CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NORTHRIDGE
RS 361OL: CONTEMPORARY ETHICAL ISSUES
California State University, Northridge
Department Of Religious Studies
Spring 2017
Instructor: Dr. Brian Clearwater Office Online
brian.clearwater@csun.edu Hours: online Fri 3-4 pm
Course Description: This course serves as an introduction to the study of ethics and an examination of major ethical dilemmas in contemporary society. We will start by studying the lives of several American leaders whose noteworthy ethical activism was inspired by their faith. We will then study how moral psychology has formulated the human instinct for ethics and apply those principles and positions in seeking to understand the range of social positions on current issues. Issues we will study include war & violence, business practices in a free market, environmental sustainability, informed consent, reparations, identity constructions of race & class, debt, immunity, and immigration. Each of these dilemmas presents a window onto society’s fractures. Why are these issues so intractable? Is there not a single ethical framework that can prove what is right?
There is an enormous amount of knowledge about Ethics, being as it has been a subject of inquiry since the earliest human records. In the process of exploring ethical issues, both individually and in dialogue, we shall examine a range of major religious and philosophical traditions, parse out conflicting claims, and ultimately empower each student to develop a toolkit for evaluating ethical dilemmas in contemporary society.
Student Learning Outcomes for RS 361: Contemporary Ethical Issues
Emphasizes the development of skills in critical thinking through analysis of such contemporary ethical issues as abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, sexual behavior, racism, gender bias, punishment, animal rights, the environment, and the relationships between religion and morality.
1) Students will be able to articulate, orally and in writing, the diversity and distinctiveness of the moral values implicit in and the ethical arguments currently employed within various religious and secular traditions.
2) Students will demonstrate an understanding of the influence of diverse religious and secular traditions on moral attitudes and behaviors.
3) Students will be able to develop oral and written proposals for resolving current moral dilemmas in society.
4) Students will be able to recognize and critically evaluate their own and others’ assumptions and biases as they play a role in - - and sometimes distort - - their thinking.
5) Students will demonstrate oral communication skills and mindful listening through conversations in the classroom about the moral values and forms of ethical thinking of fellow students.
Student Learning Outcomes, Courses in the Arts and Humanities
Goal: Students will understand the rich history and diversity of human knowledge, discourse and achievements of their own and other cultures as they are expressed in the arts, literatures, religions, and philosophy.
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will:
1. Explain and reflect critically upon the human search for meaning, values, discourse and expression in one or more eras/stylistic periods or cultures;
2. Analyze, interpret, and reflect critically upon ideas of value, meaning, discourse and expression from a variety of perspectives from the arts and/or humanities;
3. Produce work/works of art that communicate to a diverse audience through a demonstrated understanding and fluency of expressive forms;
4. Demonstrate ability to engage and reflect upon their intellectual and creative development within the arts and humanities;
5. Use appropriate critical vocabulary to describe and analyze works of artistic expression, literature, philosophy, or religion and a comprehension of the historical context within which a body of work was created or a tradition emerged;
6. Describe and explain the historical and/or cultural context within which a body of work was created or a tradition emerged.
Required Texts:
Eula Biss. On Immunity: An Inoculation. Graywolf Press: Minneapolis, 2015
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House, 2011. (available online)
Albert Raboteau, American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice. Princeton 2016
Miguel de la Torre, The U.S. Immigration Crisis: Toward an Ethics of Place. Cascade Books 2016
Other readings are available online.
Course Requirements:
*ALL STUDENTS registered for this course must have access to and utilize CSUN’s Moodle system for online classes. Access is available by logging onto moodle.csun.edu.
*Students MUST have access to their my.csun.edu e-mail address, since all communications from Instructor will be directed to their CSUN e-mail address.
1) Online Zoom sessions will be held in lieu of lectures, usually on Fridays at 5:00 pm. I hope to have many of you in the audience each time, but synchronous participation is not required. Sessions will be recorded and students must watch each one on their own.
You can access these live at and recordings will be posted on myCSUNbox (with a link on Moodle).
2) Careful reading of all assigned materials and posted responses to readings BEFORE the date indicated on the syllabus (generally by 12 noon on Fridays before our Zoom sessions).
3) There will be a Discussion Forum for most weeks. Students are required to post to every forum in a timely and thorough fashion. This involves responding to the prompt, if one is given, or writing an original analysis of the arguments made in the assigned material and posing a discussion question to your peers regarding the significance and relevance of the material. Since careful online records are provided by Moodle software, failure to participate in online forums and other assignments will directly affect your grade.
