Why Study Religion?
International and Interdisciplinary Scholarship
Religion shapes, and is shaped by, every other dimension of human society. It is impossible to fully understand politics, law, history, or science without understanding religion. We invite you to learn more about the most interdisciplinary field in the university: Religious Studies.
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Graduate Program
Featured Story
Desire and Intimacy in the Study of Religion Recap
The 2024 Northwestern Religious Studies Graduate Student Conference on Desire and Intimacy in the Study of Religion was a tremendous success. This was the first graduate student conference since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and brought scholars from Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Vienna, Berlin, and more. Throughout our five panels, presenters explored on intimacies of land, reading intimacies, digital and media intimacies, sensorial intimacies, and scholarly intimacies. To read more about our Fall graduate conference, click on the link below!
Find Your Direction
Alumna Adina Goldman had a path that led her from pre-med to English literature and biological anthropology and then to religious studies and music.
News and Events
Faculty in the News
Professor Kevin Buckelew's new book Discerning Buddhas was recently published! Congratulations!
Click below to read more about Professor Buckelew's book Discerning Buddhas, which explores themes of authority, agency and masculinity in Chan Buddhism.
Upcoming Events
May
16
2025
KFBSLS Year 5, Lecture 7: Rekjong Dhondup Tashi, "Imprisonment St...
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Online
A generation of Tibetan religious scholars fell victim to China’s rule; the fragmentary stories of their imprisonments offer a glimpse...
May
21
2025
Buffett Book Talk: Heaven Has a Wall
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM, Evanston
Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shou...
Jun
5
2025
Religious Studies End-Of-Year Celebration
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM, No Location
Religious Studies End-Of-Year Celebration, details tbd