Senior Seminar

492.01 The Art of Listening
Author Adam McHugh wrote, “the sort of people that we become is, in large part, determined by the voices that we choose to listen to.” In this class we will explore listening to the voices of both God and others and learn about the beauty and deep value of silence. We will engage in conversation over cups of tea, and we will listen deeply to the stories of others. Be prepared to check your phone at the door, enter with a curiosity for what you will hear, and leave the class with a newfound attentiveness that allows you to, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, “every day see or hear something that more or less kills you with delight.”

492.02 Human Rights and Human Wrongs
This course focuses on “human rights and human wrongs” in a global, interconnected world. We look at various treaties, the different forms of legal avenues available, and the impact of human rights and human wrongs on various populations of the world. Students will examine their world views, their philosophy and values in the context of understanding human rights worldwide. In the course of the class, students will look at various faiths and their treatment of human rights. Students will write a life-view paper analyzing their traditions and ways of acting, knowing, living and learning and highlighting their values, commitments and convictions — all while demonstrating their understanding of the diverse and life-giving purposes and perspectives by which we talk of human rights and human wrongs.

492.03 Living a Great Story
In her bestselling children’s book Tale of Desperaux, Kate Dicamillo writes, “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.” Jonathan Auxier offers a different perspective. In his young adult novel, The Night Gardener, one of his characters reflects, “A story helps folks face the world, even when it frightens ’em. And a lie does the opposite. It helps you hide.” Tim O’Brien, author of the Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried, offers yet another perspective on story. He writes, “… story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth… That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” In this senior seminar, we will use “story” as a framing concept for our discussions about what shapes us as individuals and as a society. We’ll encounter and discuss a variety of stories throughout the semester – children’s picture books, young adult literature, memoirs, films – as a way of reflecting on the different purposes of storytelling, different ways of telling stories, criteria for evaluating stories, and how stories can affirm or push against our own worldview beliefs.

492.04 Memoir-izing Your Walk
Coming to the realization: “I am alive!” Being reared in a Nazi-forced Polish ghetto and Auschwitz during one’s youngest years. Walking out of the Andes Mountains after being left for dead. Escaping isolation and forced religion in Idaho. These real-life events found in memoirs — including Dandelion Wine, The Daughter of Auschwitz, Miracle in the Andes, and Educated — will provide this Senior Seminar with talking points. We’ll also use those conversations to inspire writing in response to our reading. How do we accept and navigate our walk through life and make that life the very best existence possible? Writing your own “memoir” (aka your life-view project) will enhance and clarify that walk as you reflect on your past, present and future. Students of every belief and disbelief are welcome to join this literature-inspired and writing-rich conversation.

492.01 The Social Dilemma: Finding Community in a Digital Age
This course examines the ways in which we connect with one another and create community, both in face-to-face and digital/online contexts. We will critique our consumer society, examine the decline of community and neighborhoods in modern U.S. culture, consider ways to build community after graduation, and reflect on the possibilities and limitations of virtual community. Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age will be used as a foundational text as we examine the ways in which our communication is both impacted by and fundamentally changed by digital technology. The course concludes with examining what is Christian community, and the ways in which the historic Christian faith encourages us to be in community with one another. Readings, discussion, journaling and a final paper (world-and-life-view paper) will provide a framework for reflecting on the key questions of your course.

492.02 Human Rights and Human Wrongs
This course focuses on “human rights and human wrongs” in a global, interconnected world. We look at various treaties, the different forms of legal avenues available, and the impact of human rights and human wrongs on various populations of the world. Students will examine their world views, their philosophy and values in the context of understanding human rights worldwide. In the course of the class, students will look at various faiths and their treatment of human rights. Students will write a life-view paper analyzing their traditions and ways of acting, knowing, living and learning and highlighting their values, commitments and convictions — all while demonstrating their understanding of the diverse and life-giving purposes and perspectives by which we talk of human rights and human wrongs.

492.03 We Are Our Stories
In this course, we will explore and experience the power of narrative to shape and heal ourselves, our relationships and our communities by reading memoirs and life stories while also crafting our own. By engaging with our own life stories and those of others, this senior seminar aims to encourage practices such as observation, listening and reflection as one way of answering a central question of a Christian liberal arts education — what does it mean to be human?

492.01 The Social Dilemma: Finding Community in a Digital Age
This course examines the ways in which we connect with one another and create community, both in face-to-face and digital/online contexts. We will critique our consumer society, examine the decline of community and neighborhoods in modern U.S. culture, consider ways to build community after graduation, and reflect on the possibilities and limitations of virtual community. Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age will be used as a foundational text as we examine the ways in which our communication is both impacted by and fundamentally changed by digital technology. The course concludes with examining what is Christian community, and the ways in which the historic Christian faith encourages us to be in community with one another. Readings, discussion, journaling and a final paper (world-and-life-view paper) will provide a framework for reflecting on the key questions of your course.

452.01 Education and Christian Ways of Living
Examinations of how healthy people think they ought to live and how and why they believe they ought to live that way. What does it mean to be a Christian who is healthy? And how can and should healthy Christian living affect teachers, teaching and learning? Special attention is given to the influence teachers have on the values of their students.

