Graduate Seminars 2026-2027

All topics courses (210s and 230s) can be repeated for credit.

Fall 2027

  • REL 200A Historical Roots of  the Study of Religion | Lynna Dhanani 
  • Wednesdays, 2:00-5:00, Sproul 922

    In this graduate seminar, we examine how "religion" emerges as distinct category of analysis and understanding by looking at its relationship with the intertwined categories of alchemy, medicine, and science from pre­modernity through the Reformation, Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and modern period. Drawing on primary sources-including theological, alchemical, yogic, scientific, medical, and theosophical texts-from European, Islamic, and Indian contexts, we trace the shifting boundaries and epistemologies between religion, science, and medicine as we explore views of the material world, body, and self in these texts and contexts. 
  • REL 230D Thematic Topics: Theory & Method-Hagiography | Layne Little
  • Mondays 2:10-5:00, Sproul 922

    This in-depth study of narrative traditions surrounding saints begins with an examination of exemplary hagiographic texts from a variety of major religious traditions. This will be followed by a carefully curated series of readings on Asian saints who challenge our usual assumptions of what might constitute saintliness. In addition to primary hagiographic accounts, this class will also survey methodological approaches to analyzing sacred narratives.  It will offer a comprehensive survey of theories on the structure of myth, how to identify and classify folkloric motifs and how to find examples of a particular motif in other storytelling contexts for comparative purposes. In addition, it will also examine forms of hagiographic exegesis, and the role of saints in ritual, material and visual culture.

Winter 2027

  • REL 200B Foundational Theories of Religion | Flagg Miller 
  • Tuesdays, 2:10-5:00, Sproul 922
    This is a graduate-level course on some of the foundational theories and methods in the study of religion. The course offers an analytical survey of some of the prominent theorists and approaches that scholars and comparative-religion specialists have employed in modeling religion for others. Recurring themes in this course include culture, social power, race, gender, experience, authority, reduction versus interpretation, normative versus descriptive approaches, insider versus outsider explanations, and idealism versus materialism.  
  • REL 210B Special Topics in Asian Religious Cultures: Diasporic Religious Practices | Nicole Ranganath

  • Mondays, 2:10-5:00, Sproul 922
    Religion, Diaspora, and Belonging

    This graduate seminar examines religion as a central dimension of migration, displacement, and the formation of communities across national borders with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean region and its diasporas. Bringing diaspora studies into conversation with religious studies, anthropology, history, and postcolonial theory, the course explores how religious practices, institutions, and imaginaries sustain attachments to homelands while creating new forms of belonging. It also explores the relationship between religious experiences and affiliations in relation to histories of exile, colonialism, indentured labor, and labor migration.
     
    The reading list has not yet been finalized, but will include:
    Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, Sikh Kirtan and its Journeys (2025)
    Virinder S. Kalra and Navtej K. Purewal, Beyond Religion in India and Pakistan (2020)
    Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (2011)
    Anna C. Schultz, Echoes of Translation: Audibility and Relationality in Indian Jewish Women’s Song (2026)
    Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (2004)
    Suraj Yengde, Caste: A Global Story (2025)
  • REL 297: Prospectus Writing | Archana Venkatesan
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Spring 2027

  • RST 230B: Religion and Narrative in Ancient and Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Claire Waters 

  • Wednesdays, 2:10-5:00, Sproul 922
    This course asks what roles narrative plays, and what forms narrative takes, in religious traditions—particularly Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions from their origins into the Middle Ages. We will consider such topics as difficult stories (the punishment of the virtuous, the sacrifice of the innocent, parables); exemplary stories and their instability; and the relationship between apocryphal or non-scriptural narratives and their official counterparts. Alongside the narratives themselves we will read exegesis/interpretation of them and critiques of the place of narrative in religious instruction, examining what narrative has to offer religious teaching and what have been seen as its pitfalls and challenges.


     
    Readings will be drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an, and from the Christian apocryphal, Jewish midrashic, and Islamic hadith traditions that expand on and interpret the scriptures. We will also read pastoral, theological, and literary texts that engage with and rework foundational modes of religious narrative, such as the Patient Griselda tradition that retells the story of Job through an account of a supernaturally longsuffering wife or the mystical theologian Julian of Norwich's parable of the lord and the servant, which condenses salvation history into a resonant miniature account of failure and love.
  • REL 230D Theory & Method or REL 210B: Vernacular Religion | Michael Dylan Foster
  • TBD