The Good Life Course Pairing
Encountering the Past (HS 100)
Why does history matter? This course explores why the study of the past is essential for understanding our present. Through the lens of a single historical topic that varies by instructor, students are introduced to what it means to think like a historian and weave compelling stories. Along the way, students learn to ask critical questions, to evaluate evidence, to make persuasive arguments, and to write clearly and cogently. The course introduces students to how and why histories are produced, but more than that, it sets out to provide new ways of thinking about the human experience and about our place in the world today.
Faculty biography
Dr. Sara Scalenghe is a historian of the social and cultural history of the early modern and modern Middle East, with a focus on the Arab world. She graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a B.A. in Arabic and Persian, and then went on to pursue an M.A. in Arab Studies and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern and North African History from Georgetown University. Before returning to the East Coast and joining the Department of History at Loyola University Maryland in 2009, she held a Qatar Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, followed by two years as an Assistant Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. At Loyola, she is a core faculty member in the Global Studies program. Prof. Scalenghe's research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays program, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the American Historical Association. Her first book, Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Paperback, 2016), won the 2016 Disability History Association Outstanding Book Award. In June and July 2018 Prof. Scalenghe had the privilege to direct a four-week Summer Institute for College and University Teachers funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities entitled "Global Histories of Disability." In 2019 she edited a roundtable on Disability Studies in the Middle East and North Africa for the International Journal of Middle East Studies. She is currently writing a book on disability in the Arab world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is also co-editing, with Beverly Tsacoyianis, a volume on disability history in the MENA region, and she is co-authoring, with Judith Tucker and Nadya Sbaiti, a history of women and gender in the Middle East (under contract with Cambridge University Press). From 2017 to 2020 she served as the President of the Disability History Association.
Theology Matters: The Bible and the Good Life (TH 201)
This course explores the basic story of Christianity as told in scripture and the various ways that Christians have lived out this story across the centuries. The course examines how the Christian story influences life today, and how life today influences our telling of that story. Students of any and all religious locations will explore questions at the heart of the human story: Who is God? What is evil? Why is there suffering? What is justice in the Christian tradition? Christian theologians have wrestled with these questions for two millennia. The course will expose you to their responses, but more importantly will challenge you to consider your own position. Throughout the course you will be considering how your responses to these, and other, questions influence your conception of "the good life" and the virtues needed to achieve human flourishing.
Faculty biography
Dr. Jill Snodgrass is a Professor of Theology and a pastoral and practical theologian. She joined the Loyola faculty in 2011. Her research focuses on spiritual care and counseling with traditionally marginalized populations and her interdisciplinary approach to theology privileges the Ignatian value of a "faith that does justice."
Mentor biography
Maureen Dormer is an Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admission and has been working as professional staff at Loyola since 2022. Maureen graduated from Loyola in 2021, and quickly came back to campus to bring some more students to Loyola! In her current role, she oversees the Greyhound Ambassadors and helps coordinate Admission events, while also being the representative for Loyola applicants from New York.
Virtual Advisor
TH 201 satisfies the Theology core requirement for all students. It also satisfies one of the Diversity and Justice requirements. HS 100 satisfies the History core requirement for all students.
