53 courses with the subject RELI, 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.
RELI 101JudaismS: An Introduction1
(Same as JWST 101 ) This course offers an introductory exploration of Jewish histories, politics, cultures, texts, practices, and beliefs in all their diversity. Designed for beginners with no prior background, it serves as a foundational course for the Jewish Studies major. Students trace the development of diverse expressions of Jewish culture and religion, examining their engagement with scripture, interpretation, Jewish law, and the observance of commandments. The course introduces fundamental dimensions of Jewish life, including the life-cycle, calendar, and holidays, while exploring evolving understandings of God, Torah, and the People and Land of Israel from antiquity to the present. It also examines the various methodologies employed in Jewish Studies to analyze these traditions and transformations. Marc Epstein. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 102Religion, Media & American Popular Culture1
How does the mass media change religious values and behaviors? How might we understand the relationship between American Christians and American culture? Has sports, television or entertainment replaced religion? Is popular culture hostile to faith or is it religious in wholly new and unexpected ways? In this course we explore these questions by looking in detail at American television, film, popular literature and the internet. We also examine how specific religions and religious symbols are expressed in popular culture, what happens when traditional religions borrow pop cultural forms or ideals, and how the American media is abetting a trend towards religious eclecticism and hybridity. Christopher White. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 106Radical Evil:The History of Wickedness in the West1
This course addresses a set of theological and moral questions: what does it mean to be evil? Is evil something external, foreign, and Other, or does it abide in us all? Is evil a product of circumstances, psychology, or the exercise of free will? Can the concept of evil be useful for explaining devestating phenomena such as genocide, white supremacy, and institutionalized sexual abuse? What are the intellectual and cultural sources of the idea of evil and how has it evolved through different moments and locations in history? Why are certain personifications of evil (demons, the Devil, heretics, monsters, witches, ghosts, racialized-Others) most visible at a given time and what do these forms of evil say about the values and anxieties of a given culture or civilization? In this course we investigate the different stories that get told about evil in Judaism, Christianity and broadly across North Atlantic societies from antiquity to the present in order to defamiliarize, contextualize, and re-interpret this persistent and mysterious moral concept. Klaus Yoder. Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 107 ) The Buddha, the pilgrim, the seeker, the monk, the scholar, the temple. In this six-week Intensive we travel with and through these themes and characters to explore Buddhist lives present and past. Our readings include primary and secondary texts. Michael Walsh. First six-week course. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
(Same as ENST 108 ) Human beings have been imagining the end of the world since the beginning. In the 20 th and 21 st centuries, a new specter of cosmic destruction has revealed itself: human-caused climate change. How does this latest threat compare with earlier imagined endings? Do religious actors and communities draw on their respective apocalyptic traditions to make sense of climate change, or do previous forms of apocalypticism become less relevant in the face of this concrete disaster? This course has two functions. The first is to understand how cosmic finitude is a central feature in various religions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and different Native American traditions. To do this, we examine sources ranging from scripture to television series. The second task is to take stock of the ways different religions are responding to climate change, whether that means efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change in community activism, new forms of spirituality and theology, or else refusing to engage. We attend to how this challenge motivates new considerations of community, that is, what it means to belong to a religious community, but crucially also what it means to be a part of the broader community of the human species, and the community that encompasses all living organisms on Earth. Klaus Yoder. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 110Great Understanding is Broad & Unhurried: Sage Voices from China’s Past and Rethinking the Good Life1
(Same as ASIA 110 ) The first part of this course title comes from the 4 th century BCE philosopher, Zhuangzi. In this class we read primary texts of some of China’s greatest teachers and discover their relevance in today’s world. Without domesticating their ideas, we explore a range of readings including Zhuangzi, Laozi, Confucius, classical poetry, Buddhist sutras, the Yijing , Mengzi, and Liezi, among others. Michael Walsh. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This introduction focuses on the relationship between spirituality and embodiment in Christian thought, ritual, and ethics. Religion 111 provides an overview of the historical development of Christianity while integrating analyses of contemporary communities, literatures, and practices. The main question that guides the class is how Christians in different times and places experience the gap between spirit and flesh. How does this binary apply to notions of the human being, the interpretation of divine revelation, and political movements? Over the course of the semester, students examine Christian concepts of the relationship between body and spirit for the ways in which they have been used to legitimate as well as subvert social hierarchies and forge new communities. Klaus Yoder. Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Modern theorists and observers have frequently identified “religion” as a primary motivating factor for violence, or as a special mechanism for justifying violence. This line of argument has persisted in the face of an era of wars and interpersonal violence perpetrated and justified by secular and non-religious forces as well as by theocratic states and religious individuals or movements. Nonviolent resisters and peacebuilders have likewise drawn on religious traditions and practices, even as those same traditions are also mobilized in support of violence and repression. This class approaches the interconnections between religion, violence, and peacebuilding from multiple angles. We consider domestic violence as well as mass atrocities, and study conflict resolution strategies as well as radical nonresistance as ethical witness. Our focus is on cases from the 20th and 21st centuries, from a wide range of global contexts. In the process, students are introduced to the multidisciplinary social-scientific study of religion, bringing together ethnographic observation, social theory, textual interpretation, political and intellectual history, and practical ethics. Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 140 ) Working with an ancient Chinese cosmological schema, the luoshu , a nine-squared square, and the old adage that ‘heaven is round, earth is square,’ this class is divided into nine sections – territory, city, temple, gods, family, texts, body, food, and people. Through these nine categories we explore both alternative and traditional ways of thinking through China’s imperial and modern histories. One of our class objectives is to better understand how acts of imagination influence and shape social formations. Throughout the semester we use the themes at hand to improve our writing skills. Michael Walsh. Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 147Trances, Visions, Meditative States and Altered States of Consciousness1
(Same as STS 147 ) This course introduces students to ways of interpreting trances, visions, religious experiences, peak experiences and other altered states of consciousness. Readings range from first-hand accounts written by mystics and visionaries to interpretations of unusual experiences by psychologists, theologians, anthropologists, reporters, writers, philosophers and neuroscientists. The course raises a number of questions that we consider during the semester, including—What are the best ways to describe or explain someone else’s anomalous/religious experience? How do we talk about experiences or behaviors that seem exotic, unhealthy, deviant or odd? Should we strive for “objective,” scientific knowledge or seek other ways of appreciating religious insight and experience? Can scientific methods or tests explain the insights that religious or spiritual people experience? In addition to understanding basic characteristics of different types of experiences, we also address these and other controversial questions. Christopher White. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as JWST 150 ) An historical comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course focuses on such themes as origins, development, sacred literature, ritual, legal, mystical, and philosophical traditions, and interactions among the three religions. Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as JWST 154 ) Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Yeshua bar Yosef of the town of Nazaret in the Upper Galilee in the Roman-occupied territory Jews called “Eretz Yisrael” and the Occupation renamed “Palestine,” was a radical and extraordinary historical figure, and an even more fascinating literary figure. With the Gospels—not only the four that made it into the New Testament, but some of the hundreds of others—as our guide, we attempt to situate Jesus in his indigenous context at a crucial time in the history and development of Jewish thought, before there were either “Christians” or “Christianity.” Jesus himself asks, “Who do you say I am?” One might answer in terms we may think we understand: “Radical teacher, preacher, healer, political revolutionary.” But historically, the terms “Messiah, Son of God, God,” have also been applied to Jesus. What can we know historically? And when do we cross the line from history into theology? Marc Epstein. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 180 ) Yoga: Is it physical or mental? Is it religious, secular, spiritual? Is it ancient or modern? We all know what yoga looks like—or at least we think we do—but while yoga has become an indelible part of transnational physical culture, many of us would struggle to explain what it is or where it comes from. What many in the U.S. call yoga—a postural activity that takes place largely in classes and that is practiced by certain social groups—takes root in a whole range of religious traditions in South Asia, develops in conversation with Western practices and ideologies, and experiences a firm relocation in India in the twentieth century while continuing to proliferate in the West. Interrogating the contemporary history of yoga requires confronting questions about religion, colonialism, body culture, and capitalism. Engaging with early and premodern articulations of yoga means coming into contact with South Asia’s religious traditions and superlative intellectual history. Students in this course achieve two analytical objectives: they are able to relate sources of yoga (written and visual texts, as well as experiences) to a historically and geographically broad set of conceptions about what yoga is and does; and they are able to make arguments about the idea and practice of yoga that are grounded in primary evidence, supported by secondary scholarship, and enriched by an awareness of historical, social, and cultural contexts. Nell Hawley. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 181Sacred Scripts:Torah, Text and Restoration0.5
(Same as JWST 181 ) Students study Jewish scribal tradition while working with master scribes and faculty to restore a late 18th–early 19th century Bavarian Torah scroll with unique and exquisite textual flourishes and effects. Students cut quills, mix ink, clean parchment, patch holes, and restore letters, while learning about Bavarian Jewish history, manuscript culture, and preservation. The scroll, otherwise destined for ritual burial, instead is returned to teaching and ritual life for the first time in more than two centuries. Marc Epstein. First six-week course. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
