Personalized Courses
Students earn a total of 16 credits during a fall
semester at The Oregon Extension. Within each
segment, students choose one course title
representing the study project they have chosen
and the discipline in which they wish to receive three
or four semester hours of credit. These disciplines
include literature, psychology, sociology,
philosophy, biology, theology, biblical studies,
history, education, science and political science. In
addition, each student receives three semester
hours for English/Communications 399: Composition
and Rhetoric.
Students should talk with their academic advisor at
their home college or university about the course
they plan to take at the OE.
Students earn a total of 16 credits during a fall
semester at The Oregon Extension. Within each
segment, students choose one course title
representing the study project they have chosen
and the discipline in which they wish to receive three
or four semester hours of credit. These disciplines
include literature, psychology, sociology,
philosophy, biology, theology, biblical studies,
history, education, science and political science. In
addition, each student receives three semester
hours for English/Communications 399: Composition
and Rhetoric.
Students should talk with their academic advisor at
their home college or university about the course
they plan to take at the OE.
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Here is a sample of topics and course titles chosen by students in the past.
Click here for the full description of course offerings.
Bible
• God and human violence
• Jesus and women in the Gospels
• Christian community in the New Testament
• Earth-caring as a biblical calling
• Judas as the first Christian
• Authentic humanity in the Sermon on the Mount
• Slavery and freedom in light of John 8
• Healing body shame: Jesus and women
Education
• Pedagogy of Paulo Freire
• Inner-city adolescents in the public schools
• Classroom differences between girls and boys
• Athletics in the educational system
• How working class culture shapes children’s aspirations
• Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” and the academic world
English
• The American West: Kittredge, Abbey, McCarthy
• Feminist criticism and John Updike
• Post-colonial women writers
• Shusaku Endo and Elie Wiesel on human suffering
• Meena Alexander and Assia Djebar on language and self
• Catholic visions of Graham Greene and Francois Mauriac
• The spirituality of Rainer Maria Rilke
• Womanist theology in Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison
History
• Simone de Beauvoir on othering and freedom
• Noam Chomsky’s grim vision
• Jacques Ellul and the reign of technique
• Nancy Chodorow’s psychoanalytic perspective
• African-American voices: DuBois, Malcolm, hooks, West
• Genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia
• Women and gender in the history of Islam
• Medieval women mystics and the humanity of God
• Slavery and its defenders in the antebellum South
• The “emergent church” in contemporary America
Philosophy
• Kierkegaard’s “simple life”
• Richard Rorty’s postmodern pragmatism
• Thich Nhat Hanh and “engaged Buddhism”
• Albert Camus and French existentialism
• Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
• Hannah Arendt and the “banality of evil”
• Simone Weil’s perspective on social evil
• The collaboration of Sartre and de Beauvoir
• Hans Kung on the great atheists and reasons for faith
• Jacques Derrida and John Caputo on “religion without religion”
Political Science
• Neoconservative thought and the Iraq War
• Radical Muslim political writing
• International responses to genocide
• Max Weber and Noam Chomsky on political leadership
• Michael Novak on democratic capitalism
• John Kenneth Galbraith and the liberal society of Reinhold Niebuhr
• Veiling and unveiling: the meaning of the veil in Muslim and western culture
Psychology
• Carol Gilligan on development of self and voice in adolescent girls
• Consumerism and the psychology of addiction
• Jacques Lacan and Neo-Freudianism
• Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott and “object relations”
• “True self” in Paul Tournier, Thomas Merton, Richard Schwartz
• Alice Miller and the repressed memory of childhood trauma
• The myth of mother/daughter separation
• Varying psychological portraits of Jesus
• Jung’s archetypes
Science
• Hydrology and the crisis of the American West
• Ethics of genetic manipulation
• John McPhee’s geological writings
• The deep ecology movement
• Oliver Sacks’ studies of brain disorder
• Loren Eiseley’s Darwinian naturalism
• E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology
• Viewpoints: Creationism, intelligent design and natural selection
• Charles Darwin’s struggle with God
Sociology
• Weber and Marx on the future of capitalism
• “Bowling Alone”: loss of civic community in America
• Vandana Shiva and the mobilization of third world women
• Ernest Becker on death denial as shaping human culture
• Feminist theory’s unmasking of gender, race and class relations
• Erving Goffman and the rituals of everyday life
• The Frankfurt School’s critique of modernity
• Sociology of religious cults in America
• Peter Berger and religion as a “sacred canopy”
Theology
• Social implications of atonement theories
• Jacques Ellul on the “politics of God”
• Liberation theology
• Jean Vanier and the theology of human brokenness
• Barth, Stringfellow and Ellul on the “lordless powers”
• Julian of Norwich on the relationship of the divine and humans
• Feminine imagery for God and the shaping of personhood
• Borg and Crossan on the historical Jesus
• Brueggeman’s Old Testament theology
• Reuther and contemporary feminist theology
Click here for the full description of course offerings.
