76 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 1000Questions in the Study of Religion3
Effective Date 08/01/2024 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.
Effective Date 08/01/2017 This course is a comparative study of the world’s enduring religious traditions and their cultural expressions in architecture, art, and music. Among others, the course will examine Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and their expression in world culture.
RELG 1010Introduction to Western Religious Traditions3
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies the major religious traditions of the Western world; Judaism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.
Effective Date 11/20/2024 This course introduces key figures in early Chinese philosophy, and how they defined the good life, ethical ideals, and exemplary rulership. Through close readings, we will consider where these philosophers located what they called the Dao—-in human society, in the natural world, or in the cosmos—and how they thought humans could best apprehend truths about their world. Intended for first and second year students.
RELG 1400The Art and Science of Human Flourishing3
Effective Date 01/01/2018 This course explores human flourishing, well-being, and resiliency across academic, personal, and professional spheres. The course presents a balance of theory and practice, organized into five domains: self-awareness, well-being, connection, wisdom, and integration. Each week explores a single quality of flourishing through scientific research, humanistic reflection, and artistic expression, as well as a detailed set of contemplative practices.
RELG 1500Introductory Seminar in Religious Studies3
Effective Date 08/01/2025 These seminars introduce first- and second-year students to the academic study of religion through a close study of a particular theme or topic. Students will engage with material from a variety of methodological perspectives, and they will learn how to critically analyze sources and communicate their findings. The seminars allow for intensive reading and discussion of material. Not more than two Intro Seminars may count towards the Major. Requisites 1st- or 2nd-year
RELG 2150Religion in American Life and Thought to 18653
Effective Date 01/01/2020 This course will examine American religious life and thought prior to the Civil War, including but not limited to Puritanism, the “Great Awakening,” slavery, the American Revolution, reform movements, and the Civil War.
RELG 2160Religion in American Life and Thought from 1865 to the Present3
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Includes American religious pluralism, religious responses to social issues, and the character of contemporary American religious life.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 Studies religious meanings in modern literature, emphasizing faith and doubt, evil and absurdity, and wholeness and transcendence in both secular fiction and fiction written from traditional religious perspectives.
Effective Date 10/09/2024 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.
Effective Date 01/01/2023 This course will introduce students to the relationship between religion and film. We will watch several films in class and, after learning the basics of film analysis, we will be able to perceive and interpret how films portray religions, religious peoples, and religious categories, and even to consider what religion and film have in common as experiences. Viewing of the films will be supplemented by short lectures and class discussion.
RELG 2260Religion, Race, and Relationship in Film3
Effective Date 04/18/2011 This course explores themes of religion, race, gender, and relationship to the religious or racial ‘other’ in films from the silent era to the present. It will consider film as a medium and engage students in analysis and discussion of cinematic images, with the goal of developing hermeneutic lenses through which these images can be interpreted. The films selected all ask “How should we treat one another?”
Effective Date 09/22/2022 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. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 2559 topic #42 Religion, Media, and Democracy
Effective Date 01/01/2023 Politics and religion are links to the exploration to culture, history, and current events. This course seeks to understand what is meant by religion and the multiple ways in which it is politically important by examining the world views of various religious traditions and their political implications.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies contemporary issues in business from a moral perspective, including philosophical and religious, as well as traditional and contemporary, views of business. Topics include international business, whistleblowing, discrimination, the environment, and marketing.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Examines several contemporary moral problems from the perspective of ethical thought in the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish traditions.
Effective Date 10/18/2010 This course explores the history of the idea of “religion” as a distinct concept, and introduces students to a crucial topic of modern public life and helps them prepare to grapple with this problem from a global perspective. A Jefferson Public Citizens course.
Effective Date 01/01/2022 This course introduces undergraduates to seminal writings in modern Western thought that explore and question the meaning, truthfulness, and uses of religious belief. The goal is to develop a multi-storied narrative of the variety of interpretations given to the idea of God in modernity and to clarify the conditions of responsible religious belief in a pluralistic world. Requirements include two exams and a research paper.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Examines psychological, literary, philosophical, and theological perspectives on human existence with a view to seeing what possibilities are contained in the linguistic, theoretical, practical, poetic, and ecstatic capacities of human beings.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course examines how Latine religious traditions–including Latine Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Mainline Protestantism, Indigenous traditions, and religious “nones”–interact with political and democratic cultures in the United States.