RELI 185The Bhagavad Gita: Conversation and Revelation1
(Same as ASIA 185 ) Since its emergence some two thousand years ago, the Bhagavad Gītā (“the song of the blessed one”) has become a cornerstone of Hindu traditions all over the world. The Gita’s life begins as series of chapters in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata , when the great warrior Arjuna refuses to fight in a battle that is unfolding before him—a battle that would require him to kill his own relatives, teachers, and loved ones. In response, Krishna—who is Arjuna’s charioteer and closest friend, and who also reveals himself to be God—persuades Arjuna to fight by offering an extraordinary account of divinity, devotion, action, detachment, concentration, ritual, ethics, and social theory. The primary aims of our course are to read closely and interpret the Gita itself. We pay special attention to context, whether that means placing Krishna’s complex discourse in the context of early South Asian religious currents—Hindu, Buddhist, Jain—or making sense of the Gita as a work of literature within the larger narrative of the Mahābhārata . Indeed we may wonder what genre, or genres, the Gita belongs to: Where is it a song or a poem? Where is it a discourse or an instruction? Where is it a story? Where is it descriptive, and where is it prescriptive? We pay special attention to places where the Gita creates intellectual and emotional currents that can seem to run against one another: Is detachment the thing, or is it devotion? Dualism or nondualism? Nonviolence or violence? Finally, in the latter part of the course, we discuss how the Gita has come to be the globally popular text that is is today. Nell Hawley. Two 75-minute periods. . Course Format: CLS
To study religion is to study culture and society, as well as to critically engage and participate in the humanities and social sciences. In this course we compare and critique different approaches to the study of religion and think about the category of religion in relation to other topics and social concerns. Jonathon Kahn. Required for all majors. Encouraged for correlates. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This course is an introduction to Christian ideals of faith, conduct, character, and community, and to modern disputes over their interpretations and applications. Our emphasis is on how Christian thinkers have negotiated the emergence of modern values about authority, rights, equality, and freedom. In what ways have Christian beliefs and moral concepts been consonant with or antagonistic to democratic concerns about gender, race and pluralism? Some of the most prominent Christian ethicists claim a fundamental incompatibility with this democratic ethos. We examine these claims and devote special attention to how Christian thinkers have dealt with the ethics of war, sexuality and the environment. Jonathon Kahn. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Is religion fundamentally conservative or revolutionary? Is it “the opium of the masses” (Marx) or an intense political stimulant? How do different religious traditions become sources of power for both revolutionary and reactionary political movements? Why do different religious communities align themselves with left-wing or right-wing political parties to enact their visions of a well-ordered society? This course addresses these questions by examining several historical case studies of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary moments to uncover the complex and diverse ways religions have contributed to massive political, social, and cultural change. These will include movements less frequently identified as “religious” such as the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution(s), Fascism, National Socialism, and the Chinese Revolution of 1949, as well as movements with easily-discernible religious aspects, including the German Peasant Rebellion of 1525, the Haitian Revolution, and the 1979 Iranian revolution. Working with these case studies helps us think about the relationship between religion and politics and particularly where and when the boundaries between these two spheres of life start to crumble. Klaus Yoder. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 209The Devil You Know: Personifying Evil in the West1
You already know the devil. He’s the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He’s the rebellious angel who got pushed into hell. He possesses small children in horror films. The devil appears for many as God’s enemy, the shadow side of reality. But how can an all-powerful, omnibenevolent God have such a scary and apparently successful enemy? What if the devil we know now is actually profoundly different from the devil as he has appeared in different times and places? This class approaches that question through a biographical investigation of the devil, starting with his shift from a heavy-handed part of God’s angelic bureaucracy in the Hebrew Bible to the personification of evil in the New Testament, and then moving through the theological speculation of late-antiquity and the middle ages that solidified the devil’s paradoxical place in the cosmos. From there, it explores the massive violence the concept of the devil facilitated during the European witch hunts of the early-modern period and the colonization of the Americas. Key topics include the devil’s role in contemporary pop culture, elite and popular political discourse, and indigenous resistance to colonialism and capitalism. Along the way this course questions why this theological personification of evil still has so much relevance in an allegedly secular age. Klaus Yoder. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 211 ) Various processes of migration and conversion have contributed to the development of Muslim minority communities in Europe and the Americas, dating back to the 17th century. From enslaved Muslims in the Americas, to the Nation of Islam, to colonial and post-colonial migrations, to the debates over whether and how to define “European,” “American,” and “Latin@” Islams, this course covers the history of these religious communities and movements, their relationships with European and American states, and how contemporary European and American Muslims have described and theorized the experience of being a religious minority or diaspora. Key themes include race & ethnicity, gender & sexuality, transnational media, political resistance, ethics, and spirituality. Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 222Women, Gender, & Sexuality in Islamic Spaces1
