DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES

(Fall 2026, 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.

(Spring 2027, Professor Sarah Taylor)
Dive into one of today’s most exciting and rapidly growing areas of scholarship – the intriguing entanglements of religion and media in society and culture. This course draws from an array of sources, such as television, film, and radio, digital gaming worlds, billboards, advertisements and media campaigns, popular music, streaming video, social media, and even tattoos, body art, and graffiti. Study media while getting to make your own media for course projects!

(Winter 2027)

(Spring 2027, 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.

(Fall 2026, Professor Usman Hamid)
One in four people living today are Muslim, making Islam the second most widely practice religious tradition in the contemporary world. How do we make sense of a religious tradition that spans multiple continents, languages, centuries, and communities? In this course we explore what it means to be Muslim, how particular ideas and practices come to be seen as Islamic and what the study of Islam can teach us about religious embodiment, emotions, ethics, rituals, devotion, and law. Over the course of this class, students will be introduced to theories and critical terminology from the study of religion.

(Winter 2027, 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.

(Spring 2027, Professor Christine Helmer)
Theology is an academic discipline that, like philosophy, has to do with the big questions of life: What does God have to do with the world? Why is evil so pernicious? How does one consider life in this world from God's perspective?  We explore how theologians ask questions, what topics fascinate them, and how they bring their experiences to their work. Our work focuses on Christian theologians from past and present whose contributions help us to think in critical and constructive ways about our world today, such as Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Schleiermacher, McCord Adams, and Helmer. 

(Fall 2026, Professor James Bielo) 
Religion and the Arts is a variable-topics course that explores the dynamic relationship between religious traditions and artistic expression across cultures, historical periods, and mediums. The courses will examine how religious traditions, practices, materials, and communities have shaped, and been shaped by, the arts, including visual culture, architecture, literature, theatre, ritual performance, museum curation, and other expressive forms.

(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.

(Winter 2027, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

(Spring 2027, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)

(Winter 2027, Professor Sergey Ivanov)

(Winter 2027, Professor Virginia Burrus)

(Winter 2027, Professor Brannon Ingram)

(Fall 2026, Professor KB Dennis Meade)
Black and Caribbean Studies are vibrant fields in the digital humanities. The study of religion in the digital humanities, however, remains an emergent field. This course is an ambitious attempt at interdisciplinarity, or more aptly what Tracy Hucks and Dianne Stewart refer to as transdisciplinarity--inquiry driven research that transcends disciplinary silos. This course centers religion as the primary lens to excavate and recover representations of Afro-Caribbean religions and their North American cognates using archival sources, fiction, film, and art. Religion will serve as the framework to interrogate what counts as data, the sources in which we can locate this data, its deployment and (re)presentation. Our aim is to gain a landscape view of Caribbean
religious history through key moments and themes from the period of enslavement and what Rinaldo Walcott refers to as the long emancipation. The course will provide students the opportunity to explore current digital projects and learn digital tools to generate their own inquiries. Counts toward the Media, Technology, Journalism and Religion (MTJR) religious studies major concentration.

(Spring 2027, 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. 

(Fall 2026, Professor Sarah Taylor)
It is often said that in riding a horse “we borrow freedom.” From winged Pegasus of Greek mythology, to mystical Kelpies of Celtic lore, to the Hippogriffs in Harry Potter, horses hold a special allure for humans that transcends cultures. This course explores the power of the sacred human-horse bond as represented in art, film, TV, and social media, while teaching techniques and tools for analyzing media and making your own media! We will start by looking historically and anthropologically at the co-evolution of humans and equids, investigating how the domestication of horses and the mutually shaping human-horse relationship radically changed the world. We will also learn how religion followed the path of horses across the globe. In fact, the history of religions, their spread, comingling, and influence can be told through the prism of human-horse partnerships over space and time. We will learn about horses in mythology and sacred symbol, divine horses with supernatural powers, and how horses become a mainstay of folklore on virtually every continent. We will read and listen to reflections on the ways horses help some people to think about, know, and experience God/the divine, and/or find existential meaning. We will explore horse religions and worship (old and new), the key role played by horses in many funerary rites, and learn more about peoples who know themselves as “the people of the horse.” We will also learn about the use of horses in therapy programs for those mentally, emotionally, physically, and developmentally challenged, and the successful use of horse therapy to heal veterans and others coping with PTSD. Finally, we look at a variety of horse trainers and clinicians who approach horsemanship as a kind of sacred vocation, devotional path, and/or spiritual discipline. At the core of this course is investigating why and how it is that horses fascinate humans, capture so many hearts, and fuel our imaginations. In other words, “What is it about horses . . . ?” We learn about media by “doing media,” so this course offers the chance to design and produce two media projects based on original research and analysis, examining works that mediate horses. We will also have a class field trip to an equine therapy center. [No experience with horses necessary, though not recommended for students who are allergic to equines.]
*The course counts toward the Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) and the Media, Technology, Journalism and Religion (MTJR) major concentrations.

(Fall 2026, Prof. Dennis Meade)
The Caribbean constitutes a unique space to understand the history of resistance and social change in the Black Atlantic world. Going beyond the tropes of reggae, Rastafari, and tourism--this course provides an introduction to the diversity of religious traditions in the region, with a particular focus on Afro-Caribbean religious practices and spiritual technologies. Students will explore the cosmological features and embodied expressions that characterize these traditions. Through presentations, discussions, and writing assignments students will reflect on concepts such as belonging, migration, colonialism, race, class, and gender to understand the political and cultural implications of religion in the region. *Counts toward Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.

