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Religion and Women - GENL1022

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Undergraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 3

CSS Contribution Charge: (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

Available for General Education: Yes (more info)

View course information for previous years.

Description

This course focuses on the role of women in five of the world’s major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It examines the traditional theological principles and the practical laws that have directly impacted, for better or for worse, upon the lives of women within these religious traditions. It also explores historical and contemporary challenges to doctrines and practices that are seen to undermine women’s equality and freedom. Rather than study each religion in serial fashion, the course adopts a comparative, thematic methodology, tracing key themes across the religions concerned. Those themes include: femininity and divinity; historical founders’ attitudes to women; key scriptural texts and their interpretation; life-cycle rituals; marriage and divorce; sex and procreation; clothing and social freedom; worship and purity; leadership and authority.

Recommended Prior Knowledge

None

Course Objectives

In line with the aims of the General Education program at UNSW, the course aims to broaden students’ understanding of their social and cultural environment and to enhance their skills of comparative analysis. In particular the course aims at facilitating the student’s ability to:

Outline the main issues concerning the roles of women in religion;
Identify the relevant canonical and traditional texts that pertain to gender equality;
Appreciate different hermeneutical methods that can be applied to those texts;
Specify the key positions in the contemporary debate and their principal arguments; and
Trace similarities and differences across various religions on each issue.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:

Outline the key issues concerning women’s roles in the context of religion;
Respect and critique traditional arguments from a contemporary perspective;
Appreciate and enunciate the spectrum of similarities and differences between religions on the role of women;
Exercise analytical and comparative skills at a higher level;
Draw on knowledge from a number of related disciplines to understand the complexity of religious belief and practice; and
Articulate personal views based on a more profound understanding of the complexity of the world in which the students live and work.

Main Topics