Winter 2026 Class Schedule: Department of Religious Studies

Winter 2026 Class Schedule

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
REL 101-8-21	First-Year Writing Seminar: Counter-sovereigns, Dissidents & Heretics: Religion and Politics Beyond the State	Hurd	TTH 3:30-4:50pm
REL 101-8-21 First-Year Writing Seminar: Counter-sovereigns, Dissidents & Heretics: Religion and Politics Beyond the State (Winter 2026, Professor Elizabeth Hurd) Modern political ideals such as democracy, multiculturalism, pluralism, secularism, toleration, and the concept of religion itself, are defined in relation to contingent features of the modern state. This course steps outside of the “state box” to explore alternative formations of political and religious agency and solidarity as embodied in the words and actions of counter-sovereigns, dissenters, heretics, dissidents, and reformers. Paying close attention to the contours and contents of specific forms of dissent, and comparing them to each other, we will study efforts to challenge, rewrite, remake, and/or cultivate indifference to dominant, state-aligned secular and religious identities, ideologies, and interests. Geographically, the course will cover a range of contexts, from the U.S. to Colombia, from Egypt to Haiti, and from Mexico to France to Israel/Palestine. Students will be encouraged to think creatively about, and perhaps even contribute to, the generation of new possibilities for living together beyond the confines of secular or religious nationalisms. As a writing intensive seminar, this course also emphasizes research and writing skills to prepare students for college-level research and writing. We will discuss academic integrity and get tips from a librarian on how to make the most of Northwestern’s wide-ranging academic resources.
REL 101-8-22	First-Year Writing Seminar: Puppets, Robots, and other Uncanny Doubles	Buckelew	MW 2-3:20pm
REL 101-8-22 First-Year Writing Seminar: Puppets, Robots, and other Uncanny Doubles (Winter 2026, Professor Kevin Buckelew) Long before the modern age of AI, stories of humanoid automata—walking statues, puppets come to life, golems on patrol—circulated across the world. Like AI chatbots, such automata are fabricated by humans in our own likeness. They resemble us, but they are somehow different. Sometimes they are radically helpful or smart, better at what they do than any human could be. Other times they are evil and destructive, more malicious than we might think humanly possible. In still other cases they are just creepy, combining the familiar with the strange in an unsettling way. This class treats such automata as our “uncanny doubles” that hold up a mirror to humanity. What forgotten or repressed aspects of ourselves might we glimpse if we stop to gaze in that mirror? In other words, how have puppets, robots, and other such figures served in different times and places to stage the problem of human doubleness—whether divine, demonic, or simply uncanny? And how should we analyze the unsettling psychic effects ensuing from such glimpses of our own multiplicity? Searching for answers, our class will scrutinize a range of sources from the ancient world through contemporary popular culture.
REL 173-20	Religion, Medicine & Suffering in the West (RHM)	Orsi	MW 3:30-4:50pm
REL 173-20 Religion, Medicine & Suffering in the West (RHM) (Winter 2026, Professor Robert Orsi) Examination of religious healing ceremonies and Christian perspectives on pain and suffering in light of the meaning of physical pain in people's everyday lives. *Counts toward Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) religious studies major concentrations.
REL 220-1 / JWSH_ST 220-1	Introduction to Hebrew Bible	Wimpfheimer	TTH 9:30-10:50am
REL 220-1 / JWSH_ST 220-1 Introduction to Hebrew Bible (Winter 2026, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer) There is no understating the significance of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in Western Culture. The Bible is a text that has been repeatedly turned to for spiritual guidance, for explanations of mankind's origins and as the basis of both classical art and contemporary cinema. English idiom is peppered with phrases that originate in the Hebrew Bible and many a modern political clash can be understood as a conflict over what the Bible's messages and their implications. This course introduces students to the Hebrew Bible by reading sections of most of the Bible's books. But reading is itself a complicated enterprise. The Bible has been put to many different uses; even within the world of academic scholarship, the Bible is sometimes a source of history, sometimes a religious manual, sometimes a primitive legal code and sometimes a work of classical literature. This course will introduce students to the various challenges that present themselves within the study of the Hebrew Bible and the varied approaches scholars take when reading the Hebrew Bible. This course is a critical introduction to the Hebrew Bible.
