Why Study Religion?

International and Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Painting of a reclining scholar studying

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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Our Curriculum

Undergraduate Program

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Graduate Program

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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!

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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.

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