Saba Awarded ‘Life Worth Living’ Fellowship

Mar 21, 2024

A lone student walks across campus in the fog

Photo of Elias Saba — Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and History Elias Saba.

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and History Elias G. Saba has been awarded a 2024 Life Worth Living Faculty Course Development Fellowship from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. The $15,000 fellowship allows faculty to design courses that guide students through a process of developing philosophies for a flourishing life.

Saba’s research focuses on classical Arabo-Islamic heritage, primarily the literary and legal traditions of Arabic writing. He says he is designing a course, to be taught in spring 2025, that will explore what it means for a life to go well and have meaning. This course will bolster the mission of the Department of Religious Studies to engage with the richness of human life.

Elias Saba and his young child enjoy a teacup amusement ride — Elias Saba demonstrates a life well lived as he enjoys a ride on the teacups with his young child.

“What would it look like for a life to be lived well? What shapes could a life worth living take?” he asks. “These questions have been central to human existence for millennia. What can we learn about ourselves from these efforts?”

What would it look like for a life to be lived well? What shapes could a life worth living take?

Elias Saba

Life Worth Living explores these questions through engagement with the heritage of diverse religious traditions from ancient Mesopotamia, India, China, the Middle East, and the United States.

Four key principles interact to drive the Life Worth Living courses:

Pursuit of existential meaning — helping students pose the questions and live the answers to one of the most basic questions of life: “What is the shape of flourishing life?”
Commitment to truth-seeking pluralism — students live in a world of diverse religious and philosophical perspectives. Through these courses, they can learn to understand and respectfully interact with multiple viewpoints.
First-person engagement — students will develop their own vision for a life worth living and test the reality by living it.
Participation in a community of practice — students will be part of a community exploring these issues — a community that offers strength, support, and ongoing conversation.

The Life Worth Living Network, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, is administered through the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.