Third (Spring 2026) Trimester Classes
Religion and World Politics
Duration: 1 Trimester
Honors Option Available
Grade: 11/12
Required Course
Essential Questions:
How does the relationship between religion and politics affect peoples’ lives?
This course introduces major religions and how those religions affect world politics. It is accepted wisdom that religion is resurgent and matters, but exactly what this entails and precisely how religion matters is less understood. This class will present a variety of links between religion and politics: transnational religious ties; the rise and potential demise of secularization and secularism; and, the role of religion in shaping state-society relations including democratization and human rights. We will concentrate on the three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) for the first half of the course.
The second half of the course will concentrate on the specific manifestations of religiosity and state management of religion among Asia’s pivotal powers, concentrating on Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism. We will also examine the influence of religion on foreign policy and particularly the United States freedom of religion agenda; and, the question of whether religion is part of the problem or part of the solution when it comes to violent conflict and broader forms of disagreement such as resentment between civilizations.
Over the trimester this course we will cover all the above links between religion and politics. We will also examine and compare Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism. Religion’s current relevance cannot be ignored, particularly when surveying the geopolitical conflicts, often fueled by religion, dominating headlines today. History is more than a mere recollection of the past. It’s a tool with which we may better understand the present.
We will concentrate on the following objectives:
How to read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
How to delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning and well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
How to use technology, including the internet, to produce and publish writing and to collaborate with others.
Academic Integrity and the other AI:
During our in-person class time, the use of technology is limited and students will know ahead of time when it’s needed. Working collaboratively with others outside of class, in an effort to understand the material, is encouraged, however, it is imperative that each student develop their own interpretation of the texts, with their own annotations and excerpts.
The temptation to rely on AI generated text is ever-present, and while it may help seekers understand terms, concepts and events, submitting any text that’s copied and pasted verbatim is plagiarism.
Using AI as a resource, a place to begin, makes perfect sense; submitting another’s text, whether it’s produced by a human or AI, is cheating.
Relying on AI compromises the ability to distill, interpret and write about patterns across the texts and materials we interrogate, and makes contributing to class seminars with depth and authenticity impossible.
Do the learning on your own; it matters.
History 11/12 Honors Project 2026
The Honors Project requires that you select a current global conflict involving religion and government and follow its development over the course of this trimester. Your ultimate goal is to apply the Essential Question to the conflict you select. In order to do this, you must meet with the instructor, either before school, at lunch or after school to ensure that you are framing the question, and your responses to it, correctly.
STEP ONE: Select a topic by March 30
Once you have selected your conflict you need to provide a two page summary of what it is, when it began, what part of the world it affects, and how the Essential Question for this class, “how does the relationship between religion and government affect people’s lives,” applies to the conflict you selected.
You must have a Works Cited page with at least 4 properly formatted (MLA) sources.
You must have at least 2 parenthetical citations per paragraph and use every source listed at least once.
STEP TWO: Submit your two-page summary and Works Cited page by April 6
Each week you will submit a current events summary of an article that describes the conflict and how it is affecting the people who face it every day (it need not be a hard news article; it could be an analysis of the conflict or perhaps an opinion piece about the conflict).
DUE DATES:
1. April 13
2. April 20
3. April 27
4. May 4
5. May 11
6. May 18
Each current events summary should be a minimum of 200 words and include the following information:
1. By whom, or what organization, was the article written?
2. When was the article written?
3. In what news source was it originally published?
4. What is this article about?
5. What do you think the author hoped to do? What was her or his intent? Persuade? Inform? How do you know?
6. Using two direct quotations from the article, support your answers to #5 above. You must use the “Statement, Evidence, Commentary” format to introduce, present and justify DIRECT QUOTATIONS. How does the author support her or his contentions?
STEP THREE: Submit a current event summary on each of the dates
listed above (April 13—May 18)
STEP FOUR: June 1
Final written evaluation: includes the following analysis of how the conflict you selected is connected to the Essential Question for this course.
How are the lives of those involved being affected by the conflict?
What are the religious beliefs that contribute to the conflict?
What are the governmental beliefs that contribute to the conflict? (include the official US or UN stance on the conflict)
In what ways are other countries getting involved in the conflict?
According to experts, diplomats, governmental and religious officials, how can this conflict be solved?
Based on your knowledge, what do you think the future holds for this conflict? Is it solvable? If so, how? If not, what is keeping this from happening?
Length: no fewer than 5 and no longer than 10 pages with properly formatted Works Cited page, with at least 7 sources (no Wikipedia).
Have a good trimester.
Mr. Brown
jbrown@riverdale.k12.or.us
Food and Culture: Are you really going to eat that?
Duration: 1 Trimester
Honors Option Available
Elective
Essential Question:
How does food inform our culture?
Across time and across borders, humans have eaten not only for sustenance, but for pleasure, and food has helped shape the creation of societies and religions as well as nations and corporations. Eating together or eating similar cuisine binds families, cultures, and states together, while food taboos and distinctions draw distinctions between strangers. What we eat is not an incidental component of life, but an essential part of how it is structured; every meal we eat represents a confluence of power, culture, technology, and taste that can be traced back far into the past.
In this course, we will investigate the history of food from prehistory to the present day and beyond, as we consider examples from every corner of the world. Beginning with the science of food and taste, we will consider the origins of agriculture and the role of food in antiquity and religious life. We will explore the spread of crops and food practices across the oceans in the early modern world, and investigate the intimate and uncomfortable relationship between food and the global slave trade.
We will look at the foods that immigrants brought with them to the United States and elsewhere, while probing the linkages between race and modern eating practices. We will look at the birth of nutrition as a way of thinking about food, and the scandals of food adulteration that helped shape how we eat today. We will also create menus, shopping list budgets, and you will cook recipes using ingredients you are not used to eating.
We will concentrate on the following objectives:
How to decipher and deconstruct a meal culturally.
How to explain the chain of circumstances, environments, and people through which the food you eat had to pass before it could arrive in your mouth.
How to write a short cultural, ethnographic account of food that articulates the cultural relationship of food to human beings.
How to create a menu employing a different culture than your own and cook the menu.
CCSS Addressed:
11-12.RH.3: Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.
11-12.RST.9: Synthesize information from a range of sources (e.g. texts, experiments, simulations) into a coherent understanding of a process, phenomenon, or concept, resolving conflicting information when possible.
11-12.WHST.7: Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
Classroom culture: I believe in an interactive classroom in which we learn from each other (although not necessarily agree with) the opinions of others. A sure way to earn the respect from your fellow students is to acknowledge that their point of view is worthy of consideration and to realize that through the exploration of ideas we develop a better understanding of concepts.
Prep Period
Period 5
Advisory is a class that meets weekly, directly after our school wide Community Meeting. Students are assigned to an advisor as they enroll and remain with the same advisory group throughout their time in high school. Activities completed in Advisory help students work toward fulfilling the state's Personalized Education Plan requirement for graduation. Advisory also plays an important role in RHS culture by creating a safe and nurturing space for students to develop relationships in a group of peers and a strong connection with an adult in the school. Advisory time is also used to process senior exhibition preparation, problem-solve school issues that may arise, and to make time in high school for fun.