Winter 2025 Class Schedule
Winter 2025 Course PostersCourse | Title | Instructor | Day/Time | |
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REL 101-8-20 | First-Year Writing Seminar: American Borders: History, Politics, Religion (RLP) | Hurd | TTH 2-3:20pm | |
REL 101-8-20 First-Year Writing Seminar: American Borders: History, Politics, Religion (RLP)(Winter 2025, Professor Elizabeth Hurd) | ||||
REL 170-20 | Introduction to the Study of Religion | Bielo | TTH 9:30-10:50am | |
REL 170-20 Introduction to the Study of Religion(Winter 2025, Professor James Bielo) This course will guide students through a series of case studies that highlight the practical, ethical, and material dimensions of religions around the world. These case studies dramatize how religions are lived with and against the grain of established doctrine, so that students will gain a richer understanding of the ways religious customs have shaped the world around them. The course also serves to introduce students to the basic methods scholars employ to study religion, including history, ethnography, textual analysis, ritual theory, phenomenology, and comparison—tools through which students will formulate their own accounts of religious phenomena. | ||||
REL 230-20 | Introduction to Judaism | Wimpfheimer | MWF 11-11:50am | |
REL 230-20 Introduction to Judaism(Winter 2025, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer) This course attempts to answer the questions "What is Judaism?" and "Who is a Jew?" by surveying the broad arc of Jewish history, reviewing the practices and beliefs that have defined and continue to define Judaism as a religion, sampling the vast treasure of Jewish literatures, and analyzing the unique social conditions that have made the cultural experience of Jewishness so significant. The class will employ a historical structure to trace the evolutions of Jewish literature, religion, and culture through the ages. | ||||
REL 240-20 | Introduction to Christianity | Stewart | TTH 11-12:20pm | |
REL 240-20 Introduction to ChristianityHow many ways are there to be a Christian? What counts as Christianity, what doesn’t, and who ultimately gets to decide? Where and when does Christian practice take place and what does it look like? How has Christianity been shaped by cultures around the world, and how has it shaped those cultures in return? This class explores Christianity from a perspective of religious diversity. Using case studies from documentaries, podcasts, scriptures, scholarly articles, short stories, music videos, and films, students will encounter a variety of Christian lifeways, practices, beliefs, and identities. They will consider how important concepts in Christianity—like faith, sacrifice, and sanctity—have been variously defined and experienced across Christian communities. We will ask what factors account for the broad range of Christian doctrines and denominations, and analyze the anxieties, conflicts, and points of creativity have arisen out of this diversity. | ||||
REL 262-0-20 / BLK_ST 262-20 | Introduction to Black Religions: The North American Experience | Dennis Meade | MW 9:30-10:50am | |
REL 262-0-20 / BLK_ST 262-20 Introduction to Black Religions: The North American Experience(Winter 2025, Professor KB Dennis Meade) This course introduces you to the variety of Black religions that developed during and after the Atlantic slave trade up to the present in what is now the United States. The historical contexts surrounding the development of Black religions and the lived experiences of Black Americans are the main topics of our course. The course orients us to these traditions as continuities/changes of West African religious cosmologies. We explore the impact of the Atlantic slave trade, the role of politics, the construction of racial identities, and most importantly, the diversity of Black Religion in the United States and locally in Chicago. We will examine the interplay between religion, and race within various forms of Christianity, Islam, and American expressive cultures. | ||||
REL 316-20 | Religion and the Body in China (RSG, RHM) | Buckelew | MW 3:30-4:50pm | |
REL 316-20 Religion and the Body in China (RSG, RHM)(Winter 2025, Professor Kevin Buckelew)
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REL 318-22 | Religion and Politics in the People's Republic of China (RLP) | Terrone | TTH 2-3:20pm | |
REL 318-22 Religion and Politics in the People's Republic of China (RLP)This course will examine the role of religion in post-1980’s China with an emphasis on the political implications of the practice of religion in the People’s Republic of China. Students will read various forms of literature and policy documents to assess the extent to which Marxist theory is central to the interpretation of “religion” in Communist China. Primary sources will include Chinese constitutional articles, white papers, and editorials in English translation. Secondary sources will cover a wide range of interpretations and perspectives on the position of religious institutions and religious practices in the PRC. The first part of this course will investigate the expression of religiosity under Communism in China; the rehabilitation of Confucian values; the constitutional protection of religion and religious belief in China; the relationship between ethnicity and religious policies; the Sinicization