Science and Religion in Europe: A modular curriculum (ScREaMC)

Project Science and Religion in Europe: A modular curriculum (ScREaMC) arose out of a long-standing collaboration between the two investigators of the project
(Tampakis and Navarro), concerning non-Anglosaxon perspectives on the History of Science and Religion. There are many science and religion courses, offered in many universities around the world. However, even in the well-established spaces of the USA and Europe, there is still a focus on Protestant, Anglo-American perspectives, which begets its own set of norms. Catholic national formations, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy or Poland, as well as Orthodox countries like Greece or Russia have received far less attention. Recent scholarship has started to address the lacunae, but there is still a significant lag in these geographical and cultural milieus. This project is an attempt to widen the scope of a Science and Religion curriculum, both spatially as well as denominationally.

Project goals and aims

The project is built around three organizing principles.

• It includes historiographical perspectives and case studies not only from Protestant spaces, but also from Orthodox and Catholic exemplars. Its main historical space is that of Europe, but it strives to include perspectives not only from ignored European narratives, such as the Jewish and Islamic traditions on science and religion, but also of decidedly non-European space of “otherness”, like India and Argentina, to problematize the notion of Europe itself.
• The curriculum is modular, so that it can be adjusted for a variety of formats and target audiences. Examples of audiences include Summer School attendees, undergraduate students in History, Theology and/or HPS departments and graduate students of the same disciplines. The developed curriculum includes twenty Units rganized around five Themes, and one Stand-alone Lecture, which can be used to create different educational structures. Units have been created for different time lengths, ranging from 45 to 210 minutes.
• The curriculum strives to be at the same time immediately usable by any educator, but also flexible enough to be capable of being fine-tuned for a specific audience. To that end, it comes fully furnished with relevant educational material, such as documentaries, videos, primary sources and relevant scholarship. It also includes a feedback form.

The end result of the project is a modular curriculum, centered around five themes:

• “The interaction of Sciences and Religions as an historiographical problem”
• “Nature and the Divine in the Middle Ages”
• “Natural Sciences, Christianities, Modernity”
• “Perceptions of Science and Religion”
• “Ideologies, Science, Religion”.

More details can be found in: https://www.hpdst.gr/projects/screamc