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Associate Professor of Religion
Departmental Area: Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy Address: Department of Religion |
Background
Aline Kalbian (Ph.D., '96, University of Virginia, Religion and Ethics) teaches courses in religious ethics, medical ethics, gender and ethics, and Catholic ethics. Kalbian is an affiliate of The Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law at the FSU College of Medicine. She is also co-editor (with Martin Kavka) of the Journal of Religious Ethics. Her research focuses on the way moral traditions develop and change over time, especially on matters pertaining to gender, sexuality, and medicine. She is currently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Evil Means: Contraception in Catholic Thought.
Research Interests
- Bioethics and Religion
- Catholic Moral Theology
- Gender and Religion
Selected Publications
- Sexing the Church: Gender, Power and Ethics in Contemporary Catholicism (Indiana University Press, 2005)
- “Catholic and Contraception since 1968: Has Anything Really Changed?” Louvain Studies (forthcoming).
- “Sexuality in Religions,” in Hugh LaFollette, ed., International Encyclopedia of Ethics (forthcoming).
- “Considering the Risks to Economically Disadvantaged Egg Donors,” American Journal of Bioethics 11(7), September 2011.
- "Christian Approaches to Reproductive Technology," in Faith in America, ed. Charles Lippy, 2 vols. Praeger Press, 2006.
- "John Paul II" in Alan Soble, ed., Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., 2006.
- "Narrative ARTifice and Women's Agency," Bioethics 19(2), April 2005: 93-111. Also reprinted in The Bioethics Casebook, Janet Dolgin and Lois Shepherd, eds. Greenwood, 2005.
Teaching Specializations
- Religious Ethics
- Bioethics
- Catholic Moral Theology
- Gender and Ethics
Recent Courses
Fall 2012
REL3170 Religious Ethics
This introduction to the study of religious ethics meets the Gordon Rule requirement, the liberal studies area IV requirement and the multicultural x requirement. Students will examine the moral problems raised by issues such as deception, capital punishment, war, the environment, and human sexuality in the context of religious views about love, duty, good, and evil. They will undertake this examination through close readings of texts describing views of different religious traditions including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. They will also develop and fine-tune their writing skills by completing two 1500 word papers.
Spring 2012
REL3171 Bioethics and Religion (Honors Section)
This undergraduate honors course is an introduction to theoretical and practical issues in bioethics from the perspective of a variety of religious positions. By the end of the course students will know and understand how religious views have influenced the development of bioethics, the difficulties of cultural diversity in the context of medicine, and theories and approaches used in resolving issues in bioethics. They will also learn about the history of bioethics, the vocabulary specific to bioethics, an how to interpret moral and religious arguments as they relate to specific case studies.
REL4190 Catholic Sexual Ethics
This advanced undergraduate seminar examines the development of Roman Catholic thought on various issues related to human sexuality. Through careful reading of primary and secondary texts, we will explore the way that theological ideas such as sin, creation, sacrament, and natural law have influenced Catholic evaluations of sexuality. We will focus on how ideas about gender complementarity reinforce Catholic views about marriage, procreation and homosexuality.