The Role of Emotions in the Letters of St. Paul

The course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the role of emotion in Paul's communication with early Christian communities.  We will study emotional appeals as a rhetorical strategy of the letters as well as the effects of such emotions in human beings (including their cultural construction, biological and psychological effects, role in cognition). The overarching question of the course is how to cultivate emotional intelligence in our readings of Paul's letters.  Lectures, class discussions of assigned readings, graded presentations and writing assignments.