49 courses with the subject RELG, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
RELG 10003 Religion and Food6
Key aspects of religion, including culture, tradition, family, community, the divine, ritual, selfhood, place, and embodiment all collide in food and foodways, making food a rich entry-point into the study of religion. Working across time and space, we will explore the following key questions: 1) how does food shape individuals and communities; 2) how does food encapsulate the values of a society; 3) how does food play a sacred role across cultures? 4) what is the role of food in solidifying and crossing identities; 5) how has food been a site of privilege and resistance? Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IS, International Studies only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information. Tags: CL: 100 level RELG Jewish Traditions Faculty: Chumie Juni
Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are
RELG 110Understanding Religion6
How can we best understand the role of religion in the world today, and how should we interpret the meaning of religious traditions–their texts and practices–in history and culture? This class takes an exciting tour through selected themes and puzzles related to the fascinating and diverse expressions of religion throughout the world. From politics and pop culture, to religious philosophies and spiritual practices, to rituals, scriptures, gender, religious authority, and more, students will explore how these issues emerge in a variety of religions, places, and historical moments in the U.S. and across the globe. Offered: Fall 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CCST Encounters CL: 100 level RELG Pertinent Course CCST Seeing and
What is Judaism? Who are Jewish people? What are Jewish texts, practices, ideas? What ripples have Jewish people, texts, practices, and ideas caused beyond their sphere? These questions will animate our study as we touch on specific points in over three millennia of history. We will immerse ourselves in Jewish texts, historic events, and cultural moments, trying to understand them on their own terms. At the same time, we will analyze them using key concepts such as ‘tradition,’ ‘culture,’ ‘power,’ and ‘diaspora.’ We will explore how ‘Jewishness’ has been constructed by different stakeholders, each claiming the authority to define it. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 100 level JDST Pertinent MARS Supporting MEST Studies Foundation RELG Breadth RELG Jewish Traditions RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Chumie Juni
This course explores the colorful, contested history of religion in American culture. While surveying the main contours of religion in the United States from the colonial era to the present, the course concentrates on a series of historical moments that reveal tensions between a quest for a (Protestant) American consensus and an abiding religious and cultural pluralism. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: AMST Democracy Activism AMST Survey 1 CL: 100 level HIST Pertinent Courses RELG Breadth RELG Pertinent Course RELG Traditions Americas
An introduction to the major religious traditions of Japan, from earliest times to the present. Combining thematic and historical approaches, this course will scrutinize both defining characteristics of, and interactions among, various religious traditions, including worship of the kami (local deities), Buddhism, shamanistic practices, Christianity, and new religious movements. We also will discuss issues crucial in the study of religion, such as the relation between religion and violence, gender, modernity, nationalism and war. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies QRE, Quantitative Reasoning WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: ASST East Asia ASST Pertinent CL: 100 level EAST Core MARS Supporting POSI Elective/Non POSC RELG Breadth RELG Buddhist Traditions RELG Pertinent Course ASST Humanistic Inquiry Faculty: Asuka Sango
This course offers a survey of Buddhism from its inception in India some 2500 years ago to the present. We first address fundamental Buddhist ideas and practices, then their elaboration in the Mahayana and tantric movements, which emerged in the first millennium CE in India. We also consider the diffusion of Buddhism throughout Asia and to the West. Attention will be given to both continuity and diversity within Buddhism–to its commonalities and transformations in specific historical and cultural settings. We also will address philosophical, social, political, and ethical problems that are debated among Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism today. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
Hinduism is the world’s third-largest religion (or, as some prefer, “way of life”), with about 1.2 billion followers. It is also one of its oldest, with roots dating back at least 3500 years. “Hinduism,” however, is a loosely defined, even contested term, designating the wide variety of beliefs and practices of the majority
RELG 162Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Beginnings6
Who was Jesus? What’s in the Bible? How did Christianity begin? This course is an introduction to the ancient Jewish texts that became the Christian New Testament, as well as other texts that did not make it into the Bible. We will take a historical approach, situating this literature within the Roman Empire of the first century, and we will also learn about how modern readers have interpreted it. Along the way, we will pay special attention to two topics of enduring political debate: (1) Whether the Bible supports oppression or liberation and (2) What the Bible says about gender and sexuality. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 100 level ENGL Foreign Literature JDST Pertinent MARS Core Course MEST Studies Foundation MEST Supporting Group 1 RELG Breadth RELG Christian Traditions RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Sonja Anderson
