Religion-General Religion

What is religion? Why do people reach out to God(s) or other unseen powers? How are beliefs in spiritual entities expressed and perpetuated? Why do people come together to form religious communities? How does religion order people's lives, and what impact have religious visionaries and institutions had on societies through the ages? This is a co-taught seminar that introduces students to the rich and interdisciplinary field of Religious Studies.

Studies the major religious traditions of the Western world; Judaism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.

This course interprets humanity's changing ecological relationships through religious and philosophical traditions. It takes up ethical questions presented by environmental problems, introduces frameworks for making sense of them, and examines the symbols and narratives that shape imaginations of nature.

Engaging commentary from a range of religious traditions and media sources, this course examines the enduring intellectual and political challenges of engaging religion in a pluralistic and democratic context. In addition to religious studies and theology, course readings will include material from media studies, law, political science, philosophy, and cognitive psychology.

This course studies how to be a moral agent in a market society. It attends to how economic issues influence different spheres of human life, both public and private, and discusses the ethics of a professional career, the moral obligations of corporations, the nature of inequality, the economic ethics of major world traditions, and how to live a morally sane human life in a market system.

An analysis of African-American social criticism centered upon, but not limited to, the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X

This course is about the felt experience of religion across time and place. Through readings, essays, presentations and exercises we will become familiar with a variety of perspectives on the relationships between religions and bodies in their multiple cultural contexts.

This seminar explores the major conversations that scholars of religion are having, and have had, about what "religion" is and the best ways to study it. Focusing on classical controversies, ongoing debates, and new developments, this course will help students map out the field of religious studies and begin to situate their own studies within it. This course is geared towards Religious Studies majors but open to any interested student.

Students in this course will fashion their own approach to studying religion and develop a retrospective project that interweaves the various strands of their prior study over the course of the major. Building on earlier courses in Religious Studies, this capstone seminar completes the major's sequence by applying questions and conversations in the study of religion to some advanced theme crafted by the instructor.

This course offers third- and fourth-year Religious Studies majors resources for conceiving and executing a major research project. As a follow-up, students usually take RELG 4900 ("Distinguished Major Thesis"), which affords them an opportunity to write the research project they have conceived in this course. Whether you plan to write a thesis or not, RELG 4800 offers an accessible introduction to the craft of research in Religious Studies.

This course offers MA students in Religious Studies resources for conceiving and executing a major research project or thesis. By the end of the semester, each participant will have completed a well-organized, detailed prospectus. The prospectus will reflect the guidance of one's thesis advisor as well as the scrutiny of the instructor and input from peers. Each student will thus be poised to begin writing his/her thesis the following semester.

This course familiarizes students with a range of ways of studying practice in religions as it is evidenced in sacred texts, religious artifacts, images and locations; as it is chronicled in historical documents; as it is reflected in literary and artistic creations; and as it revealed in contemporary practice.

Given the multidisciplinary character of religious studies, it is imperative for new scholars to gain a basic sense of theoretical and methodological options in the field. By way of an examination of landmark texts, this course surveys the formation of religious studies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and considers some important contemporary approaches.

This tutorial examines Black Religious Studies and Black Studies scholarship that utilizes apocalyptic ideas to analyze Black religion, thought, politics, culture, and metaphysics.

This tutorial investigates the ethical dimensions of colonialism, neocolonialism, and resistance in Latin America. Through foundational and contemporary sources -- including Indigenous, Afro-Latinx, and feminist voices -- students will analyze ethical frameworks that critique violence and extractivism, and explore concepts of healing, restitution, and decolonial thought.

This individualized graduate tutorial provides an introduction to the relationship between Religion and Poetry across a number of traditions, exploring the concept of "poetic knowledge" and the relationship between poetry and spiritual realization.