Our Religious Studies students are equipped to understand our diverse and rapidly changing world while learning much about themselves. This comparative field of study imbues students with the ability to assess diverse actions, traditions, and values. The knowledge and habits of mind learned in Religious Studies remain relevant forever, as key to a life of conscious choice and thoughtful, multi-cultural engagement.
Religious Studies courses help you examine your core values, both objectively and in terms of personal experience. In our classes, you will explore how people make sense of the world and enhance your global cultural knowledge as you engage in a wide variety of topics from barbecue to baseball, magic to mindfulness, and sexuality to the sacred.
The Center for Religion and the Human presents Dr. Rosemary R. Corbett (Bard Prison Initiative) for a talk, “Scientific Statesmen” & the 20th Century Erasure of Palestine” on Tuesday, April 8th at 6pm.
Event details
Prof. Constance Furey discussed Édouard Glissant’s view of the sacred, as described in his classic book, Poetics of Relation.
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The Undergraduate Religious Studies Association will hold their 9th annual undergraduate symposium at IU on March 28-29th.
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Prof. Rebecca Manring’s Fulbright research focused on the modern relevance of the translation of Dharma Mangala, a 17th-century Middle Bengali epic eulogizing Dharma, a folk deity in rural Bengal.
Learn about Manring's Fulbright research
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan will be retiring from the department at the end of this spring 2025 term. She will continue her work in the field as a Visiting Scholar at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago for the 2025-26 academic year.
About Prof. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
The Graduate Religious Studies Association (GRSA) will be hosting a reading group this spring for all students who have participated in Sullivan’s infamous R-665 seminar titled “Interpretations of Religion.”
Read more about the course
Ph.D. candidate Joseph Decker shared his initial dissertation research at the Japan Foundation’s JF-GJS Initiative: Japan Foundation Fellow Conference 2024.
Read about Joe’s research
Prof. Laura Carlson Hasler published an essay in a newly-published volume, Bibles in Popular Culture (Bloomsbury) which tracks the way Bibles are imagined, worried about, and ignored in recent television programs.
Read more about the article
Our department is home to an incredible community of teachers and students ready to support your intellectual and personal pursuits. We are innovative and open-minded researchers who welcome unconventional ideas to help us better understand the role religion plays in culture and society.
The study of religion broadens and deepens your understanding of the diverse richness and mystery that attends being human. Our faculty is engaged in research through the LUCE-funded Being Human project to learn more about what it means to be human in our rapidly changing world.
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