This course examines everyday spirituality and lived religion in the contemporary world. As organized religion declines, spiritual engagement persists in new forms. This course explores how individuals seek meaning, transcendence, and connection beyond traditional religious institutions, particularly among those identifying as 'spiritual but not religious' (SBNR).

Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.

Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.

This seminar is organized around themes and topics that are of special interest to the study of religion. The seminar is offered on an occasional basis and the topic is determined in advance by the instructor.

As organized religion declines, spiritual engagement persists in new forms. This course explores everyday spirituality in the contemporary world¿how individuals seek meaning, transcendence, and connection beyond traditional religious institutions. With more people identifying as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) or unaffiliated, scholars examine how spirituality is expressed in daily life.

This advanced seminar theorizes the intersections of religion and technology as a critical site for exploring broad topics in religious studies. The course will take various approaches to relations among religion, technique, and knowledge production: we examine rhetorical constructions of the religious and the technological; explore religious influences on invention and scientific progress; analyze spiritual ideals and contemporary machines; and theorize ways that religious practices and traditions operate as techniques and specialized knowledges.

This advanced seminar for Religion majors takes up the question of what place (if any) religious and social ethics has in postmodern culture. In other words, what characterizes postmodernity and what has been its effects on the discipline of ethics? Are there any prospects for a common morality given the realities of post-structuralist deconstruction? How will one determine the appropriateness of an ethic for postmodern culture?

While the field of religious studies frequently focuses on belief and the intellectual development of religious traditions, this course shifts its focus to the body and its importance for the study of religion. The class examines the role of the body as a vehicle through which individuals experience "the sacred," and as a site upon which communities inscribe, assert, and contest religious values.

Do religions originate in myths of violence, and then re-enact them, as in the Eucharist? How do sacred texts enshrine and commemorate violence? How do religions motivate, justify or reinforce violence? What role does ritual play in re-enacting violence? What roles do eschatological expectations play in violence? How has the postcolonial world grappled with the questions of religious violence?

Traces of mystical Islam, or Sufism, fill the poetry shelves of chain bookstores. Quotes attributed to the Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz grace tea bags, calendars, and any number of tchotchkes available at big box stores around the country. The US government has identified Sufism as the "tolerant" face of Islam and funneled millions into its promotion. But how much does any of this really say about the complex set of people, practices, and ideas called Sufism? Students in this course encounter Sufism from its earliest instantiation to today.