Module THEO3511: The Postmodern God

Department: Theology and Religion

THEO3511: The Postmodern God

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To develop students' specialist understanding of the historical shifts that contributed to postmodern thought and postmodern thinkers.
• To explore the mutual impact of postmodern thought and theology upon each other, both critical and constructive.
• To foster students' ability to critically evaluate and develop complex debates between theology and postmodern thought.
• To develop students' ability to apply these debates across a spectrum of contemporary issues.
• To develop students' confidence and ability in the use of scholarly methods and conventions, both written and aurally presented.

Content

• The general consensus amongst sociologists and cultural theorists is that the late 20th and early 21st century ushered in a new cultural sensibility: postmodernism. In the same way that modernity both challenged theology as well as lending it new form, so too the postmodern reaction is both critical and constructive for theology. This module explores the key impact of postmodern thought on theology. What does the postmodern God look like? How might postmodern ethics challenge or contribute to religious ethics? How might theology respond to the postmodern challenge within the field of politics and the economy? And how do postmodern approaches to gender sit with Christian theology? This module explores both the theoretical background to various postmodern thinkers, and the application of their ideas and the key issues they raise in tandem with a number of prominent theologians.

Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of the underlying concepts and principles associated with postmodern thought including power, gender, and deconstruction.
• An evaluative understanding of theological responses to postmodern thought and the conditions it describes.

• An ability to engage key postmodern texts, philosophical, anthropological, political and psychological, with historical and critical depth.
• A perceptiveness to the place awarded to theological ideas within those texts, as well as the challenges to theological and religious themes.
• A capacity to perceive and interpret relationships between key theological beliefs and postmodern thought such that their mutual influence becomes perspicuous and available for academic study.
• The ability to apply the central works across a variety of contemporary issues, and the capacity to reflect with insight on the key aspects of human experience (e.g. power, gender, ethics, faith, religion), and to reflect philosophically and theologically on the present.

• Students will develop the skills for research, presentation, and writing skills.
• An ability to read multivalent texts with intellectual nuance, in particular as they pertain to postmodern thought and theology.
• An ability to assess a range of contemporary issues in an interdisciplinary way.
• An ability to articulate their assessments in a clear and scholarly way.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures convey information and exemplify an approach to the subject-matter, enabling students to develop a clear understanding of the material and to improve their skills in interpreting and evaluating information. Lectures cover the broad reading.
• Seminars allow for more discursive and critical participation as well as giving the students the opportunity for presentations. Seminars cover close reading of given texts.
• The summative essays of the students’ choice in consultation with the lecturer will allow for an extended critical piece and contribute through reading and research, and in the structured presentation of information in written form.
• The formative book review (to be set) will develop subject-specific knowledge and understanding, along with student skills in the acquisition of information and evaluation, and presentation of texts in a concise and critical way.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

1,500 word book review

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University