FSEM 158   Belonging, Becoming, and Beyond

Faculty Profile for Professor Frank

What matters? Why? Why bother? And when (and why) is it important to push back? This seminar puts aside traditional understandings of religious identity as adherence to fixed rules, beliefs, and rituals. Instead, students explore dynamic ways people in different times and places have grappled with how one finds beauty, connection to others, justice, and purpose in today’s world. Students study how myths, practices, objects, spaces, personal stories, and theories of religion might prompt us to rethink our own understanding of the world, with or without religion. No prior knowledge of religion or any religious background is presumed. We are all learners. Students who successfully complete this seminar earn credit for RELG 101 and can satisfy the human thought and expression areas of inquiry requirement or the confronting collective challenges liberal arts practice.

Georgia Frank’s research focuses on different ways of being religious in ancient Greece, Turkey, Rome, Israel, and Egypt. Her passion for storytelling and archaeology inform her courses on “Theories of Religion,” “Death and Afterlife,” and “Love, God, and Sex." Outside of class, she loves to cook big pots of chili, wander through Rome with students, and teach Greek to anyone curious to try it. To find out more about her books and articles on bodily experience in early Christianity, please visit her faculty webpage: https://www.colgate.edu/about/directory/gfrank