“Faith” is often an empty word. Used in banal expressions like “people of faith,” “the world’s great faiths,” and the ever-present debate between “faith” and “reason,” faith loses all connection with actual human lives. This course explores faith, not as an abstract concept, but as a narrative device. Stories represent faith not as an idea, but as a response to demands—whether those demands come from a god or from other human beings. Readings may include stories of mystical insight (The Golden Ass of the Roman author Apuleius), of the brutal realities of martyrdom (Shusaku Endo’s Silence and Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory), and of the rejection or reformulation of faith (Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Talents).