of religion; and the administration of the five officially accepted religious traditions in the People’s Republic of China (Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam). The second part of the course will focus on the recent cases related to the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Tibetan Buddhists of Western China. The class will explore some of the most controversial issues related to these two ethnic minorities including terrorism, religious violence, nationalism, assimilation, foreign influence, and soft power. The course format will consist of both lectures and discussions, during which students will be encouraged to exercise critical thinking and lead in-class presentations. Students will analyze various types of documents, critically evaluate content and concepts, and endeavor to synthesize the information and communicate it effectively and thoroughly.Counts towards Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) major concentration. | ||||
REL 319-24 / HUM 370-5-30 | Being Human in a More Than Human World (RHM) | Jacoby | MW 12:30-1:50pm | |
REL 319-24 / HUM 370-5-30 Being Human in a More Than Human World (RHM)(Winter 2025, Professor Sarah Jacoby) | ||||
REL 330-20 | Rabbinic Sex Stories (RLP, RSG) | Schwartz | MW 12:30-1:50pm | |
REL 330-20 Rabbinic Sex Stories (RLP, RSG)(Winter 2025, Professor Shira Schwartz) | ||||
REL 339-21 | Talmud (RLP) | Wimpfheimer | MW 2-3:20pm | |
REL 339-21 Talmud (RLP)(Winter 2025, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer) | ||||
REL 349-20 | Medicine, Miracles, and Magic: Healthcare in the Middle Ages (RHM) | Stewart | TTH 3:30-4:50pm | |
REL 349-20 Medicine, Miracles, and Magic: Healthcare in the Middle Ages (RHM)(Winter 2025, Dr. Lily Stewart)
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REL 371-21 / RTVF 398-20 | Religion, Film, TV: Religion, Existentialism and Film | Molina | W 3-5:30pm | |
REL 371-21 / RTVF 398-20 Religion, Film, TV: Religion, Existentialism and Film(Winter 2025, Professor Michelle Molina) In the aftermath of the World War I, many artists and filmmakers asked new questions about the relationship between realism and religion. Could one reconcile concrete reality (or realism) with faith in the other-worldly? Many of the artists under discussion in the course drew upon themes that had already been raised by Kierkegaard in the 19th century. What was the relationship between religion and modernity, faith and ethics, reality and the supernatural, observable phenomena and invisible causes? How did one make sense of death in a meaningless universe? Was the universe meaningless? Could meaning be found in realism itself? Through engagement with films by directors ranging from Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Ingmar Bergman, to Woody Allen and Harold Ramis, we will study mid-to-late 20th century films whose common theme is the quest to understand the meaning of life, either actively through taking up religious life, or because the protagonists consider themselves inhabiting a godless and meaningless universe. Class will be discussion-based, with a few short lectures to set up pertinent themes. Class readings will include Kierkegaard, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, among others. *Registration By Instructor Permission Only. | ||||
REL 379-21 | Exhibiting Religion | Bielo | TTH 2-3:20pm | |
REL 379-21 Exhibiting Religion(Winter 2025, Professor James Bielo) | ||||
REL 395-20 | Theories of Religion (Senior Capstone Seminar) | Taylor | TH 2-4:30pm | |
REL 395-20 Theories of Religion (Senior Capstone Seminar)(Winter 2025, Professor Sarah Taylor) What counts or does not count as “religion”? How do we know? And who gets to decide? This course explores the major foundational theorists in the field of Religious Studies, while placing them into conversation with contemporary perspectives in the field. We begin by asking “What is a theory? And what does it mean to have a theory about something?” We then dig into those theories and engage with them -- “activating theory” by representing each theory we study in creative and participatory ways that actively involve the whole class. Throughout the quarter, you will be formulating your own theory of religion and then making the case for it in your final project. Have you taken theory courses in the past that are a bit dry and opaque? We take a different tack. Put on your creative and artistic thinking caps as we make theories of religion come alive in unique and innovative ways. Designed for majors and minors in Religious Studies. This course involves music, art, video, podcasts, and other artistic mediums, in addition to written texts. | ||||
REL 471-21 / ANTHRO 490-29 | Graduate Seminar: Religion & Capitalism | Bielo | W 2-5pm | |
REL 471-21 / ANTHRO 490-29 Graduate Seminar: Religion & Capitalism(Winter 2025, Professor James Bielo) | ||||
REL 471-22 | Graduate Seminar: Black Magic: Conjure and Healing Traditions in Black Atlantic Religions | Dennis Meade | M 2:30pm-5:30pm | |
REL 471-22 Graduate Seminar: Black Magic: Conjure and Healing Traditions in Black Atlantic Religions(Winter 2025, Professor KB Dennis Meade) | ||||
REL 473-20 | Graduate Seminar: Buddhist Studies: State of the Field | Jacoby | F 1-3:30pm | |
REL 473-20 Graduate Seminar: Buddhist Studies: State of the Field(Winter 2025, Professor Sarah Jacoby) |