Program on Medicine and Religion

Non-Credit Course | Science and Religion: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Lumen Christi Institute)

RETH 31000 – Good Hands: Research Ethics

Autumn 2024

Basic research is intended to explore and evaluate truth claims at the edge of our understanding of the natural and physical world, and it is this very quality that renders it useful as science. Yet, this often creates significant ethical questions for the research as well as for the social order in which all research takes place. Often, courses in research ethics focus on the establishment and enforcement of canonical rules of behavior, where the goal is to inform the investigator about how to follow these established rules. This course will turn to a different set of problems in research ethics. While we will begin with a foundation in the history of research ethics, reviewing the key cases that shaped the policies about which we have consensus, (human and animal subject protections; authorship, etc.) will consider the problems about which there is not yet a clear ethical course: what are the limits of human mastery? Why is research deception so prevalent? Are there experiments which are impermissible and why? What is the obligation of the researcher toward their community? How can we think clearly and ethically in situations of deep uncertainty? We will consider how moral philosophy as well as theological arguments have shaped research science and reflect on the nature, goal and meaning of basic and translational research in modernity. Course Note: Required course for MS program in Biological Sciences. Laurie Zoloth

THEO 46006 – Approaches to Suffering: Theological Perspectives and Contemporary Meditations

Winter 2025

Framed by a consideration of Susan Sontag on the representation of suffering, Elaine Scarry on The Body in Pain, and Judith Butler on grievable life, this seminar will seek to extend and enrich such contemporary meditations through conversation with varied theological approaches to suffering. One thesis of the course is that theodicy need not be viewed as the chief theological approach to suffering. Through close reading of selected works, we will consider interpretive frames such as creation and providence, wounding and healing, and crucifixion and resurrection, together with religious responses such as introspection, contemplation, mourning, witness, and resistance. PQ: Previous work in theology. Course Note: Undergraduates may petition to enroll. Kristine Culp

CCTS 32000/ RELP 32000/ RLST 26306 – Religion, Medicine, and Human Flourishing on the South Side of Chicago: Reimagining the Role of the University Through Community Voices

Spring 2025

Modern medicine historically promotes health as central to the good life. The contemporary turn in the medical and social sciences to the more capacious concept of human flourishing, however, presses these disciplines into conversation with longer traditions of inquiry on the nature of the good life for individuals and within community. How might philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions reveal the powers and limits of contemporary views of human flourishing? How does the on-the-ground experience of those pushing to advance human flourishing on the south side of Chicago challenge these categories?

Sponsored by the Program on Medicine and Religion, this course is an innovative experiential course open to pre-health undergraduates in the College, graduate students in Public Policy/Social Work/Divinity School, and/or medical students at Pritzker School of Medicine. This course seeks to expose students to traditional and contemporary perspectives of health and human flourishing, while offering opportunities to engage local faith-based non-profit organizations that seek to promote human flourishing among underserved communities in the South Side of Chicago. John Yoon