Analysis of a text consists of examining the different parts of a text to arrive at conclusions about what it means and how it makes that meaning. You should offer judgment on the text in a way that persuades other readers to see it through your analytical perspective. Thus, you must pay careful attention to a text’s thesis and evidence and offer an assessment of how successfully the thesis is defended by giving examples (usually quotations from the text). You may use analysis from your own forum posts to contribute to your own papers for this course.
Assignments:
1) Faith-based Ethics Essay. Due in week 4, 2-3 pages in length. The Faith-based Ethics Essay shall reflect each student’s reflection on the profiles given in American Prophets. What patterns do you identify? Why did each person’s faith inspire them to take ethical action and why do so many of the rest of us have different experiences? You may draw from your own forum posts but this essay should reflect your synthesis of the material.
2) Psychology Belonging Essay. Paper due in Week 9 covering weeks 4-8 on how the psychology of morality may influence our sense of who belongs, who are outsiders, who are entitled to safety, etc. Use this framework to analyze the books by Biss and de la Torre. 3-4 pages. You may draw from your own forum posts but this essay should reflect your synthesis of the material.
3) Economic Ethics Essay due in Week 14: How do economic concerns and incentives disrupt ethical decision-making? Given the case studies from weeks 9-13, how can we make informed ethical decisions despite economic entanglements? 3-4 pages. You may draw from your own forum posts but this essay should reflect your synthesis of the material.
4) Discovery Paper. Due in Finals Week, 8-10 pages in length. The Discovery Paper will combine a personal narrative of your own journey to an ethical position on a contemporary moral dilemma along with a reasoned defense of that position. Your paper must critically engage with at least 2 outside sources that agree with your position and 2 that disagree. You are also required to reference and cite factual resources as needed to support your argument (survey data, government statistics, scientific research, etc). Feel free to include graphs, tables, conceptual artwork, or other figures that offer further insight. The instructor must approve topic proposals and sources.
a. Individual Presentation OR Art Project exhibiting and following from your Discovery Paper that makes the case for your position on a contemporary moral dilemma in an academic blog post format with pictures. Alternatively, with Instructor approval, students may produce a work of art, in any media, that communicate to a diverse audience the poetic dimensions of a contemporary ethical dilemma (to be submitted with a short narrative companion text describing your artistic process).
Grading
Class/Forum Participation 40%
Faith-based Ethics Essay 10%
Psychology Belonging Essay 15%
Economic Ethics Essay 15%
Discovery Paper and Presentation 20%
Contemporary Ethical Issues
Class Schedule and Plan
Week 1: Introductions, Syllabus
What is Ethics? What is Morality? How does Religion inspire activism?
READINGS: Albert Raboteau, American Prophets, ch. 1 on Rabbi Heschel
ACTIVITIES due by For Friday, Jan 27, 2017:
• Personal Introductions in the “Who are you?” Forum
• Week 1 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 2: Religious Radicals and Pacifism
Are Ethics derived from cultural contexts or from universal principles? How do we judge what is right? Is Morality dependent on a supernatural Order? Is the threat of punishment in the afterlife necessary to ensure good behavior?
READINGS: “Moral Relativism” at
American Prophets, ch. 2-3 on AJ Muste and Dorothy Day
ACTIVITIES due by Friday Feb 3, 2017:
• Week 2 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 3: Faith and Civil Rights
READINGS: American Prophets, ch. 6-7 on MLK and Fannie Lou Hamer
ACTIVITIES due by Friday Feb 10, 2017:
• Week 3 Reading Discussion Forum
Faith-based Ethics Essay due Monday Feb 13
Week 4: Evolutionary Psychology and Ethics
Are people born a blank slate? What role does evolution play in Ethics?
READINGS: Steven Pinker, “The Moral Instinct”
Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures. Ch. 2
Optional: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath
ACTIVITIES due by Friday Feb 17, 2017:
• TED Talk: Franz de Waal, “Morality in Animals”
• Video: “Born Good?”
• Week 4 Discussion Forum
Week 5: Contemporary Issues: Immunity
Herd immunity, herd identity. How do we identify others?
READINGS: Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation, pp. 1-71
ACTIVITIES due by Friday Feb 24, 2017:
• Week 5 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 6: Immunity Continued
What do we owe each other? How do we construct webs of obligation?
