REL 235 - Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-being: A Comparative Religious Perspective

This course addresses different ways humans define mental, physical, and spiritual health, that is, “well-being,” and the strategies they offer to achieve it. Particular attention will be paid to the role of race in the different constructions and practices of well-being. The course recognizes, but does not privilege biomedical views of mental and physical health, though we do not discourage those seeking help from medical and psychological professionals for their clinically diagnosed physical and mental health needs. Beginning with an introduction to “the science of alternative medicine” to clarify the difference between biomedical and alternative healing and what “science has to say” about the efficacy of alternative healing, we move to a case study of the clash between the two in A. Fadiman’s account of a Hmong immigrant girl with epilepsy. We then cover conventionally “religious” understandings and practices of “well-being,” e.g., Sabbath rest, meditation, communal rituals (i.e., in Z. N. Hurston’s interpretation of voodoo), relationships with human and other than human beings (charismatic healers, Christian conversations with God), sex, diet, sacred places (gardens, temples, etc.), indigenous herbalism, art therapy, Jewish lernen (study for its own sake, not for grades), a. m. brown’s “pleasure activism,” and “belief” itself, Complementing the assigned readings will be outside of class “labs” to engage in the particular kinds of well-being practices (temporary “sabbath”-like abstention from work, electronic devices), abstentions from certain foods, meditation, art and dance therapies, etc.), albeit adapted in forms appropriate for a non-denominational secular liberal arts college.

Credits 4

Compass Attributes
Humanities, Structure/Power/Inequality