REL 230-1 / JWSH_ST 230-1	Introduction to Judaism: Jewish Texts (MTJR)	Schwartz	MW 11-12:20pm
REL 230-1 / JWSH_ST 230-1 Introduction to Judaism: Jewish Texts (MTJR) (Winter 2026, Professor Shira E. Schwartz) This course serves as an Introduction to Judaism through an introduction to Jewish textual sources. The course will explore critical tenets of Jewish life and practice through a range of classical and contemporary Jewish textual genres, as well as Jewish textual artifacts, ritual objects, and forms of media, like Torah scrolls, Jewish type, and digital commentary. Students will learn how to engage Jewish texts through different Jewish reading practices and hermeneutics, including through partnered text-study (havruta). Our approach will also pay attention to the media and materiality of Jewish transmission across different kinds of Jewish sources. *The course counts towards the Media, Technology, Journalism and Religion (MTJR) major concentrations.
REL 264-32 / HIS 200-32	American Religious History from 1865 to the Great Depression (RLP)	Orsi	MW 12:30-1:50pm
REL 264-32 / HIS 200-32 American Religious History from 1865 to the Great Depression (RLP) (Winter, Professor Robert Orsi) This course examines major developments, movements, controversies, and figures in American religious history from the end of the Civil War, as the nation struggled to make sense of the carnage of war and to apportion responsibility, to the 1930s, when economic crisis strained social bonds and intimate relations and challenged Americans to rethink the nature of public responsibility. Topics include urban religion; religion and changing technologies; African American religion; religion and politics; and the religious practices of immigrants and migrants. The course counts towards Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) major concentration.
REL 315-20	Buddhist Auto/Biography	Jacoby	W 3:00-5:30pm
REL 315-20 Buddhist Auto/Biography (Winter 2026, Professor Sarah Jacoby) In the middle of the twentieth century, cutting-edge literary theorists concluded that autobiography was exclusively a product of “Western” individualistic culture, thereby ignoring the literary output of large parts of the globe, including Buddhist religious literature. The goal of this course is to explore Buddhist biography and autobiography as literary genres and as lenses through which we can examine the various meanings of living an exemplary Buddhist life, focusing on religious literature from India and Tibet. Questions the course will probe include: How did a religious doctrine such as Buddhism, which denies the ultimate existence of the self, become a major locus of auto/biographical writing? What is the nature of the self as it is expressed in Buddhist religious auto/biography, and what were the aims of this literature? What can we learn from reading biographies and autobiographies about Buddhist selves, societies, and histories? How do differences of gender, nationality, and religious lineage inform auto/biographical representations of the self?
REL 319-20	Chan/Zen Buddhism	Buckelew	MW 11-12:20pm
REL 319-20 Chan/Zen Buddhism (Winter 2026, Professor Kevin Buckelew) The Chinese Chan (Japanese Zen) Buddhist tradition is one of the most famous branches of Buddhism in the world, but also one of the most widely misunderstood. This course explores the history, literature, philosophy, visual culture, and monastic practices of Chan/Zen Buddhism in East Asia. We pay special attention to the ways Chan/Zen innovated within the Buddhist tradition to establish a uniquely East Asian school of Buddhism. Along the way we consider the changing place of meditation in Chan/Zen practice, closely read Chan/Zen sermons and kōans, analyze the role of women and gender in Chan and Zen, and conclude by considering the modern reception of Zen in the West.
