Religion and Popular Culture
This course explores the complex ways in which religion and popular culture relate to each other as they circulate around the globe.
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Introduction to Religion
As scholars and students committed to the academic study of religion, we will take a critical perspective in the examination of religious systems, which will, and should, challenge us to think outside of our primary systems of socialization. Students in this course will be exposed to a wide variety of worldviews which will allow us to expand our understanding of what it means to be a human in the world.
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Religion, Ethics, and Public Life
In this course we look the foundational role of religion in ethical thought, and the effects of this thought on public life in the US and around the world.
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Prophets, Messiahs, Apocalypses
This course explores the range of the ways ancient Jewish texts imagine the cosmos, divine intervention, and humanity’s ability to change the world.
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Introduction to Buddhism
This course surveys the development of Buddhism, from its origins in India to its subsequent expansion across the globe, including its presence in the United States.
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Introduction to the New Testament
This course offers basic introduction to the biographies, letters, and apocalyptic revelations that comprise the New Testament and the ways that scholars of religious studies, classical studies, and ancient history study them.
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Introduction to Hinduism
Our goal is to gain a basic understanding of Hinduism as a religious tradition, to expand our own ideas of what it means to be human, and to broaden our understanding of what “religion” is.
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Introduction to Christianity
What is Christianity? What does it mean to be Christian? How should a Christian act in the world? In asking these questions, this course draws upon key texts, themes, concepts, and practices. In doing so, it reveals that Christianity might just be both a possibility and an impossibility.
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Introduction to Islam
This course is designed for students with little prior knowledge of Islam.
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Indigenous Thought
This course will examine several traditions of Indigenous thought, with a focus on the peoples indigenous to the Americas and the Pacific.
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East Asian Buddhism
This discussion-oriented course introduces students to Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, and the East Asian diaspora.
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Gender and Power in the Hebrew Bible
This course will trace the relationships among gender, sex, and cultural power in Jewish antiquity through the Hebrew Bible.
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African American Religions
This course will examine the religious ideas and expression of African-descended people in the Americas, and particularly the United States (and former English colonies), from the 17 century to today.
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Christianity: Christ to Constantine
This course surveys the history and literature of Christianity from c.30-c.450 CE/AD.
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Islamic Law
The purpose of this course is for students to gain understandings of central events and issues in the development of Islamic Law (fiqh) over the last 1400 years.
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Poetics of Conversion
In this course we will examine the ways in which humans relate to the realms of the divine, the animal and the inanimate by focusing on the importance of transformational tales in works of mythology, fiction, history and autobiography, as expressed in writing and the visual arts.
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Buddhist Philosophy in India
This course surveys the historical development of Buddhist philosophy in India and how it has shaped the ideas of self, reality, reasoning, knowledge, belief, conduct, and liberation.
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Holy Russia, Holy War
This course examines the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church thinks and talks about war, including the present war in Ukraine.
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Conceptions of the Self: East and West
This course examines statements on the nature of human existence from both East Asia and the ancient and modern West, with a special focus on Christianity, Confucianism, and Daoism.
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Hawaii
This course will look to Hawaiʻi in thinking through issues such as the inevitable expansion of America, the depiction and appropriation of indigenous cultures, what it means to live in a multi-cultural world.
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Original Sin: Religion, Psychology, and Behavior
Are we born bad? Selfish and greedy? Do we have a difficult time understanding why we do what we do? In this class we’ll demonstrate the enduring relevance of religious texts to contemporary questions of human psychology.
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The College of Arts