Fall 2026 Class Schedule: Department of Religious Studies

Fall 2026 Class Schedule

Course	Title	Instructor	Day/Time
REL 101-7-20	First-Year Writing Seminar: The Incredibly True Adventures of Horse Girls	Taylor	TTH 11-12:20PM
REL 101-7-20 First-Year Writing Seminar: The Incredibly True Adventures of Horse Girls (Fall 2026, Professor Sarah Taylor)
REL 170-20	Introduction to the Study of Religion	Bielo	TTH 11-12:20PM
REL 170-20 Introduction to the Study of Religion (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.
REL 230-20 / JWSH-ST 230-0-1	Introduction to Judaism	Wimpfheimer	MWF 10-10:50am
REL 230-20 / JWSH-ST 230-0-1 Introduction to Judaism (Fall 2026, 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 250-20	Introduction to Islam	Hamid	MW 12:30-1:50PM
REL 250-20 Introduction to Islam (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.
REL 261-20	Cultivating Environmental Consciousness	McClish	TTH 9:30-10:50am
REL 261-20 Cultivating Environmental Consciousness (Fall 2026, Professor Mark McClish) This course is an experimental, constructive, student-led inquiry into the idea of environmental consciousness, a term recently used by philosopher Michael Bonnett to posit an intrinsic relationship between consciousness and nature. He argues that education should be ecologized by aiming to help students develop environmental consciousness as a responsive receptivity to nature. In this course we will explore the idea of environmental consciousness by developing and carrying out nature-based practices meant to help us understand its feasibility as a basis for education. Students will collectively design, undertake, and assess these practices. In doing so we will reflect on our relationship with nature and the environment, the goals of education, conceptions of learning and assessment, the putative distinction between the secular and religious, and the relationship between educational practices and climate catastrophe.
REL 278-20 / AMER-ST 310-0-10	Religion and the Arts	Bielo	TTH 2-3:20PM
REL 278-20 / AMER-ST 310-0-10 Religion and the Arts (Fall 2026, Professor James Bielo)
REL 318-20	Buddhist Literature in Translation	Terrone	TTH 3:30-4:50PM
REL 318-20 Buddhist Literature in Translation (Fall 2026, Professor Antonio Terrone)
REL 360-20	Race, Religion, & Digital Humanities	KB Dennis Meade	MW 11-12:20PM
REL 360-20 Race, Religion, & Digital Humanities (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 Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.
REL 371-20	Religion, Film, TV: The Spirit of Horses (RHM, MTJR)	Taylor	F 12-2:30PM
REL 371-20 Religion, Film, TV: The Spirit of Horses (RHM, MTJR) (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.
REL 379-20	Religions of the Caribbean (RLP)	KB Dennis Meade	MW 3:30-4:50PM
REL 379-20 Religions of the Caribbean (RLP) (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.
REL 379-21 / CLASSICS 370-0-1	Comparative Sacrifice: Belief and Ritual	Elsen	MW 12:30-1:50PM
REL 379-21 / CLASSICS 370-0-1 Comparative Sacrifice: Belief and Ritual (Fall 2026, Sarah Eisen)
REL 382-20	Political Religion in the Contemporary World	Zahra Khoshk Jan	MW 2-3:20pm
REL 382-20 Political Religion in the Contemporary World (Fall 2026, Prof.Zahra Khoshk Jan) *Counts toward Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) religious studies major concentration.
REL 471-20 / HIS 405-24	Graduate Seminar: Embodiment, Materiality, Affect	Molina	T 3-5:30PM
REL 471-20 / HIS 405-24 Graduate Seminar: Embodiment, Materiality, Affect (Fall 2025, Professor Michelle Molina)
REL 476-20 / MENA 411	Graduate Seminar: Art of Devotion: Islam and Aesthetics	Hamid	TH 2:30-5PM
REL 476-20 / MENA 411 Graduate Seminar: Art of Devotion: Islam and Aesthetics (Fall 2026, Professor Usman Hamid) What is the relationship between aesthetics, material culture, and religious experience? In this course we explore this question by examining the aesthetic traditions of Islam, focusing on how Muslims have used literature, visual art, musical performance, and architecture as modes of religious expression and creativity. Through studying aesthetics and devotion in the Islamic tradition, we will reflect on questions of cultural appropriation and reuse, politics of representation, and the global circulation of objects, peoples, and capital. Additionally, we will consider how aesthetics might help us better understand the role of affect, senses, and embodiment in Islam.