Course Descriptions
Catholic Intellectual Tradition
CIT 201 HUMAN JOURNEY CIT SEM I 3.0 Credit(s)
These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live. Prerequisite: Take FYS or FYWS 125
Offered: Fall & Spring Semesters All Years
CIT 202 HUMAN JOURNEY CIT SEMINAR II 3.0 Credit(s)
These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live. Prerequisite: Take CIT 201
Offered: Fall & Spring Semesters All Years
CIT 203 SPRINGSTEEN, SCORSESE AND SHU 3.0 Credit(s)
This course is an interdisciplinary look at how Catholic thought and imagination have intersected with culture from the 1960's to the present time. We will look at texts, films, and art.
Offered: Fall & Spring Semesters Contact Department
CIT 204 SINNERS, SAINTS & SACRAMENTS 3.0 Credit(s)
This interdisciplinary course explores the themes of sin, sainthood, and sacraments, particularly as those themes are depicted in Catholic fiction and film. The Catholic sacramental tradition is based on the belief that creation and human activities (rituals, saints' lives, etc.) can somehow manifest God's presence (i.e. grace) in a sinful world. We will discuss a diverse range of topics through a sacramental lens, as well as practices, beliefs, and debates surrounding both the sacraments and the Catholic tradition of canonization. We will particularly highlight the relationship between evil and grace in our various fictional texts, and how conversion so often entails a recognition of sin, both structural and personal. Students will be asked not only to learn common issues and symbols of the seven Catholic sacraments and the Catholic piety of sainthood, but also to reflect and discuss critically how issues raised by sacraments and sainthood continue to be relevant to their own lives and the contemporary world.
Offered: All Semesters All Years
CIT 205 TAKING THE JOURNEY:CAMINO de SANTIAGO 3.0 Credit(s)
This course explores the experience of pilgrimage. Students learn in the classroom then spend ten days in Spain walking the Camino de Santiago. Prerequisite: Take CIT-201
Offered: Spring Semester Contact Department
CIT 206 BIG QUESTIONS IN POPULAR TV AND FILM 3.0 Credit(s)
In this course we will examine how life's BIG Questions emerge in different popular films and television.
Offered: As Needed Contact Department
CIT 207 CATHOLIC SOCIAL JUSTICE 3.0 Credit(s)
This course examines Catholic Social Justice in the contemporary world.
Offered: All Semesters All Years
CIT 208 GOD ON BROADWAY 3.0 Credit(s)
This course examines how religious, ethical, and cross-cultural themes emerge in plays and musicals.
Offered: Fall Semester All Years
CIT 209 RELIGION & REVOLUTION 3.0 Credit(s)
This course will offer students the chance to engage with the longer history of feminist and LGBTQ movements in the twentieth century, while at the same time immersing them in how Catholics responded to historic debates about gender and sexuality that shaped political and cultural life in this same period.
Offered: Spring Semester All Years
CIT 210 Catholics & Us Politics Since Wwii 3.0 Credit(s)
This course examines the political journey of U.S. Catholics in the period from the middle of the 20th century to the present, mixing political philosophy with discussion of key events and figures.
Offered: As Needed Contact Department
CIT 211 DO ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN? 3.0 Credit(s)
In this course, we explore how the earth and all of its creatures are a part of God's plan. We will discuss how animals are related to human beings, and how they should be integrated into our relationship with God. Prerequisite: TAKE CIT-201
Offered: Spring Semester All Years
CIT 212 SOCIAL JUSTICE IN ACTION 1.0 Credit(s)
Through the Office of Volunteer Programs and Service Learning, students will be educated about the social and political issues surrounding Bridgeport, Connecticut, and its communities by engaging in and reflecting upon a number of community experiences.
Offered: Fall & Spring Semesters All Years
CIT 213 WILD IRISH SPIRITS:THEATRE & RITUAL 3.0 Credit(s)
This short course at SHU in Dingle examines Irish drama and spirituality through experimental and site-specific performance. Do we still believe that land and spirit can be wild with us? We will explore how stories, improvisation, and ritual can teach us, in the words of the Irish ecological mystic John Moriarty, to "walk beautifully on the earth." Ritual and performance-from a celebration of the Catholic Mass to a night at the pub after seeing a good play-can "re-wild" our own spirits in relationship to the natural world and each other. But how should we name and tell stories about our shared earth, what Pope Francis calls "our common home"? This unique course introduces the theory and practice of site-specific ritual and theatre by taking place amid the drama of waves, mountains, people, and stories of a journey to Ireland and back. We will read and discuss some major Irish plays about naming wild spirits of the land, rediscover the Gospels and Jesus' seaside storytelling through performance analysis, talk with local artists, theatre-makers, and dancers in the West of Ireland, embody some wisdom from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Irish context of natural beauty, and learn how to re-wild our own play with ritualizing and improvisation. Participants will work together to develop an original performance inspired by their time in Dingle, but no previous acting experience is required.