RELG 2495Religious Violence in the West: From the Crusades to #Charlottesville3
Effective Date 11/26/2019 If religious teachings so often focus on love and peace, why is so much violence committed in the name of religion? In this course, we will consider the ways in which religion and violence have intersected in Western religions (particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) over the past two millennia, from the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire to the modern world. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 2559 topic #29 Religious Violence in the West
Effective Date 05/01/2026 This course examines cultural and religious perspectives on cause and effect: why do things happen, and how is morality implicated? After a short historical overview of karma in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, we turn to karma in legal, philosophical, political, and religious practices of contemporary Southeast Asia. Finally, we move beyond ‘karma’ by name and ask how ideas of moral causation are part of diverse global religious and scientific and systems of thought.
Effective Date 01/01/2021 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.
Effective Date 08/01/2022 Analyzes various moral problems in medicine, health care, and global health from Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Jewish, and Islamic theological perspectives with reference to salient philosophical influences.
RELG 2660”Spiritual But Not Religious”: Spirituality in America3
Effective Date 09/28/2016 This course asks: what does “spiritual but not religious” mean, and why has it become such a pervasive idea in modern America? We’ll study everything from AA to yoga to Zen meditation, with stops in Christian rock, Beat poetry, Abstract Expressionist painting and more. In the end, we’ll come to see spirituality in America as a complex intermingling of the great world religions, modern psychology, and a crassly commercialized culture industry.
RELG 2713Sensing the Sacred: Sensory Perception and Religious Imagination3
Effective Date 10/02/2012 Seeing is believing. Or is it? In this course, we will examine the role of sensory perception in religious imagination. We will consider how religious practitioners think about the senses, utilize the senses to experience the world, and assign meaning to the senses. We will also probe the ways in which religious traditions deploy sensory metaphors to describe human experience of the sacred.
Effective Date 01/01/2022 This course serves as an introduction to the religious beliefs and practices of China, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. The course covers several broad themes in Chinese religion, including ritual, self-cultivation, means of communicating with the gods, and the intersection of political authority and religion. We will engage with textual, material, and visual traditions.
Effective Date 08/01/2022 This course traces the history of Jerusalem with a focus on its significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How has Jerusalem been experienced and interpreted as sacred within these religious communities? How have they expressed their attachments to this contested space from antiquity to modern times? Discussion will be rooted in primary texts from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, with attention to their historical context.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 The growing role of robots in society presents new challenges, but many of the ethical and philosophical issues raised by robots have long histories. This course will examine golems, automatons, robots, and cyborgs to consider what distinguishes humans, what it means to create other beings, what it means to be embodied, and what relationships we should have with the nonhuman. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 3559 topic #50 Gods, Humans, Robots
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Studies Greco-Roman religions and religious philosophies of the Hellenistic period, including official cults, mystery religions, gnosticism, astrology, stoicism; emphasizes religious syncretism and interactions with Judaism and Christianity.
RELG 3057Existentialism: Its Literary, Philosophical and Religious Expressions3
Effective Date 08/01/2010 Studies Existentialist thought, its Hebraic-Christian sources, and 19th and 20th century representatives of the movement (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Buber, and Tillich).
Effective Date 01/01/2010 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
Effective Date 11/21/2024 An examination of the ethos of democracy as articulated by various philosophers and religionists in the American context and the ways in which that ethos has been warped by racism. We will consider a diverse set of theorists of American democracy including Jefferson, Douglass, Whitman, Addams, Du Bois, Dewey, King, and Baldwin, as we also explore the racial and religious milieu they respond to.
Effective Date 08/01/2022 Explores how ethical issues in religious traditions and cultural narratives are addressed in literature, scripture, essay, and memoir. How do stories inquire into “the good life”? How may moral principles and virtues be “tested” by fiction? How does narrative shape identity, mediate universality and particularity, reflect beliefs and values in conflict, and depict suffering?
Effective Date 08/01/2025 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.