READINGS: Eula Biss, On Immunity pp. 72-end
ACTIVITIES due by Friday March 3, 2017:
• Week 6 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 7: Immigration
READINGS: Miguel de la Torre, The U.S. Immigration Crisis, ch. 1-4
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, March 10, 2017:
• Week 7 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 8: Immigration
READINGS: Miguel de la Torre, The U.S. Immigration Crisis, ch 5-7 and conclusion
ACTIVITIES due by Friday March 17, 2017:
• Week 8 Reading Discussion Forum
Spring Break: March 20-24
Psychology Belonging Essay Due Monday March 27: Paper due covering weeks 4-8 on how the psychology of morality may influence our sense of who belongs, who are outsiders, who are entitled to safety, etc. Use this framework to analyze the books by Biss and de la Torre. 2-4 pages.
Week 9: Debt
READINGS: David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 years ch. 1-2
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, March 31 , 2017:
• Week 9 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 10: Reparations and White Debt
READINGS: Ta-Nehisi Coates “The Case for Reparations”
Eula Biss, “White Debt”
Michael Sandel, Ch. 10
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, sections entitled “The Thousand and One Goals;” “The Way of the Creating One;”
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, April 7, 2017:
• Week 10 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 11: Nature, Climate Change, and Environmental Racism
How should we respond to environmental crises? Who is responsible?
READINGS: TBA
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, April 14, 2017:
• Watch Film “Before the Flood” available free online
• Week 11 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 12: Corporate Responsibility
How should wealth be distributed? How should corporations be regulated?
READINGS: TBA
Sandel, Ch. 9
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, April 21, 2017:
• Week 10 Reading Discussion Forum
Week 13: Gender Roles, Sexual Consent
READINGS: Letter by the Stanford Rape Survivor
2 articles from the New York Times on sexual consent on college campuses: “Campus Sex…with a Syllabus”
“California Law on Sexual Consent Pleases Many but Leaves Some Doubters”
.
1. FILM: Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and Domination (Lynn Phillips): link takes you to CSUN Library website, where you click on a green link to online content that says CSUN Users only. You'll need to login on the next page. Film is 51 minutes long.
.
TRIGGER WARNING: this film has some intense content about non-consensual sex. It is a documentary by a psychologist who has done interviews with college-age women about their experiences with heterosexual hookup culture. It includes a series of actors re-enacting parts of those interviews. Nothing violent is portrayed visually, but some stories are troubling and not appropriate for young children.
ACTIVITIES due by Friday April 28, 2017:
• Watch Film: Flirting with Danger:
• Week 12 Reading and Video Discussion Forum
Economic Ethics Essay due Monday, May 1: How do economic concerns and incentives disrupt ethical decision-making? Given the case studies from weeks 9-13, how can we make informed ethical decisions despite economic entanglements? 2-4 pages.
Week 14: Contemporary Issues: Discovery Project Research
ACTIVITIES due by Friday, May 5, 2017:
• Discovery Project Student Presentations begin
Week 15: Contemporary Issues: Discovery Project Research
ACTIVITIES due by Friday May 12, 2017:
• Student Presentations due
• Course evaluations
Finals Week:
• Discovery Paper submitted online due Monday, May 15, 2017.
Regarding expectations for your grade in this course, remember that this is an upper division required course in the Humanities. Your CSUN degree is meaningful because of the high standards the faculty set. Religious Studies is a highly demanding, multidisciplinary field. In this course, I expect you to put great effort into understanding the material and reflecting on it critically. You will be challenged to apply Ethical principles in an appropriate and nuanced way. With that in mind, here is a rubric of the standards I will use to assess your work.
A Very strong competency in Ethical analysis— student demonstrates thorough preparation; demonstrates a mastery of the course material, including the ability to synthesize material over the course of the semester; thoughtful, multi-faceted, sophisticated, creative, and well-supported analysis of primary and secondary sources; cogent, clear, and persuasive writing on the forums and in submitted papers.
Student goes well beyond the requirements of the course.
B Strong competency in Ethical analysis— student demonstrates thorough preparation; demonstrates a firm grasp on the course material; offers insightful readings and use of primary and secondary sources; strong writing on the forums and in submitted papers.
Student meets requirements of the course competently and performs above average.
C Proficient Ethical analysis— student demonstrates minimum standard of preparation; completes all course requirements; demonstrates a summary understanding of course material with fair attempts at application to relevant cases.
Student meets minimum requirements of the course to the satisfaction of the Professor
D Unsatisfactory—student reads course material but does not understand it or sometimes misrepresents it; student completes course assignments but their work evidences rudimentary understanding and analysis.
Student makes comments with scant support or makes unproductive comments.
Student does not meet minimum requirements of the course, but made some effort to do so
F Student fails to meet the minimum requirements of the course.
Before you come to talk with me about a grade that you have earned (either on a paper or for the course overall), PLEASE re-read the grading rubric above. You will likely find that your assessment was consistent with the descriptions here.
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