Teaching

The courses that Professor Helmer will teach during the 2023-2024 academic year are:

Winter 2024
Rel/Ger 272: Luther and the West

Luther’s impact on the west is powerful and provocative.  Many ideas that we associate with modern life and culture can be traced back to Luther.  We focus this course on Luther’s three reformation texts from 1520 and explore how the reading of these texts by persons at particular times and in particular places resulted in creative interpretations of key theological ideas that illumined aspects of the modern west.  Our themes are: the personal self, economics, political theology, philosophy, and art.  We also have the opportunity to discuss Professor Annie Bourneuf‘s new book, Beyond the Angel of History, with her.

Spring 2024
Ger 101: The Nazi Olympics and Religion

Rel 471: The Scholar’s Vocation (co-taught with Professor Robert A. Orsi)

 

Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Humanities, Professor of German and Religious Studies, Northwestern University