Spring 2027 Class Schedule: Department of Religious Studies

Spring 2027 Class Schedule

Course	Title	Instructor
REL 101-8-23	First-Year Writing Seminar	Hamid
REL 101-8-23 First-Year Writing Seminar (Spring 2027, Professor Usman Hamid)
REL 172-20	Introduction to Religion, Media, and Culture	Taylor
REL 172-20 Introduction to Religion, Media, and Culture (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!
REL 220-20	Introduction to Hebrew Bible	Wimpfheimer
REL 220-20 Introduction to Hebrew Bible (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.
REL 270-20	Introduction to Theology	Helmer
REL 270-20 Introduction to Theology (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.
REL 278-22	Exhibiting Religion	Bielo
REL 278-22 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 318-22	Religion and Culture in the People's Republic of China (RLP)	Terrone
REL 318-22 Religion and Culture in the People's Republic of China (RLP) (Spring 2027, Professor Antonio Terrone) 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. The course counts towards the Religion, Law, and Politics (RLP) major concentration.
REL 339-22	*NEW Course" Talmudic Logic	Wimpfheimer
REL 339-22 *NEW Course" Talmudic Logic (Spring 2027, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)
REL 349-22	Christianity, Identity, and Violence: Martyrdom in Antiquity and Beyond	Helmer
REL 349-22 Christianity, Identity, and Violence: Martyrdom in Antiquity and Beyond (Winter 2027, Professor Virginia Burrus)
REL 369-20	What is Christian Nationalism (RLP)	Bielo
REL 369-20 What is Christian Nationalism (RLP) (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.
REL 379-23	Sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean	Eisen
REL 379-23 Sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean (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.
REL 379-24	Religions in a burning world	Orsi
REL 379-24 Religions in a burning world (Spring 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)
REL 379-25	Kaplan Global Lab Course	Molina
REL 379-25 Kaplan Global Lab Course (Spring 2027, Professor Michelle Molina)
REL 379-26	Relationality in a More Than Human World	Jacoby
REL 379-26 Relationality in a More Than Human World (Spring 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
REL 471-23	Graduate Seminar: Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion	Schwartz
REL 471-23 Graduate Seminar: Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion (Spring 2027, Professor Shira E. Schwartz) This seminar introduces students to the growing subfield of queer and transgender studies in religion. Combining theoretical frameworks from religious studies and queer and transgender studies, we will study the impact of religious norms on queer/trans lives within religious communities, queer/trans forms of religion that emerge on the margins of normative religious communities, and when queerness/transness become points of religious exit. We will explore the norming systems of religion and gender/sex/sexuality together, examining how they produce both normative and non-normative forms of embodiment and desire, while interrogating the boundaries of religion/race/ethnicity. Crucial to our study will be the examination of the language and categories of “queer” “trans” and “religious” as social identities and structural subject positions. Where do these terms originate and who do they include? Do they articulate forms of identity, practice, belief, or power? And how do we trace the boundaries of normativity in a transnational, transhistorical, and comparative ethnoreligious context?
REL 482-20	Graduate Seminar: Feminist Theory and the Study of Religion	Jacoby
REL 482-20 Graduate Seminar: Feminist Theory and the Study of Religion (Spring 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby) 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.