How do religion and medicine approach the healing of disease and distress? Are religion and medicine complementary or do they conflict? Is medicine a more evolved form of religion, shorn of superstition and pseudoscience? This course explores religious and cultural models of health and techniques for achieving it, from ancient Greece to Christian monasteries to modern mindfulness and self-care programs. We will consider ethical quandaries about death, bodily suffering, mental illness, miraculous cures, and individual agency, all the while seeking to avoid simplistic narratives of rationality and irrationality. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CCST Encounters CL: 200 level PPOL Ethics RELG Christian Traditions
RELG 214Irish Studies In Ireland Program: Sacred Place & Pilgrimage in Ireland
Encounters with the sacred on the landscape present a thorough line of Irish religion: pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian. Holy mountains, islands, stones, and wells materialize the sacred and organize the practices of lived religion. Such places are also charged sites of historical memory, colonization, and resistance. Long wellsprings of Irish cultural nationalism, they now capture spiritual imaginations of global seekers of earth-based spirituality. Through readings, field visits, and walking several pilgrimage routes, this course explores narratives and practices of sacred places, engages the blurry boundary between the sacred/secular entailed in pilgrimage, and queries the modern romance with “Celtic Spirituality.” Offered: Summer 2025 Credits: 6 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies Tags: CL: 200 level EUST Country Specific RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Michael McNally · Gregory Hewett
RELG 216Irish Studies in Ireland Program:Irish Landscape in Myth, Literature, History
The past is a strong presence in Ireland. People live with Iron Age tombs in their backyards and Irish language place names rehearse ancient epics. Places resound with collective memory as they have been storied through myth, literature, and folklore. So too are Irish political identities made and remade through evocations and practices of sacred place. This course explores the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, Celtic Revival spiritualizations of the landscape, and materials by and about “New Irish” communities. The course centers place-based learning: curated experiences at archaeological sites, historical walking tours of Galway and Dublin, and an immersive week in the politically charged cityscape of Belfast. Offered: Summer 2025 Credits: 3 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies Tags: CL: 200 level ENGL Pertinent EUST Country Specific RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Michael McNally · Gregory Hewett
The concept of law plays a central role in religion, and the concept of religion plays a central role in law. We often use the word ‘law’ to describe obligatory religious practices. But is that ‘law,’ as compared with state law? Legal systems in the U.S. and Europe make laws that protect religious people, and that protect governments from religion. But what does ‘religion’ mean in a legal context? And how do implicit notions of religious law affect how judges deal with religion? We will explore these questions using sources drawn from contemporary religions and recent legal disputes. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: AMST Democracy Activism CL: 200 level JDST Pertinent PPOL Ethics RELG Jewish Traditions RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Chumie Juni
How have religious thinkers understood the demands of justice, the work of love, and the relation of both to power and politics? Is resistance or compromise the most appropriate way to bring justice to human relations? How should the ideals of faith inform questions about political authority, struggles for equality, and engagement with difference? This course draws on Christian theology, African American religious thought, and Jewish thought to explore a range of questions about ethics and social change. Along the way, we encounter diverse models of human selfhood, moral obligation, and the role of religion in public life. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: ACE Theoretical AFST Humanistic Inquiry AMST Democracy Activism CL: 200 level PHIL Interdisciplinary 2 PHIL Social and Political Theory 1 PPOL Ethics RELG Christian Traditions AMST Race Ethnicity Indigeneity
RELG 224Religion, Science, and the Moral Imagination6
How do we imagine the relationship between religion and science? Are they at odds, in harmony, or different ways of imagining ourselves, our world, and our futures? This course explores historical understandings of religious and scientific thought, asking how the two came to be separated in the modern era. We use the imagination to explore power dynamics and moral judgments embedded in assumptions about matter, nature, bodies, persons, and progress. We draw on literature, philosophy, and theology to consider questions about authority, ethics, and existential hope, focusing on climate crisis, technology and personhood, racism, and the possibility of alternative futures. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PPOL Ethics RELG Christian Traditions Faculty: Lori Pearson
Is religion an illusion we create to explain what we don’t understand? An elaborate means to justify the violence we commit? A way to hold onto meaning in the face of radical doubt? This course explores how Western theologians and philosophers have grappled with the loss of traditional religious beliefs and categories. What is the appropriate response to losing one's religion? It turns out that few abandon it altogether, but instead find new ways of naming the sacred, whether in relation to existential courage, aesthetic experience, moral hope, prophetic insight, or passionate love. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level PHIL Pertinent RELG Christian Traditions RELG Pertinent
