Topics in Religious Studies: Violence, Vulnerability, and Trauma in Contemporary Religious Thought

What does it mean to be vulnerable? What does it require of us? Should we blame ourselves for succumbing to wounds and disasters to which we knew we were vulnerable? These questions are complicated by the fact that we often see our vulnerabilities most vividly when they have been realized in wounds, and so the conversation proceeds from situations of trauma. This course examines religious and secular discussions of vulnerability in contemporary contexts of environmental disaster, terrorism, racially motivated violence, and intimate violence to consider the question: what does our past experience have to do with our preparation for the future?