REL 339-1 / JWSH_ST 339-1	The Art of Rabbinic Narrative	Wimpfheimer	TTH 2-3:20pm
REL 339-1 / JWSH_ST 339-1 The Art of Rabbinic Narrative (Winter 2026, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer) Rabbinic literature contains a large corpus of stories. In this course we will explore different methods of reading such stories. These range from naïve historiography to sophisticated historiography, from reading these stories as fables with didactic morals to reading them as windows onto a class-stratified and gender-divided rabbinic culture. Our analysis of these methods of reading rabbinic stories will be conducted in conversation with different twentieth century literary theorists.
REL 359-20 / MENA 390-5	Islam and the British Empire	Ingram	W 3:00-5:30pm
REL 359-20 / MENA 390-5 Islam and the British Empire (Winter 2026, Professor Brannon Ingram)
REL 369-30 / AMER_ST 310-30	What is Christian Nationalism (RLP)	Bielo	TTH 11:00-12:20pm
REL 369-30 / AMER_ST 310-30 What is Christian Nationalism (RLP) (Winter 2026, James Bielo) In this course, students will explore the religious, social, and political dimensions of Christian nationalist movements. We will consider the U.S. case in historical and ethnographic perspective, and contextualize it amid global comparative examples. The course counts towards the Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.
REL 379-40 / AMER_ST 310-40	Exhibiting Religion	Bielo	TTH 2-3:20pm
REL 379-40 / AMER_ST 310-40 Exhibiting Religion (Winter 2026, Professor James Bielo) In this course students will explore diverse representations of religion in museum settings and other contexts of public display. Student research will include engagement with Chicago area museums, and the opportunity to design their own exhibit.
REL 386-21 / LATIN_AM 391-21	Sin, Salvation, and Racialization in Latin America (RLP)	Molina	TH 2:00-4:30pm
REL 386-21 / LATIN_AM 391-21 Sin, Salvation, and Racialization in Latin America (RLP) (Winter 2026, Professor Michelle Molina) * The course counts towards Religion, Law and Politics (RLP) major concentration.
REL 395-20	Theories of Religion	Taylor	TH 2-4:30pm
REL 395-20 Theories of Religion (Winter 2026, 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. This course involves music, art, video, podcasts, and other artistic mediums, in addition to written texts.
REL 476-22 / MENA	Graduate Seminar: New Directions in Islamic Studies	Ingram	T 3:00-5:30pm
REL 476-22 / MENA Graduate Seminar: New Directions in Islamic Studies (Winter 2026, Professor Brannon Ingram)
REL 482-20	Graduate Seminar: Religion and the More Than Human	Jacoby	M 3:00-5:30pm
REL 482-20 Graduate Seminar: Religion and the More Than Human (Winter 2026, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
HUM 325-4-20 / LATIN_AM 391-20 / INTL_ST 390-0-21	Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital Storytelling (RLP)	Molina	TH 2:00-4:30pm
HUM 325-4-20 / LATIN_AM 391-20 / INTL_ST 390-0-21 Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital Storytelling (RLP) (Winter 2026, Professor Michelle Molina) In this course, students will research a case study from among the many refugee and migration crises that have dominated the news cycle in recent years. The final project is a short video about your case study. To develop your research projects, the class foregrounds different methodological approaches: 1) To move beyond journalism, we will conduct primary and secondary historical research to understand the complex historical roots of each case study. 2) We will analyze and practice forms of ethnographic writing to better situate and describe the lived experiences of migration and exile, both past and present. 3) We will pay attention to various forms of media, whether print culture, sound, or visual media, to interrogate but also experiment with contemporary modes of narrating and conveying human experience in the digital age. Our work in class will be collaborative, thus a key prerequisite is that you are mature and self-motivated. You do not need to have prior research experience, but you need to demonstrate a desire to dig into your topic and hone your ability to write deeply informed, rigorous, and nuanced arguments and to think about creative ways to bring rigorous historical and ethnographic detail to visual storytelling. * The course counts towards Religion, Law and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.