(Same as WFQS 222 ) This course explores the relationship between Islam, gender, and sexuality through a focus on space. The course is organized through six key spaces that have formed gendered bodies in Islamic contexts and diasporas: the home, the mosque, the school, the public square, the medical clinic, and the interior soul. As we move through each of these spaces, we explore how sexual difference, gender, sexuality, and religious practice take on different shapes in different settings, and at different life stages. We read canonical works of Muslim feminist thought, as well as the classical sources they engage with. We pay attention to gender diversity in the classical traditions and contemporary Islamic contexts, coming-of-age and other life stages, and to the role of gender and sexuality in mystical relationship with the divine. Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as JWST 230 ) An introduction to the heart of Judaism—the law developed by the rabbis over the course of millennia. We explore highly challenging legal institutions including themes of marriage and divorce, conversion, the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, gender and sexuality, questions of authority and rebelliousness. How were these practices—seemingly around forever— first established? How have they developed over the centuries, and how are they being reconfigured in post-modernity by contemporary halakhic activism? Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 233 ) The Buddha and his followers have had a profound influence on Asian cultures for more than two millennia. In this class we explore a variety of Buddhist imaginaries and practices beginning with ones that emerged in the first centuries after the historical Buddha, and tracing the development of these practices throughout Asia with an emphasis on China. We engage themes such as suffering, death, monastic institutionalism, the role of women and gender, the challenges of Euroamerican colonialisms, and the tensions between textual ideals and everyday practices. Michael Walsh. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 235 ) More than two thousand years ago the Han dynasty emperor Yuandi (r. 48-32 BCE) stated at the beginning of his reign: “We make it a point to establish personally our ancestral temple, because this is the ultimate power to build up our authority, eliminate the sprouts of rebellion, and make the people one.” The ‘ancestral state’ ( zuguo ) has always been an authoritarian one. The ancestral temple has always rendered China – both as imagined, mythologized, and contemporary – as religious. We begin our class then with the controversial assumption that China is a religious state precisely because it is a modern, nation-state. How can this be, and what is the connection to Emperor Yuandi’s assertion? Wang Hui, one of China’s most eminent, contemporary scholars, poses another type of question: “What is the nature of the historical emergence or construction of modern Chinese identity, ideas of geography, and senses of sovereignty?” This question is critical to better understanding China’s past and present. Might we also understand Wang’s question as a type of religious question despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) historical repudiation of religion? (After all, a history of the past is a history of the present.) And, if we can, what might this even mean, and what advantages or disadvantages might this offer us in further deepening our understanding of China today? Michael Walsh. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 241The Land of Israel Before the State of Israel1
(Same as JWST 241 ) This course deals with the Holy Land in Jewish (as well as Christian and Muslim) reality and imagination before Zionism. Love of and attachment to the Land in religious texts, poetry, art, literature and music, as well as the tensions between such sentiments and diasporist thought; and the collusions and collisions between and among the communities which claimed these attachments from antiquity through the Ottoman Period. Agnes Veto. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
1 1 unit(s) (Same as JWST 242 ) An exploration of the historical trajectory from religious to racial Jew-hatred through the study of religious, historical, political and sociological sources as well as art, literature and music. Agnes Veto. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as JWST 249 ) This course has a tripartite aim. First, to familiarize students with the various literary genres of the Biblical corpus — myth, treaty, legal collection, prophecy, political propaganda, historiography — in order to highlight the diversity and richness of the corpus as a literary product. Second, we seek to establish the agenda of some sections of the Biblical text and to understand how the widely different genres can and do contribute to a complex theological message. Finally, we attempt to unveil and analyze the underlying assumptions of the differing scholarly opinions concerning the meaning of the Biblical texts. In the course of the semester students read important samples of the Biblical texts and are introduced to the most influential scholarly views of the field. Agnes Veto. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
RELI 250Across Religious Boundaries: Understanding Differences1
The study of a selected topic or theme in religious studies that cuts across the boundaries of particular religions, allowing opportunities for comparison as well as contrast of religious traditions, beliefs, values and practices. Nell Hawley.