(Fall 2026, Sarah Eisen)
How could humans forge meaningful and sustainable relationships with the gods, when the gods were believed to be infinitely more powerful than they were? This class will examine the ancient practice of offering sacrifice to the gods broadly across the Mediterranean basin, exploring a wide range of geographies, beliefs, customs, religions, and sources. The act of sacrifice, practiced in ancient Greece, Rome, the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, was practiced for a variety of reasons related to appeasing, supplicating, and currying favor with the gods. We will consider all types of sacrifice, including animal, vegetal, liquid, and even human offerings to the gods, while considering how concepts including expiation, catharsis, supplication, substitution, communion, and authority factored into the ritual. How did this ritual develop in response to changing or sustained religious beliefs? Did the gods of the ancient world eat the blood and flesh of sacrifices? What about the various minority groups in antiquity who rejected the practice of sacrifice? Throughout the class, students will examine the art historical, archaeological, and literacy evidence for this practice, while also critiquing different lenses and theoretical approaches to sacrifice.

(Winter 2027, Professor Usman Hamid)

(Spring 2027, Sarah Eisen)

Religion permeated every aspect of life in the ancient Mediterranean. Even though it was believed that one could encounter the gods anywhere, some places were more sacred than others, and over time the concept of a sanctuary formed. This course will investigate sacred spaces in the ancient Mediterranean, with a focus on Greece and Rome. We will ask: what made one place more sacred than others? What activities and rituals occurred in a sanctuary? How can we recognize a sanctuary archaeologically, and how were they discussed in ancient literature? By investigating ancient sacred spaces, students will explore the social, political, and economic realities and imaginations of religious spaces as they effected polities, empires, and interconnected cultures.

(Spring 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)

(Spring 2027, Professor Michelle Molina)

(Spring 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby)

(Fall 2026, Dhondup T. Rekjong)
This course simply explores the concept of mind in Tibetan Buddhism. The mind is one of the most complex and dominant subjects in Buddhism in general, and in Tibetan Buddhism in particular. The course will examine some key areas, such as “mind and mental factors,” (sem dang sem chung) “mind training,” (lo jong) and “awakening mind” (bodhicitta). Each of these concepts and practices brings its own rich history in Indian and Tibetan religious cannons.

First, we will read some key passages from Indian texts such as Nagarjuna’s Praise to the Ultimate Expanse, and Dharmakirti’s The Exposition of Valid Cognition, to understand the dynamic relationship between positive and negative mental factors and the nature of these mental states, as revealed in first through fifth century texts. Next, we will read some key Tibetan texts from the eleventh through thirteen centuries, such as Geshe Langrig Thangpa’s Eight Verses of Mind Training, and Je Tsongkhapa’s The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment to understand how to train our minds and cultivate “great compassionate mind” (sem pa chen po). While reading these and similar texts, we will also delve into the narratives of these scholars and practitioners in understanding their socio-religious world, in which these mind-related concepts, trainings, and manuals emerged over time.

(Fall 2026, Prof.Zahra Khoshk Jan)
In the context of post-secularism and the renewed visibility of religion in the public sphere, this course examines the rise of political religion through two interrelated processes: the politicization of religion and the sacralization of political ideologies. It explores how these dynamics shape contemporary movements, organizations, and forms of fundamentalism, with particular attention to their implications for identity formation and national security. Drawing on sociological and methodological approaches, the course analyzes both monotheistic and non-monotheistic traditions to understand how religious and political domains become mutually constitutive. Students will engage with key theoretical frameworks and empirical cases to develop critical analytical skills for interpreting the role of religion in modern political life. The course emphasizes the complexity of post-secular conditions and equips students to assess how sanctified ideologies operate within diverse cultural and political contexts. *Counts toward Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.

(Winter 2027)

This course explores a variety of Tibetan-language genres of writing such as history, poetry, philosophy, doctrine, narrative literature, and more, with attention to their form and content. All course readings are in Tibetan, presuming at least an intermediate ability to read Tibetan. Students will focus on Tibetan-English translation techniques while broadening their knowledge of Tibetan literary genres. Course readings will vary depending on enrolled students' specific areas of interest.

(Fall 2026, Professor Michelle Molina)
This seminar explores theoretical approaches to the problem of body/embodiment/materiality. One aim of the course is to examine various methodological approaches to embodiment and materiality, making use of sociology and philosophy (Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Baruch Spinoza, and Bruno Latour). The second and closely related aim is to situate bodies in time and place, that is, in history. Here we look to the particular circumstances that shaped the manner in which historical actors experienced their bodies in the Christian west (Peter Brown, Mary Carruthers, Michel Foucault, among others). Ultimately, we will be examining theoretical tools while we put them to work. The goal: how to use these theorists to write more dynamic, creative, interesting scholarship?

(Winter 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)

This course aims to put feminist theory and religious studies into conversation with each other in order to examine the resulting intersections, points of mutual illumination, and aporias. The course will investigate the history of feminist approaches to religious studies as well as new directions in current scholarship including black feminist andwomanist theologies, goddess feminism, postcolonial and transnational feminisms, and secular and post-secular feminisms. We will consider thefollowing questions: What does it mean to apply a gender studies lens to the study of religion? How do feminist conceptions of “liberation” reinforce or reject religious conceptions of “liberation”? How does taking religion seriously transform feminist theory? And how does taking feminist theory seriously transform research practices, subjects, archives, and methods in religious studies? In thinking through these topics, we will (re)read some feminist classics as well as focus on a selection ofsignificant recent works important for students of feminist theory andreligious studies. This course seeks to move beyond prevalent assumptions of Judeo-Christian normativity in its analysis of feministcontributions to the study of religion. It pays particular attention to feminist approaches to the study of Asian religions, but with flexibility to highlight other geographic/thematic areas of interest to graduate students enrolled in the course.