3.0

credits

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"Everything happens for a reason." "I guess it wasn't meant to be." People often impose a narrative logic on life events by reference—however attenuated—to a transcendent order of meaning. This course asks two basic questions: How do theological concepts such as God's omniscience, Providence, predestination, and prophecy get translated into particular narrative structures? How does narrative experimentation function as a critique of traditional theological viewpoints, particularly around the question of how divine agency is related to the existence of evil? Course texts may include: The Book of Job, Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist; Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative; Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead and Home; Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe; Terrence Malick, dir., The Tree of Life.