Offered: As Needed Contact Department
CIT 214 Woundedness, Vulnerability & Healing 3.0 Credit(s)
This course explores how woundedness and vulnerability shape human beings' individual identities, personal relationships, and sense of one's place in a community. At the same time, we will discuss if and when healing is possible, to what extent religion and spirituality plays a role in that healing, and what healing even means given the variety of ways that human beings are vulnerable and wounded throughout life. The course will be discussion-based seminars, and, through an interdisciplinary pedagogy, will cover topics such as Scripture, disabilities (both physical and developmental), mental health, and social marginalization, amongst other issues. Students will be expected to engage in discussions based on assigned readings as well as complete a variety of writing assignments. The course fulfills the Humanistic Inquiry requirement for the Liberal Arts Exploration as we will critically examine and reflect upon fundamental concerns, issues, and topics related to the human condition of woundedness and vulnerability, as represented by influential thinkers and writers, often (although not exclusively) from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. In addition, this course supports the minor in Humanities and Health.
Offered: All Semesters All Years
CIT 215 HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND FAITH 3.0 Credit(s)
Drawing from the values and perspectives of Catholic Social Teaching through the lens of Social Work practice, this course critically examines social justice concepts and develops intercultural skills needed to address issues of social justice with individuals and diverse communities. Through a cultural immersion experience abroad, students will be engaged with local communities and participate in community-based learning opportunities which address issues such as: human rights, human dignity, solidarity with the poor, and the common good.
Offered: Spring Semester Odd Academic Years
CIT 216 JUST BEAUTY:CAN BEAUTY SAVE THE WORLD? 3.0 Credit(s)
Can beauty save the world as Dostoevsky once claimed? Can beauty make a difference in a world that is often ugly and unjust - can it even "save" us? In this course, we will explore ways of interpreting beauty that are more than skin deep. Drawing on artists, cultural critics, theologians, and ethicists, we will discuss how beauty has served as both a tool of oppression and an inspiration for ethical action.
Offered: Fall Semester All Years
CIT 217 CATHOLICS PERSPECTIVES LAW AND JUSTICE 3.0 Credit(s)
Catholic intellectuals and jurists have exerted deep influence on political and legal traditions in Europe as well as the United States. This course examines Catholic perspectives on law and justice in terms of their historical trajectory as well as their impact on contemporary American society.
Offered: Spring Semester Even Academic Years
CIT 218 THE GOOD LIFE: YOUR PATH, YOUR PURPOSE 3.0 Credit(s)
Leading lives that matter, knowing our purpose and becoming who we want to be are central to living the good life. The years in college and emerging adult are a time when we think from our deepest self about what we most will value and desire for our lives. Yet these years can also be confusing and finding how to build the most meaningful life possible for us can be challenging. This course uses the timeless writings and wisdom of great thinkers-philosophers, psychologists, religious thinkers, artists and writers, professional leaders-to help us think through real life cases that will guide us to finding the good life of meaning, purpose, and faith that we seek. Students will: 1. Read, understand and discuss the works of great thinkers in philosophy, literature, psychology, religion, and the arts--classical to contemporary--- who write about living a good life. 2. Analyze and write about the real life case studies that explore the questions, issues, values, and beliefs about what makes the good life. 3. Develop their own guides that chart a path for the good life. 4. Develop writing, speaking, and thinking abilities.