Effective Date 03/15/2016 This course introduces students to the primary philosophic contributions of Plato/Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and Kant, with briefer studies in Thomas, Maimonides, Ibn Sina, and Leibniz. Discussion will focus on these thinkers’ potential significance for contemporary studies in religion and theology.
RELG 3315Jefferson, Religion and the Secular University3
Effective Date 02/19/2013 The undergraduate seminar will explore as inter-related topics the religious formation and outlook of Thomas Jefferson, his conception of the proper relation of religion and the civil power, his idea of the university as a secular institution, ad the role of religion in the founding and subsequent history of the University of Virginia.
Effective Date 03/15/2016 Explores ethical questions raised by religious-traditional and cultural narratives as well as by fiction and memoir. How do stories inquire into the good life? How may moral principles and virtues be tested by fiction? How does narrative shape identity, mediate universality and particularity, reflect values that may conflict, and depict suffering. Format: literature and theory, guided discussion, critical essays, and a final presentation.
RELG 3360Conquests and Religions in the Americas, 1400s-1830s3
Effective Date 01/01/2026 Beginning with Islamic-ruled Spain and the Aztec and Incan empires, the course examines historical changes in the religious practices of indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans and European settlers in Latin America and the Caribbean under European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. Topics include: religious violence, human sacrifice, the Inquisition; missions; race, gender and sexuality; slavery, revolts, revolutions, nationalism.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 A survey of films about God and the effect these films (as opposed to books or paintings) have had on the Western understanding of God.
RELG 3405Introduction to Black and Womanist Religious Thought3
Effective Date 02/02/2020 Is thought always already racialized, gendered, sexed? This Introduction to Black and Womanist Thought course argues that thought does not have to submit itself to modern regimes of knowledge production, that there are alternative ways to think and practice and be in the world with one another. An introduction to major thinkers in both religious thought and traditions with attention to theology, philosophy, and history. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 3559 topic #51 Black & Womanist Relg Thought
Effective Date 08/01/2025 This course is an investigation of the major thinkers and themes in the black philosophical and religious tradition, about the ways blackness is cognized in philosophical and religious discourse, and the relation of the blackness concept to people called black historically. We will also, then, consider the ways philosophy and religion have been thought with, alongside of and against by black writers, musicians, performers.
Effective Date 01/01/2026 This course investigates key ideas resonant in Afrodiasporic music practices with relation to religion and spirituality. Students will engage four areas: 1) Sound; 2) Instruments; 3) Rhythm; 4) Lyric to considers the ways each of the four areas is a complex field in which the religion and spiritual practices emerge. There will be various listening, viewing and reading exercise that underscore the relationship of sound to the concepts of religion and spirituality as cultural ideas. Requisites Students cannot enroll if they have previously completed RELG 3559 Topic #79
Effective Date 09/18/2020 To what extent does the pursuit of sustainability require restraining or retraining our desires? How can people be encouraged to consume less, or in less destructive ways, when cultures of consumption prove resistant to change? This seminar will explore these questions from the perspective of South Asian traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain). We will consider classical sources as well as contemporary debates about sustainable development. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 3559 topic #49 Sustainability and Asceticism
Effective Date 01/01/2014 The promise of religious liberty contained in the First Amendment has always been subject to a variety of restraints by federal and local governments. This course will focus on the cultural experience of these restraints; not only how they were devised by courts and implemented by regulatory agencies, but also how they are understood in the popular imagination and, finally, what influence they have on the shape of religion in America.
RELG 3444Religious Conflict and Resolution Among the Abrahamic Religions3
Effective Date 12/07/2010 What are the religions of Abraham? Are they bound for peace or conflict? This course introduces students to the scriptural sources and medieval to modern practices of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism including key historical narratives from the Qur’an, and the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. An examination of the role these scriptures play in people’s lives is followed by focusing on the ‘hot spots’ of inter-Abrahamic conflict today.
Effective Date 09/28/2016 Exploration of how what we feel colors what we believe, what we claim to know. What are human emotions and why do we have them? Philosophers, psychiatrists, neurologists and religious thinkers disagree. We will analyze these disagreements, along with the question of how the emotions can be controlled or educated. We will focus on William James, who influentially argued that for most believers, religious experience is first and foremost emotional.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Christian Europe gave rise to modern science, yet Christianity and science have long appeared mutual enemies. Does science undermine religious belief? Can human life and striving really be explained in terms of physics and chemistry? In this course we explore the encounter between two powerful cultural forces and study the intellectual struggle to anchor God in the modern world.