RELI 254A Hundred Gospels and the Confusing, Conflicted Life of Jesus1
(Same as JWST 254 ) Who was Jesus? What does the Bible say about him? How did it come to say what it does? Was he a humble carpenter? A divine being? A revolutionary? A rabbi? Was he learned in ancient wisdom, or simple and charismatic and fresh in his teaching? The sources dance in, about and around the issues as they alternately confirm and confound definitions. The canonical Gospels-accounts of Jesus’ life accepted as authoritative by Christians-number four. But even these four contradict each other and require “harmonization” in the eyes of believing Christians. And they are only four out of ten completely preserved examples. In addition to these ten, there are a further six Gospels describing only the childhood of Jesus, four partially preserved Gospels (including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene), and tens of fragmentary, reconstructed, and completely lost Gospels. Once thing is certain from all of these documents: Jesus wasn’t a Christian. How, then, did he come to be regarded as the founder of a new religion, a religion that would be called Christianity? And how did he come to be understood as God, the Son of God, or both at the same time? Marc Michael Epstein. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as JWST 255 ) Textual, phenomenological and theological studies in the religious mysticism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes.
Any 100-level course in Religion or Jewish Studies or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 256Theology of the Prison1
How might the experience of imprisonment have influenced the development of Christian ideas about the body, salvation, and justice? Does the contemporary crisis of America’s “prison-industrial complex” demand new attention to this aspect of the Christian tradition? In this course, students analyze the experience and representation of imprisonment in influential theological, philosophical, and literary texts from antiquity to the present. At the same time, we examine how inmates in contemporary American prisons are using a wide range of theologies and spiritual practices to heal, gain perspective, and critique unjust institutions. Doing so allows us to assess how the Christian tradition may be employed and critiqued for the purposes of interpreting and challenging American notions and policies of punishment and rehabilitation. Throughout the semester, we also encounter authors from different traditions who conceptualize the challenges of incarceration in ways that are comparable with and challenging to the categories we see in the Christian sources. Klaus Yoder. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 264Controversies in Science, Technology & Religion1
(Same as STS 264 ) This course introduces students to new and controversial topics in the study of religion, science, technology and spirituality. We examine controversial issues such as evolution/creation, artificial intelligence, science fiction as spirituality, religious and secular views of the mind, issues in biomedical ethics such as cloning, the neurology of religious experience, technologically-mediated spirituality, pseudo-science and parapsychology. Christopher White. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This course introduces students to research methods and key readings on religion, spirituality and American popular culture. The course begins with key readings examining how religious ideas, practices, and communities are being reshaped by television, films, the internet, mobile devices, and popular culture. The remainder of the course is spent working on individual research projects, reading articles on the research and writing process, and sharing work in progress. Christopher White. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 271Contemporary Arab Studies: Culture, Religion, Politics1
(Same as ANTH 271 ) This course introduces students to the study of the contemporary Arab world and its many diasporic communities. In addition to Arab-majority societies, we consider the experiences of minoritized populations such as Amazigh, Kurds, Armenians, and others, as well as how neighboring regions—including Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, the Balkans, and the Sahel—have co-constituted Arab politics, cultures, and imaginaries. Moving beyond headlines and monolithic portrayals, we explore the region’s internal diversity and historical complexity through a cultural studies lens. Our approach includes close engagement with ethnography, history, visual art, film, poetry, and literature, with attention to religious life throughout these genres—all as prisms through which to understand politics, identity, and everyday life differently. The course provides students with tools to rigorously analyze and contest Orientalist stereotypes while situating key geopolitical debates in their broader social and historical contexts. Key themes include gender and sexuality, protest and revolution, labor and leisure, multiple forms of piety and spirituality, and music and popular culture. Taking a transdisciplinary approach, the course is taught by faculty from various fields who bring distinct methodological perspectives. Guest lectures and at least one field trip in the greater NYC/Hudson Valley area deepen our collective inquiry. Ultimately, this course not only recasts reductive views of the Arab region and its diasporas, but offers a critical vantage point from which to think anew about the shared conditions of our contemporary world. China Sajadian, Kirsten Wesselhoeft. China Sajadian, Kirsten Wesselhoeft. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 280 and WFQS 280 ) Literature is prime territory for thinking about gender in Hindu traditions as an expansive, contested, interrogative category. When it comes to Hinduism, we find some of the most intricate, profound reflections on gender in sources that are highly aware of the social and emotional realities of human life: epics, narratives, poems, and performance genres. Inspired by Mrinalini Sinha’s challenge to “distinguish between merely exporting gender as an analytical category to different parts of the world and rethinking the category itself in light of those different locations,” (2012) this course asks how works of Hindu literature develop and convey their own theories of gender and sexuality. What tensions do they explore? Where do they seem to prescribe, and where do they seem to question? How do the specifics of literary forms and Hindu practices allow them to do that? The course is organized by literary genre, with students exploring early, medieval, and contemporary sources. Themes include: epic masculinity, devotional voices, heroines, ritual possession, and narratives of gender affirmation. Nell Hawley. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This intensive course introduces students to research methods and key readings on religion, spirituality and American popular culture. The course begins with key readings examining how religious ideas, practices, and communities are being reshaped by television, films, the internet, mobile devices, and popular culture. The remainder of the course is spent working on individual research projects, reading articles on the research and writing process, and sharing work in progress. Christopher White. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
(Same as JWST 283 ) What does it mean to be Jewish today—when belief, practice, politics, and culture don’t line up neatly? This course examines lived Jewish experience both “religious” and “secular,” asking when those categories converge and when they diverge, and thinking about how ritual, ethics, storytelling, and everyday choices create both connection and conflict. Team taught by two professors who both heartily agree and deeply disagree, we track arguments over authority, authenticity, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and identity across the U.S., Israel, and Europe. Marc Epstein, Jonathon Kahn. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Supervised community-engaged learning in the community in cooperation with the Office of Community-Engaged Learning. Course Format: INT
One course in Jewish Studies, Religion or permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 330Religion, Critical Theory and Politics1
Advanced study in selected aspects of religion and contemporary philosophical and political theory. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 333The Question of Palestine and Israel: A Dialogical Approach1
(Same as HIST 333 and JWST 333 ) What does it take to live and learn in a community of people who disagree on core values? On U.S. campuses, the question of Palestine and Israel has acutely exposed such fundamental disagreements. This seminar pursues two parallel aims: First, we engage in deep study of the contested history of Israel and Palestine since the end of the 19th century, and second, we consider the resonances of this history and present on U.S. campuses, and investigate what interpretive and intellectual communities are possible when members do not share identities, backgrounds, commitments, or assumptions. Team-taught by two professors from different disciplinary backgrounds, the seminar proposes that strident disagreement does not preclude dialogue – in fact, these arguments can be valuable resources for learning. Topics addressed include historical formulations of Palestinian and Jewish nationalism and self-determination, competing historiographies of the events of 1948, eliminationism in Zionist and pan-Arab thought, the legacies of violence for moral and political imaginations, theological and ethical relations to the land, and the competing narratives of “indigeneity” and the “right of return” of Palestinians and/or Jews. Joshua Schreier, Kirsten Wesselhoeft. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 345Violent Frontiers: Colonialism and Religion in the Nineteenth Century1
(Same as ASIA 345 ) What is the relationship between religion and colonialism and how has this relationship shaped the contemporary world? During the nineteenth century the category of religion was imagined and applied in different ways around the globe. When colonialists undertook to ‘civilize’ a people, specific understandings of religion were at the core of their undertakings. By the mid-nineteenth century, Europe’s territorial energy was focused on Asia and Africa. Themes for discussion include various nineteenth-century interpretations of religion, the relationship between empire and culture, the notion of frontier religion, and the imagination and production of society. Michael Walsh. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