Martin Luther and the Reformation have often been understood as crucial factors in the rise of “modernity.” Yet, the Reformation was also a medieval event, and Luther was certainly a product of the late Middle Ages. This class focuses on the theology of the Protestant Reformation, and traces its legacy in the modern world. We read Luther, Calvin, and Anabaptists, exploring debates over politics, church authority, scripture, faith, and salvation. We then trace the appropriation of these ideas by modern thinkers, who draw upon the perceived individualism of the Reformers in their interpretations of religious experience, despair, freedom, and secularization. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 200 level MARS Core Course MARS Supporting PHIL Interdisciplinary 2 PHIL Traditions 1 RELG Christian Traditions RELG Pertinent Course EUST
Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen, period? Could angels and demons have something to do with it? This course asks how cosmology—an account of how the universe is put together and the different entities that inhabit it—can be an answer to the problem of evil and injustice. We will start with a historical investigation of the demonology and angelology of ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian texts and then move into modern practices such as exorcism and magical realist literature. Along the way, we will keep asking how these systems justify the existence of evil and provide programs for dealing with it. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CCST Encounters CL: 200 level GWSS Elective JDST Pertinent MARS Core Course PHIL Interdisciplinary 2 PHIL Value Theory 1 RELG Christian Traditions RELG Jewish Traditions RELG Pertinent Course
This course explores historical and legal contexts in which Native Americans have practiced their religions in the United States. Making reference to the cultural background of Native traditions, and the history of First Amendment law, the course explores landmark court cases in Sacred Lands, Peyotism, free exercise in prisons, and sacralized traditional practices (whaling, fishing, hunting) and critically examines the conceptual framework of “religion” as it has been applied to the practice of Native American traditions. Service projects will integrate academic learning and student involvement in matters of particular concern to contemporary native communities. Offered: Fall 2025
African American religions are a mix of African, European, and indigenous American influences. The unique social, political, and economic concerns of Black people shape their spiritualities in intricate and surprising ways. This course explores the history of African American religions through a consideration of historical works, historiographical debates, and hermeneutical trends. Readings survey themes of race, gender, reproduction, natal alienation, and political struggle in African American religious experiences through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Course assignments introduce students to the practice of method and theory in the historical study of religion by emphasizing how historiography informs narrations of the past. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: AFST Humanistic Inquiry AFST Survey Course CL: 200 level RELG Christian Traditions RELG Traditions Americas Faculty: Jorge Banuelos
Through close reading of primary sources, this course examines how some of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Middle East and South Asia conceptualized God and the ideal God-human relationship to address such pressing questions as: How should religion relate to modern technological and scientific advancements? Can Islam serve as an ideology to counter European colonialism? Can Islam become the basis for the formation of social and political life under a nation-state, or does it demand a transnational political collectivity of its own? What would a modern Islamic economy look like? Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: ASST South Asia CL: 200 level MEST Supporting Group 1 PPOL Other Comparative RELG Islamic Traditions RELG Pertinent Course SAST Humanistic Inquiry SAST Support Humanities Faculty: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
This course explores the history of samurai since the emergence of warrior class in medieval times, to the modern developments of samurai ethics as the icon of Japanese national identity. Focusing on its connection with Japanese religion and culture, we will investigate the origins of the purported samurai ideals of loyalty, honor, self-sacrifice, and death. In addition to regular class sessions, there will be a weekly kyudo (Japanese archery) practice on Wednesday evening (7-9 pm), which will enable students to study samurai history in context through gaining first-hand experience in the ritualized practice of kyudo. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: ACE Applied ASST East Asia CL: 200 level EAST Supporting MARS Core Course RELG Buddhist Traditions RELG Pertinent Course ASST Humanistic
With Jews and Jewishness front and center in American political contestations, it is increasingly urgent to understand formations of Judaism, past and present, in relation to normative concepts of the "American." This course will consider the ways that Judaism interacts with, is shaped by, and in turn shapes, America and Americanness. We will apply historical, anthropological, and theoretical lenses to explore the many aspects of what Jewishness means and has meant in this country.
