2025-2026 Course Descriptions
Courses primarily for:
Courses Primarily for Undergraduate Students
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.
REL 101-8-21 – First-Year Writing Seminar
(Winter 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)REL 101-8-22 – First-Year Writing Seminar
(Winter 2027, Professor KB Dennis Meade)REL 101-8-23 – First-Year Writing Seminar
(Spring 2027, Professor Usman Hamid)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 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 200-20 – Introduction to Hinduism
(Fall 2026, Professor Mark McClish)
REL 210-20 – Introduction to Buddhism
(Winter 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
REL 220-1 / JWSH_ST 220-1 – 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 230-20 – 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 / MENA 290-5-1 – 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
(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 262-0-20 – Introduction to Black Religions: The North American Experience
(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.
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 / AMER_ST 310 – Religion and the Arts
(Fall 2026, Professor James Bielo)
REL 278-22 / AMER_ST 310 – 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 278-1 / SLAVIC 278-1 / COMP_LIT 211-1 – Icons
(Spring 2027, Professor Gurianova)"Visual Art in the Context of Russian Culture: Icons"
This year we focus on the phenomena of Christian Orthodox icons, from Byzantine through contemporary era, in the dual contexts of Russian and European cultures; topics directly related to iconography and iconology, as well as interconnections among visual arts, literature, religion, and political history.
REL 318-20 – Buddhist Literature in Translation
(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.
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 349-20 – Christianity: Theology and Mysticism
(Winter 2027, Professor Christine Helmer)REL 349-21 – Eastern Christian Missions and Missionaries
(Winter 2027, Professor Sergey Ivanov)
REL 349-22 – Christianity, Identity, and Violence: Martyrdom in Antiquity and Beyond
(Winter 2027, Professor Virginia Burrus)
REL 351-20 – Islamic Law
(Winter 2027, Professor Brannon Ingram)
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 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 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)
(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 – Comparative Sacrifice: Belief and Ritual
(Fall 2026, Sarah Eisen)
REL 379-22 – Mediating Religion (MTJR)
(Winter 2027, Professor Usman Hamid)
REL 379-23 / CLASSICS 370 – 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
(Spring 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)
REL 379-25 – Kaplan Global Lab Course
(Spring 2027, Professor Michelle Molina)
REL 379-26 – Relationality in a More Than Human World
(Spring 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
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 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 440-20 – Readings in Tibetan literature
(Winter 2027, Professor Sarah Jacoby)
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.
Graduate-level Courses Available to Undergraduates
REL 339-20 – Jewish Texts as Media (MTJR)
(Winter 2027, Professor Shira Schwartz)REL 339-21 – Reading the Talmud
(Winter 2027, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)
REL 339-22 – *NEW Course" Talmudic Logic
(Spring 2027, Professor Barry Wimpfheimer)
Courses Primarily for Graduate Students
REL 471-20 / HIS 405-24 / GSS 490-23 – Graduate Seminar: Embodiment, Materiality, Affect
(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?
471-22 – Graduate Seminar: US Religious History
(Winter 2027, Professor Robert Orsi)
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 476-20 / MENA-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.
REL 481-1-20 – Graduate Seminar: Contemporary Theories of Religion
(Winter 2027, Professor Brannon Ingram)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.