An examination of selected themes, issues, or approaches u see in illuminating the religious dimensions and dynamics within particular cultures and societies, with attention to the benefits and limits of the comparative method. Past seminars have focused on such topics as myth, ritual, mysticisms, and iconography. May be taken more than once for credit when content changes. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ASIA 355 ) Are places inherently sacred or are they made that way through human action? In this seminar we examine the relationship between spatial and temporal orientation and connect this to the fundamental importance of sacrality in human action and existence. We explore comparatively how space is produced, maintained, and made sacred. We also investigate how social groups and nation-states work to produce spaces of control within which their citizens must reside. Some of our questions include: What is the relationship between power and sacrality, between nation-state and a state of being? How are places made sacred through human action? To what extent is sacrality a process of emplacement? What role does sacredness play in local and global geopolitical environments? Michael Walsh. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as WFQS 360 ) This course examines the intertwined regulation of religion and sexuality by modern states through six case studies from around the world: Nigeria, France, Norway, Iran, Uganda, and India. These cases take us through a range of political systems and both religiously homogenous and religiously diverse societies, showing how in each case the state is intimately concerned with the relationship between religion, sexuality, and sexual difference. Through our analysis of these cases, we cover topics including comparative secularisms, race and citizenship, Islamic law, postcolonial feminist and queer theory, the sociology of religious revival, and religion and global media. At the end of the course, students will have a globally-informed and nuanced understanding of the stakes of contemporary debates about religious freedom, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights around the world. Kirsten Wesselhoeft. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
RELI 381Feasting, Fasting, Farming: Religion and Ritual through Foodways1
Food is central to religious life, from rituals of worship, to social and environmental ethics, to the transmission of regional cultures and traditions. Food practices and prohibitions have been used to define religious boundaries and to articulate moral and spiritual understandings of the human body. Sharing food as an act of service and sociability has structured religious institutions around the world. Food scarcity, famine, food waste, and other structural features of global food production and distribution are central matters of religious concern and engagement. This course explores global religions and the analytical categories of religious studies through the role of food – growing it, preparing it, eating it, abstaining from it, and sharing it with others. The readings and site visits address Islam, Judaism, Christianity, South Asian religions, and indigenous religions of the Americas. Students develop independent research projects on foodways of their choice. The course includes several required field trips to farms and other sites in the Hudson Valley, and hands-on experience researching, preparing, and sharing food. Kirsten Wesselhoeft.
One course in Religion. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall
RELI 382Radical Religion on the Right and the Left1
This seminar examines the role of 20th-century religious traditions in both right and left-wing political formations. Religion is most often understood as a right-wing political influence, especially in the contemporary United States. The rise of the Christian Right has impacted so much of contemporary life in the USA, from the striking down of abortion rights in the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision to restrictions on queer and trans rights in Republican-dominated states. Putting the rise of the US religious right in a global perspective, this course profiles related right-wing “radical religion” in the Americas, Asia, Europe. Alongside this, we also unpack a less prominent version of “radical religion”: how religion has mattered deeply for left-wing movements around the world. We cover social movements such as Jewish and Christian Socialism and Anarchism, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, and Latin American Liberation Theology. This seminar explores how religion often speaks loudest to those who are the most dissatisfied with the status quo and those most threatened by social change. Klaus Yoder.
One course in Religion. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
RELI 388Cosmic Disruptions: Myths and Festivals in India1
(Same as ASIA 388 ) Stories and celebrations interrupt our sense of time, ourselves, and the usual order of things. They scoop us out of everyday life, plunge us into something beyond ourselves, and invite us to rethink what has become familiar. In India, myths and festivals work together to create chaos from order and order from chaos—on human and celestial levels at once. This course explores the disruptive currents of major Hindu festivals and the myths that are connected with them. We ask: How do fiercely resourceful deities relate to their (often heroic, devoted) antagonists? How do profound expressions of grief and suffering run alongside joy and triumph in celestial realms and on earth? What are the many ways, subtle and overt, in which festivals and their myths upset the social order? How do large-scale rituals and narratives alike prompt us to see the earthly landscape of India from a cosmic perspective, allowing us to perceive rivers, cities, mountains, and animals as genuinely divine parts of our world? By way of investigating these broader questions, students examine a series of Hindu festivals from different regions of India that mark the lunar calendar—topics may include Onam, Navaratri, Annakut, Shivaratri, Holi, the Kumbh Mela, and the Aravan festival—and the myths that lay the groundwork for these disruptive, regenerative events. Nell Hawley. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