Bible
• God and human violence
• Jesus and women in the Gospels
• Christian community in the New Testament
• Earth-caring as a biblical calling
• Judas as the first Christian
• Authentic humanity in the Sermon on the Mount
• Slavery and freedom in light of John 8
• Healing body shame: Jesus and women
Education
• Pedagogy of Paulo Freire
• Inner-city adolescents in the public schools
• Classroom differences between girls and boys
• Athletics in the educational system
• How working class culture shapes children’s aspirations
• Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” and the academic world
English
• The American West: Kittredge, Abbey, McCarthy
• Feminist criticism and John Updike
• Post-colonial women writers
• Shusaku Endo and Elie Wiesel on human suffering
• Meena Alexander and Assia Djebar on language and self
• Catholic visions of Graham Greene and Francois Mauriac
• The spirituality of Rainer Maria Rilke
• Womanist theology in Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison
History
• Simone de Beauvoir on othering and freedom
• Noam Chomsky’s grim vision
• Jacques Ellul and the reign of technique
• Nancy Chodorow’s psychoanalytic perspective
• African-American voices: DuBois, Malcolm, hooks, West
• Genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia
• Women and gender in the history of Islam
• Medieval women mystics and the humanity of God
• Slavery and its defenders in the antebellum South
• The “emergent church” in contemporary America
Philosophy
• Kierkegaard’s “simple life”
• Richard Rorty’s postmodern pragmatism
• Thich Nhat Hanh and “engaged Buddhism”
• Albert Camus and French existentialism
• Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
• Hannah Arendt and the “banality of evil”
• Simone Weil’s perspective on social evil
• The collaboration of Sartre and de Beauvoir
• Hans Kung on the great atheists and reasons for faith
• Jacques Derrida and John Caputo on “religion without religion”
Political Science
• Neoconservative thought and the Iraq War
• Radical Muslim political writing
• International responses to genocide
• Max Weber and Noam Chomsky on political leadership
• Michael Novak on democratic capitalism
• John Kenneth Galbraith and the liberal society of Reinhold Niebuhr
• Veiling and unveiling: the meaning of the veil in Muslim and western culture
Psychology
• Carol Gilligan on development of self and voice in adolescent girls
• Consumerism and the psychology of addiction
• Jacques Lacan and Neo-Freudianism
• Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott and “object relations”
• “True self” in Paul Tournier, Thomas Merton, Richard Schwartz
• Alice Miller and the repressed memory of childhood trauma
• The myth of mother/daughter separation
• Varying psychological portraits of Jesus
• Jung’s archetypes
Science
• Hydrology and the crisis of the American West
• Ethics of genetic manipulation
• John McPhee’s geological writings
• The deep ecology movement
• Oliver Sacks’ studies of brain disorder
• Loren Eiseley’s Darwinian naturalism
• E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology
• Viewpoints: Creationism, intelligent design and natural selection
• Charles Darwin’s struggle with God
Sociology
• Weber and Marx on the future of capitalism
• “Bowling Alone”: loss of civic community in America
• Vandana Shiva and the mobilization of third world women
• Ernest Becker on death denial as shaping human culture
• Feminist theory’s unmasking of gender, race and class relations
• Erving Goffman and the rituals of everyday life
• The Frankfurt School’s critique of modernity
• Sociology of religious cults in America
• Peter Berger and religion as a “sacred canopy”
Theology
• Social implications of atonement theories
• Jacques Ellul on the “politics of God”
• Liberation theology
• Jean Vanier and the theology of human brokenness
• Barth, Stringfellow and Ellul on the “lordless powers”
• Julian of Norwich on the relationship of the divine and humans
• Feminine imagery for God and the shaping of personhood
• Borg and Crossan on the historical Jesus
• Brueggeman’s Old Testament theology
• Reuther and contemporary feminist theology
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