Freshman and Sophomore seminars offer lower-division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester. Enrollment limits are set by the faculty, but the suggested limit is 25.

This seminar is designed as a brief history of the idea of God as told through literature. As such, the seminar will tell a story of what is arguably one of the most important human creations: the idea of a transcendent being. We will read selections from the books of Genesis and Job in the Hebrew Bible; from The Brothers Karamazov, a nineteenth-century masterpiece of Russian and World Literature by Fyodor Dostoevsky; from Albert Camus’ philosophical novel The Fall; and from Saša Stanišić’s How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, a moving contemporary work of transnational literature. The seminar is open to all freshmen and sophomores, and it will appeal in particular to students interested in studying the humanities, Slavic and comparative literature, philosophy, and global studies. All readings are in English.

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Requirements class fulfills