Offered: Spring Semester All Years
CIT 219 RACE, DIGNITY AND THE COMMON GOOD RACE DIGNITY COMMON GOOD 3.0 Credit(s)
W.E.B. Du Bois opened The Souls of Black Folk (1903) by saying "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line." Despite the tremendous gains resulting from the Civil Rights Movement's activism, the "problem of the color-line" remains in place at the turn of the first quarter of the 21st century. This course examines the contributions of major Black authors toward addressing the "problem of the color-line" from the 19th century to today, with a focus on how Black authors have sought dignity and pursuit of the common good within a society beset by racist attitudes and legal structures that lead to disproportionate outcomes. The course puts these authors into dialogues with mainstays from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition to reflect on the nature of human dignity and our pursuit of the common good, and it especially elevates the contributions of under-discussed Black Catholics. The warrant for focusing on Black experiences and anti-Black racism is because this form of racism most directly shapes the history of racism in the US. Students will have the opportunity to investigate other groups' experiences of racism using the framework provided by our investigation of anti-Black racism. The course begins with literary texts from the 19th and early 20th century alongside legal texts to help students recognize the varieties of racial prejudice and their effects. It utilizes the distinction in Catholic theology between original sin and actual sin to help articulate the distinction to be drawn between, on the one hand, racist acts, laws, and norms for which particular actors are guilty and, on the other hand, the lingering consequences of such acts, laws, and norms, for which all are responsible, regardless of individual guilt, if we are to promote the common good and the healing of the "hidden wound" (Berry) of racism. Thinkers to be treated in this part of the course are court cases (Plessy v. Ferguson) and fiction writers (Kate Chopin, Flannery O'Connor, C.S. Lewis), as well as short excerpts from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on the notions of sin, guilt, responsibility, and the common good (e.g., Plato, Augustine). The course then turns to a historical survey of major Black authors, focusing on their accounts of their own experiences and the philosophical and theoretical tools they develop to explain their experiences. This is the bulk of the course. Key figures are Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Black feminist authors, such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks, will also be included. Students will be prompted to see how the "racial contract" (as Charles Mills explains) can rewrite itself to accommodate shifting legal and social realities, such that racism persists (e.g., from slavery to Jim Crow, from Jim Crow to mass incarceration and police brutality, etc.). Major concepts and issues will include the role of literacy, the goal and function of education, the meaning of struggle, violent and non-violent resistance, the way that race hierarchy is a "fixed star" in white consciousness, double-consciousness, the Veil, oppression, and historically-minded sociological analysis. The course then turns toward systematic questions in our contemporary moment, following the conclusion of Coates's Between the World and Me. Integrating the key ideas and arguments from earlier figures, we ask what needs to change in our systems of education, law, norms, wealth distribution, etc. in order to promote Black dignity and heal the "hidden wound." Special emphasis will be placed on the dignity of labor, using texts from Tocqueville, Marx, Wendell Berry, Hannah Arendt, and Catholic social teaching (e.g., Laborem exercens). Special emphasis will also be placed on the contributions of recent Black Catholics (e.g., Brian Massingale on the necessity for lamentation). This class will serve to fulfill the Humanitistic Inquiry LAE requirement in that it will engage a number of historical and contemporary texts that raise important questions about how different groups of people engage one in another in American society, especially concerning race. It will prompt students to reflect on human nature, the nature of human dignity, and the nature of human community. The course will fulfill the Social and Global Awareness requirement by engaging with a number of social issues in US culture and their historical relations to experiences abroad (e.g., the treatment of Black GIs in WWII in Europe vs. in America, trips that each of the major figures covered took abroad and the different experiences they had there, etc.).
Offered: As Needed Contact Department
CIT 231 BECOMING HOLY 3.0 Credit(s)
How does someone become holy? In this course, students engage the virtues- as theological/philosophical ideas, as ways of being depicted in art, and as values exemplified in the particular lives of Catholic saints-in order to answer that very question. This seminar interrogates saints, both canonized and living in our midst, as an entry point into a larger reflection on how particular lives connect to a universal Church, as well as how virtues might help us in our own journeys in becoming holy. After opening the course with discussions about sanctity and saint-making, students will be immersed in a study of virtues contextualized in lives of saints located around the globe. Students will encounter and conduct an interdisciplinary study of the biographies and contexts of key historical figures that will challenge assumptions, as well as broaden perspectives about what the word "Catholic" means. The Greek word catholicam means universal. In the end, they will consider how collectively these lives form the communion of saints. How might Catholicism make a universal impact? How do we see the universal in particular lives? Students will learn how to identify as well as shape a life worth living, and perhaps, even how to become holy.
Offered: All Semesters All Years
CIT 232 WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? 3.0 Credit(s)
Won't You Be My Neighbor? Catholics and Community "Who is my neighbor?" This question inspired the Good Samaritan parable in the Gospel of Luke, and it resounds today. How do places, communities, and the built environment help people embody the Catholic Intellectual Tradition? This course introduces an interdisciplinary Catholic Studies approach to social structures and material cultures by reading "the signs of the times" in local buildings, local objects, local practices, and local policy choices. We understand what it means to be a neighbor when we take the "local" seriously: this course focuses on connections between the universal and the particular through our social location at Sacred Heart University and the greater Bridgeport region. What is SHU's relationship to the pioneering vision of the Second Vatican Council and Bishop Curtis's idea to empower the vocation of the laity here at home? How have Catholics and their institutions related to the ideal of neighborly communities? How does the Catholic Intellectual Tradition encourage us to learn by serving others? Students will be invited to encounter neighbors different from themselves and to situate those stories within a larger framework. Students will also consider how generational and neighborhood divides can be overcome through dialogue, encounter, and shared commitments to justice and the common good.
Offered: All Semesters All Years