492.01 Vocation and Health Care
This course is designed to explore what it means to think about the meaning of vocation (from the Latin vocare, to call) especially in the context of health care. Using the concept of vocation suggests several questions that might be addressed: What would it mean to be “called” as a care-giver or healer? How would health care be different if one approached it as a vocation than if one considered it simply a career? How does theology, spirituality and ethics become an integral part of the vocation to care for those who are sick? For students who do not expect to be working in health care, similar questions can be posed within the context of their own life and work.

When we consider our vocations or callings, we do not only think about jobs. Our life is more than our work, and our sense of calling can (and I think ought to) inform all of life: our relationships, leisure, citizenship, use of natural resources and our service to the wider communities we live in. So, while we will often talk about vocation in the context of health care, we can and should expand our considerations to the whole of our lives.

The way we frame our questions and answers will inevitably draw on the religious or philosophical perspectives we bring, so our topic is inescapably concerned with our worldviews. Throughout the course it is my intention that our class provide a safe and nurturing context in which each student can explore, clarify, verbalize and question his or her worldview. As the course draws to a close, students will be invited to formulate their answers to these and other questions as they work toward completing their life view paper and presentation. A variety of readings, video presentations, classroom guests and creative learning activities will provide the basis for our semester-long conversation.

492 .02 Becoming a Self, Living a Life
This seminar focuses on the following Big Question: What does it mean to become a self, and what is the process of becoming a self throughout one’s life? Put another way, it asks: How does one become the person one is meant to be? How do we live, in the words of Parker Palmer, “the life that wants to live in me?” We begin with the assumption that each one of us is led or called to be a unique self. But what is meant by a “calling”? And called by whom? We will consider the traditional Christian view that each of us is called by God, through an inner leading, to become our true self, a unique image of God, expressed through a life of service in the world. We will also consider alternative views on selfhood and how to live a meaningful life. And we will consider how we might hear this call, this inner leading, by becoming better listeners to ourselves and others. We will be aided by readings from the disciplines of philosophy, theology, psychology and comparative literature. And we will be guided by open, honest, compassionate self-reflection and group discussion. By the end of the seminar each of us should have a better sense not only of the person one is, but the person one is called to be.

492.03 Engaging the Other — Who is my neighbor?
Christ calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. But what exactly does this mean? Who are our neighbors in this increasingly shrinking world wrought with violence, fear and destruction? Who is included in our definitions of “neighbor,” and who is on the fringes or completely excluded? Who sits at our table, and with whom do we break bread, a sacred ritual of communing with another person? What does hospitality mean when it is given and when it is received?

492.05 Sport, Faith, and Life
How does sport and how does religion help us understand how we should live in community? Sport has often embraced the religious and spiritual attitudes that participants and spectators bring to it. The Christian faith, on the flip side, has had a much less uniform response to its adherents engaging in sport. In this course, we will discuss a number of specific facets of the relationship between sport and Christianity such as legal issues, evangelism, prayer, character development and many others. And within each facet, we will reflect on students’ own experiences related to sport/physical activity and Christianity.

492.06 The Art of Listening
Author Adam McHugh wrote, “the sort of people that we become is, in large part, determined by the voices that we choose to listen to.” In this class we will explore listening to the voices of both God and others and learn about the beauty and deep value of silence. We will engage in conversation over cups of tea, and we will listen deeply to the stories of others. Be prepared to check your phone at the door, enter with a curiosity for what you will hear, and leave the class with a newfound attentiveness that allows you to, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, “every day see or hear something that more or less kills you with delight.”

492.07 Issues of Science and Religion
A course that considers from a brief historical perspective the issues between modern science and Christianity, particularly as they relate to the issue of origins. We will survey our current understanding of the origin of the universe, including our galaxy and solar system, by considering the most recent Big Bang theories and our knowledge of the evolution and formation of stars and the origin of life. On the other hand, we will develop an approach to the Scriptures and examine how they inform us on the creation of the cosmos.

492.09 Friendship and Community
Drawing on the humanities, social sciences, arts and even a little bit from the natural sciences, we will explore the importance of friendship and community to flourishing human life, especially in troubled times. We will reflect on our experiences of friendship and community and how to be more intentional about them. Readings will range from classic philosophical essays, such as Cicero’s “On Friendship” and C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, to novels such as Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, to work by social scientists such as Sherry Turkle and the interdisciplinary frameworks of René Girard’s mimetic theory and James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. Written requirements will include daily responses and a lifeview paper.

492.10 Technology and the Future of Being Human
In this course, we will explore the historical tensions between modern science and Christianity, particularly regarding the topic of origins. Our primary focus will be on the latest Big Bang theories and our current understanding of the formation and evolution of stars, the origin of our own solar system, life, and humans. Moreover, we aim to study the Scriptures better to comprehend their perspective on the creation of the universe. By examining these two books of knowledge, we hope to determine whether they contradict each other, can be reconciled, should exist in dialogue, or can be integrated into a single book.

492.11 Psalms for Life
This course takes a look at the biblical book of Psalms and its influence on the life and faith formation of its readers — including you! We will examine the Psalms in their biblical setting, in Christian theological understanding, in their historical use for Christian worship, and as they appear in art and culture around the world. We will also focus on the Psalms as expressions of human identity developing over time — identity lived in relationship with God and others.

Hope College

Associated Student Learning Outcomes

IDS 452/492 level courses (3 Credits)

Course Descriptions