REL 101-7-20 First-Year Writing Seminar: The Incredibly True Adventures of Horse Girls
(Fall 2026, Professor Sarah Taylor) Marking the Year of the Horse, this seminar explores the cultural and mythic figure of the “horse girl” from ancient religion to contemporary media. Across societies, horses appear as companions in girls’ sacred quests for courage, belonging, and self-discovery. We examine “horse girls” in mythology, religion, folklore, literature, and media. Topics include: horse goddesses, Amazons, Valkyries; figures such as Joan of Arc and Lady Godiva; Mongolian mounted archers; Mexican escaramuzas, cowgirls, and iconic fictional horse-girl heroines. The seminar also explores contemporary equestrian aesthetics and the renewed cross-cultural fascination with horses. In an era of pervasive screens, fragmentation, isolation, and social media distortion, horses evoke possibility, freedom, imagination, creaturely companionship, and the search for purpose. Readings span memoir, ethnography, history, and mythology. Through analytical writing, students investigate how horses have inspired generations of girls and women to imagine courage, meaning, and deeper forms of spiritual connection to the more-than-human world.
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
(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.
(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.
(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
(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.
(Fall 2026, Professor Antonio Terrone) In this course, students will read writings from Buddhist canonical and non-canonical literature on a variety of subjects to gain an introduction to the variety of literary genres used in Buddhist works, as well as to consider the central tenets of the Buddhist literary tradition these works convey. Who was the Buddha? What did he preach? Why do we suffer and how do we realize enlightenment? How should one follow the Buddhist path? What metaphors and parables have Buddhists used to convey these insights over the centuries? Students will be able to explore these and other questions through a selection of English translations of original texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan including the life of the Buddha, his sayings, Buddhist sutras, and Buddhist autobiographies. As this course is an introduction to Buddhist literature, there are no prerequisites, and students will gain familiarity with Buddhist teachings through engaging directly with primary sources in translation.
(Fall 2026, Dhondup T. Rekjong) This course centers the Dalai Lama’s book The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, accompanied by other essential readings, to explore the intersection of Buddhism, science, and mindfulness, aiming to deepen and enrich students' understanding of Buddhism in the contemporary world. It moves beyond traditional Buddhist teachings to offer undergraduates a unique opportunity to challenge common perceptions of Buddhism, often viewed solely as a religion. Throughout the course, we will examine the historical interactions between Buddhism, science, and mindfulness, engage with recent debates through dialogues, discussions, and workshops, and consider the uncertain futures of the disciplines. By doing so, we will gain insights into scientific developments while rethinking the relevance and role of Buddhism within a broader secular context.
REL 360-20 Race, Religion, & Digital Humanities (MTJR)
(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.
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.
(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
(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.
(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.
REL 379-28 Political Religion in the Contemporary World
(Fall 2026, Prof.ZahraKhoshk 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.
(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?
REL 476-20 / MENA 411-0-2 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.