Christianity, by its very name, focuses on Jesus. This course shifts the focus to Mary, his mother: her various manifestations and her contributions to the myriad experiences of peoples around the world. Race, gender, class, and feminist and liberation theologies come into play as Mary presents as: the Mother of God; queen of heaven; a Black madonna; a Mestiza madonna; an exceptional woman with her own chapter in the Qur'an; various goddesses in Haitian Vodoun, Hinduism, and Buddhism; a tattoo on the backs of U.S. prisoners–and so on. In addition to considering Miriam (her Jewish name) as she appears in literature, art, apparition, and ritual practice around the world, we will also consider Mary Magdalene, her foil, who appears in popular discourse from the Gnostic gospels to The Da Vinci Code. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: CX, Cultural/Literature HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies QRE, Quantitative Reasoning WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: ASST Humanistic Inquiry ASST Pertinent CCST Encounters CL: 200 level EUST Transnational Support GWSS Elective MARS Supporting RELG Christian Traditions RELG Pertinent Course RELG Traditions Americas Faculty: Kristin Bloomer
RELG 300Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion6
What, exactly, is religion and what conditions of modernity have made it urgent to articulate such a question in the first place? Why does religion exert such force in human society and history? Is it an opiate of the masses or an illusion laden with human wish-fulfillment? Is it a social glue? A subjective experience of the sacred? Is it simply a universalized Protestant Christianity in disguise, useful in understanding, and colonizing, the non-Christian world? This seminar, for junior majors and advanced majors from related fields, explores generative theories from anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary studies, and the history of religions. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry Tags: ASST Disciplinary ASST Methodology CL: 300 level RELG Pertinent Course CCST Principles Cross-Cultural Analysis Faculty: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
When will the world end, and how? What’s wrong with the world that makes its destruction necessary or inevitable? Are visions of “The End” a form of resistance literature, aimed at oppressive systems? Or do they come from paranoid minds disconnected from reality? This seminar explores apocalyptic thought, which in its basic form is about unmasking the deceptions of the given world by revealing the secret workings of the universe. We begin with ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses and move into modern religious and “secular” visions of cosmic collapse, including doomsday cults, slave revolts, UFO religions, and Evangelical fantasies about armageddon in the Middle East. We will also create a giant handwritten manuscript of the book of Revelation using calligraphy pens, paint, and gold leaf. Offered: Spring 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 300 level JDST Pertinent MARS Capstone MARS Supporting MEST Supporting Group 1 RELG Christian Traditions RELG Jewish Traditions
RELG 359Buddhist Studies India Program: Buddhist Meditation Traditions
Students will complement their understanding of Buddhist thought and culture through the study and practice of traditional meditation disciplines. This course emphasizes the history, characteristics, and approach of three distinct meditation traditions within Buddhism: Vipassana, Zazen, and Dzogchen. Meditation practice and instruction is led in the morning and evening six days a week by representatives of these traditions who possess a theoretical as well as practical understanding of their discipline. Lectures and discussions led by the program director complement and contextualize the three meditation traditions being studied. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: IS, International Studies No Exploration Tags: CL: 300 level RELG Buddhist Traditions RELG Pertinent Course SAST
What makes a sound noise to someone and God's self-disclosure to another? What makes a statue a decorated stone to someone and a living deity to another? Are these distinctions rooted in faith or in people’s sensory experiences in different cultures? Together, we will explore such questions by inquiring into how sensory experiences and religious beliefs relate to one another. The course is designed as a practicum in which students will learn to develop sensory histories of objects and to practice exhibiting religious objects in museums or elsewhere for public understanding. Offered: Fall 2025 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 300 level MEST Supporting Group 2 RELG Pertinent Course RELG Buddhist Traditions RELG Christian Traditions RELG Islamic Traditions Faculty: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
While many people associate religions with spirituality and transcendence, religious beliefs and practices have always been mediated through objects, sensory experiences, bodies, and spaces. Broadly speaking these constitute the material dimensions of religion. This course will first introduce students to the major theoretical and methodological issues involved in the study of material religion. Students will then be asked to put what they have learned to practice by developing a research project around a religious thing or some other material aspect of religion. Not offered in 2025-26 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2 Tags: CL: 300 level RELG Pertinent Course
This seminar will acquaint students with research tools in various fields of religious studies, provide an opportunity to present and discuss research work in progress, hone writing skills, and improve oral presentation techniques. Offered: Winter 2026 Liberal Arts Requirements: HI, Humanistic Inquiry Tags: RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Lori Pearson
Religion 400 covers two required elements of the comprehensive exercise for the Religion major. All seniors must enroll in Religion 400 for one credit in fall term of senior year, when students will write and revise their comps research proposals. All seniors must then enroll in Religion 400 for two credits in spring term of senior year, when each student will finalize the research paper, create and deliver an oral presentation on it, and attend the oral presentations of all religion majors in the senior class. (The paper is drafted during winter term in Religion 399.) Offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2026 Grading: S/NC – 2 Tags: RELG Pertinent Course Faculty: Lori Pearson Other Courses Pertinent to Religion These courses are related to Religion, but are not required to meet a specific academic requirement for Religion.
