Religion, Ethics, and Society
The Religion, Ethics, and Society path is designed to support both descriptive and normative scholarly work in religious philosophy, theology, ethics, and political thought across a diverse range of religious traditions and in concert with vital attention to historical and social contexts and forces. Faculty and students in this path take seriously the various efforts that religious people have made to make sense of their worlds, including their explorations of the nature of reality, divinity, goodness, and power. We see these efforts as sources for the generation of new knowledge as we seek to understand them more profoundly, to build upon them to make interventions in contemporary life, or both. This path makes room for scholarship that brings critical analysis to bear on institutions, everyday practices, contemplative practices, and cultural expressions through the lens of religious and ethical thought to produce both theoretical and practical outcomes.
Faculty on this path have expertise in Africana, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Jewish traditions. We employ a wide range of textual, ethnographic, historical, theological, philosophical, literary, sociological, and contemplative methods. Our work together as a path is premised on the belief that we share social realities as matters of common concern, even if we understand those realities in diverse ways and propose distinct approaches to them. We proceed with the conviction that we all have much to learn from each other and from the various traditions in which we are immersed as scholars. We welcome collaboration with all other paths in the GDR.
Path Advisors
Elizabeth M. Bounds
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
Director of the Justice Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Certificate Program
