Build a Bridge.  www.buildabridge.org  Build a bridge requires 20 hours of training over a weekend. You will be working with art projects in a homeless shelter or other organization that serves the poor.  This class will not be filled with other SLC students.

 Many genres of art have been used to highlight existing inequalities and injustices in society, and have also been instrumental in promoting social change and societal healing. However, a closer look reveals that within the arts there is also significant evidence of structural and behavioral bias on the basis of race, age, gender, socioeconomic and differing abilities. This course will examine how the worlds of painting, music and dance incorporate various forms of discrimination through such factors as limitations on access to training or education, cultural views on what and who is considered acceptable, and political expediency.  We will also explore the ways in which art has been used to heal and transform in society.
Students will be exploring all three art forms but will be expected to focus on just one for the purposes of a term paper. Other assignments (which will hopefully inform the content of the term paper) will include a study of the dynamics of a local museum or concert venue or dance studio, an interview of an artist (in one of the three fields) and the creation of a plan to use one of the art forms as a means of social healing.  NOTE: Absolutely no experience or talent necessary! ATTRIBUTES: Sociology.

PJ 2800-001 Race, Class, & Gender CRN: 21638 Enrollment: RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER      TR 2:30-3:45 Dwyer

This course concerns a critical analysis of the inequalities that exist in the U.S. as a function of differences based on one’s race, one’s sex, and one’s class.  We will read contemporary authors from different cultures and different disciplines as they describe, historicize, analyze, and offer possible remedies for those experiences, practices, policies, and conceptual structures that can separate and divide us one from another.   As a peace and justice course at a Catholic University, this course is structured from the values and tenets of Catholic social teaching. Fundamentally, this means that we will be looking at the ways we understand and organize ourselves, but from the perspective of those most vulnerable to systems of power that serve to deny and/or devalue them.  Africana Studies Minor/Conc, Diversity Requirement 1, Diversity Requirement 2, Writing Enriched Requirement

ETH 3010-001 CRN 21508  Sec. 001  TR  1-2:15pm Topics:  True Measures of Devotion:  Warriors and Warfare in the 21st Century  Mark Wilson.  This class will not be filled with SLC students

This Course is restricted to students working at Comfort House:  Which is a place where homeless veterans can live and get what they need to live well and independently.   The focus of this course is on veterans.  War has been a permanent, and some would argue defining, feature of human history.  Recent debates over the United States’ invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the “War on Terror” follow in a legacy of arguments, often heated and rarely simple, about the permissibility of war and the sacrifices—physical, social, psychological, and moral—that war demands.  Can killing be morally sanctioned?  How do we distinguish between killing and murder?  Can war be an instrument of peace?   This course will examine these questions as they have been explored by Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and secular thinkers.  We will consider when, if ever, the use of military force is justified, and question whether moral limits can be placed on the actions of war.  We will also investigate the ways in which new technologies (e.g., drones, autonomous robots) offer significant challenges to conventional notions of warfare.  In approaching these topics, attention will be given to issues of international justice, human rights, the presumption against harm, and military necessity.  We will give special emphasis to the experience of combatants, questions of moral injury, and the relationship between combatants and noncombatants in civil society.       

NEW COURSES due to cancellation of Homeless Chic

PJ5000-003 HISTORY OF HOMELESSNESS                                                 TR10:00             Sena
The History of Homelessness will offer an examination of the diverse societal perceptions of homelessness and poverty, and how those perceptions have shifted over time. Students will also study changes in government policy and how changing policy has affected people experiencing homelessness.  It is the intention of this course to provide a framework for understanding the root causes of the expansion of homelessness in the U.S., and to convey a sense of the experience of homelessness and its consequences. There will be exploration of the current efforts to meet the immediate needs of the homeless. The course will empower students to advocate for sustainable changes which can prevent homelessness. Students will glean a deeper understanding of homelessness through readings and class discussions, and through interacting with people who are experiencing homelessness at the Student-Run Emergency Housing Unit of Philadelphia. ATTRIBUTES: History, Diversity 1.