Effective Date 08/01/2020 This course introduces students to the moral frameworks of Aristotle, Maimonides, Machiavelli, and Jeff McMahon and then examines pressing moral issues in contemporary America.
Effective Date 08/01/2014 Studies a moral problem or set of related problems (e.g., human experimentation, special moral relations, or warfare) in the context of recent work in theological ethics.
Effective Date 09/19/2013 Beginning with Biblical sources and concluding with contemporary texts, this course will examine the philosophical framework of casting idolatry as an unspeakable sin: What is an idol, and why is idolatry so objectionable? With an emphasis on Judaism, though not exclusively, we will discuss idolatry in the context of representation, election, otherness, emancipation, nationalism, secularism, religious innovation, and messianism.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Examines one or more contemporary systems of Christian ethics, alternating among such figures as Reinhold Niebuhr, C. S. Lewis, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Maritain.
Effective Date 05/01/2026 This course introduces undergraduates to classic and major recent scholarly texts in the field of African American religious history, from transatlantic slavery to the civil rights movement and Black Power.
RELG 3713Black Religion and the Criminal Justice System3
Effective Date 04/21/2022 This course examines the relationship between black religion and the criminal justice system in the U.S. from Jim Crow to the Black Lives Matter era. We will focus on the ideas, lived experiences, and activism of the incarcerated; religious engagements with policing; and movements for criminal justice reform and prison abolition. Authors likely will include Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammad. Requisites Students can’t enroll if previously taken RELG 3559 topic #65 Religion and Criminal Justice
Effective Date 01/01/2024 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.
Effective Date 10/18/2011 This class is study of the influence of the Bible (both Hebrew and Christian canons) on the fiction of William Faulkner. We will also see how this ancient text and its heritage informed Faulkner’s views on race, community, and personal identity as well.
RELG 3795Theology, Spirituality and Ethics of Sustainability3
Effective Date 01/01/2010 Primarily through the readings of theologians from the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, this course explores theological, spiritual and ethical perspectives on the environmental issues that are becoming increasingly important across the globe.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 An analysis and assessment of theological, philosophical, and legal interpretations of rights holders and rights held in living and dead human bodies and their parts, in the context of organ and tissue transplantation, assisted reproduction, and research.
Effective Date 03/01/2009 Investigates how modern thinkers have understood the character of evil and the challenge it poses to human existence. Evaluates the proposals made in response to that challenge.
Effective Date 09/27/2021 This course will explore the role of religion in the black freedom struggle in the United States, with a focus on the twentieth century to the present. We will consider the question, how have black people harnessed religion to conceptualize and fight for various notions of black progress and the salvation of black people (broadly construed) amid the persistence of racial inequality?
Effective Date 01/01/2010 Multidisciplinary examination of religious self-perception in relation to the dominant values of American life. Readings represent a variety of spiritual traditions and autobiographical forms.
Effective Date 08/01/2024 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. Requisites Religious Studies Majors
RELG 4540Advanced Topics in General Religious Studies3
Effective Date 08/01/2025 This topical course provides upper level undergraduate students in Religious Studies an opportunity for advanced coursework in General Religious Studies
RELG 4800Crafting a Research Project in Religious Studies3
Effective Date 07/20/2017 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.
Effective Date 08/01/2015 Students write a thesis, directed by a member of the department, focusing on a specific problem in the theoretical, historical or philosophical study of religion or a specific religious tradition. The thesis grows out of the project proposal and annotated bibliography developed in the Research Methods seminar.
Selection by faculty for Distinguished Major Program and completion of RELG 4800. Credits: 3
RELG 4910Secularism and Religion3
Effective Date 04/11/2014 Does religion belong in the public square? Does it have a legitimate role in secular life, despite a lack of unanimity in the religious beliefs of the public? Can religion be separated from public and political life? This course explores theoretical works that examine these and related questions and queries the ways in which religion shapes, challenges, and clashes with the modern nation-state.
