Graduate Division of Religion Course Atlas

Fall 2026 Course Atlas
 
(Please check back for changes and updates - last update 2.20.2026)

ICIVS 714 / RLR 700 - Sufism: Belief and Practice
Wednesday, 2:30-5:15
Scott Kugle

This seminar is on Sufism (Islamic Mysticism) in the Indian Ocean World. It is an inter-disciplinary exploration of Sufism focusing on foundations in Baghdad and its expansion into South India and Southeast Asia, with a focus on the Qadiri and Shattari orders. The course teaches students how to interpret Sufi phenomena, including mystical theories, theological concepts, ritual practices, and political involvements.

ICIVS 770/RLR 700 - Sainthood in Comparative Perspective
Monday, 4:00-6:45
Vincent Cornell

A comparative study of sainthood across religious traditions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Theravada Buddhism), focusing on hagiography and the sociology of sainthood.

 
RLHB 720T - Psalms
Wednesday, 9:00-12:00
Joel LeMon

The biblical Psalms reflect the religious history of the ancient Israelites: their beliefs, their imagistic systems, their modes of worship, and their forms of prayer. The Psalms have, in turn, shaped the theology and practice of numerous religious communities. This course explores the ancient literary and historical context of the Psalms and its formation. It also analyzes the ways that Psalms have been and continue to be appropriated within religious communities. William P. Brown, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Walter Brueggemann. The Psalms and the Life of Faith. Ed. Patrick D. Miller. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. Susan Gillingham. Psalms Through the Centuries: A Reception History Commentary on the Psalms. 3 Vols. London: Wiley Blackwell, 2008, 2020, 2022. Othmar Keel. The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger. Psalms 2, 3: A Commentary of Psalms 51-100. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005, 2011.

 
RLL 707 - Advanced Readings in Sanskrit
Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:30
Sara McClintock

Designed for students with a minimum one year of prior study of Sanskrit, this course will focus on reading and translating a range of sources to be determined in consultation with students in the class. Possible genres include narrative texts, philosophical treatises, commentaries, and pilgrimage accounts.

 
RLNT 745 - Social History of the New Testament
Wednesday, 1:00-4:00
Susan Hylen

This course surveys the social history of the world that shaped the New Testament. It familiarizes students with the social, philosophical, and religious environment in which early Christianity emerged and within which the language of the NT may be interpreted. Although the subject of the course is the Greco-Roman world itself, the categories and questions studied are formulated with an eye to what is useful or important for the interpretation of the NT.

 
RLR 700 - Globalization, Religious Nationalism, and Extremism
Wednesday, 1:00-4:00
Jehu Hanciles

This seminar explores the complex interplay between globalization, religious nationalism, and extremism, with a focus on Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Religious nationalism and extremism are now the focus of robust scholarly attention, and their real-world implications invest analyses with urgency. This seminar examines the definitions, debates, and durability of each concept (and related constructs such as “fundamentalism”, “modernity”, and “ethnicity”) with a view to understanding regional variations and global dimension. Seminar readings and discussion will explore several key issues/questions, including: how processes of globalization influence religious identities and impact nationalist sentiments; the events, trends, and dynamics that shape the rise of extremist ideologies and their impact on contemporary societies; the complex ways in which religion and nationalism intersect, and how these intersections manifest in religiously motivated political movements within the three religious traditions; whether and to what extent the dynamics of globalization have contributed to shared traits, comparable transformations, and converging trajectories of extremist ideologies across religious traditions and regions in the last 3-4 decades. This is not a study of the religious traditions themselves. The central aim is rather to critically assess the roots, rise, and reach of extremist ideologies or movements invigorated by religious nationalism and closely scrutinize the impact and implications of these developments for public life and global existence.

RLR 700 - Postcolonial Trajectories in Practical Theology
Tuesday, 2:00-5:00
Emmanuel Lartey

The course is designed to enable participants explore postcolonial developments in the disciplines of Practical Theology with a particular focus on issues of methodology. By means of an examination of a variety of approaches, texts, and practices, the course seeks to assist students develop their own practical theological method. Attention will be paid to the following: (a) Models of Practical Theology, including discussions of the changing historical identity of the discipline with an emphasis on postcolonial developments (b) The Interdisciplinary nature of Practical Theology including its historic relationships with the human sciences and postcolonial understandings of the human condition. (c) The interactions between theology and practice, faith and action, praxis as theory and practice in reflective dialog (d) Practical theological methodology and the logic of theological construction; methods of theological reflection upon pastoral practice and human circumstances employed in a variety of cultural settings (e) Inter-religious interaction as practical theological engagement

RLR 700 - Theology of Karl Rahner
Monday, 6:00pm-9:00pm
Steffen Loesel

This course engages the theology of Karl Rahner. We explore both Rahner's theological method and his contributions to major theological loci, such as nature and grace, the Trinity, christology, anonymous Christianity, ecclesiology, theological anthropology, and eschatology. Our focus will mainly be on selected essays from his multi-volume Schriften zur Theologie, which arguably constitute the core of Rahner's work and best reflect his method. Last but not least, we engage some of Rahner's critics, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, and his legacy.


RLR 700 - Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding
Friday, 9:30-12:30
Ellen Ott Marshall

This seminar fulfills one of the requirements for the Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding concentration in the GDR. It is open to all GDR students and to other students with permission of the instructor. The RCP Concentration supports and equips doctoral students who intend to teach and research topics related to violence and peacebuilding within the fields of religious studies and theology. The RCP Seminar aims (1) to orient doctoral students to the RCP intersection with its varied literature and methodologies and (2) to deepen their understanding of connections between their disciplinary foci and the role of religion in violence and peacebuilding. While Dr. Marshall will serve as the instructor of record and convener for the course, faculty from across and beyond the GDR will guide us through materials from their respective fields.

 
RLR 700 - The Dead Sea Scrolls
Wednesday, 3:00-6:00
Roger Nam

This seminar offers an intensive study of the Dead Sea Scrolls within early Judaism, emphasizing advanced philological skills through direct engagement with primary texts. Students will explore the social and historical context of Qumran, integrating archaeological evidence. The course also examines the early interpretations of biblical traditions within the Scrolls


RLR 700 - Theology and Ethnography
Wednesday, 9:30-12:30
Susan Reynolds

This doctoral seminar will examine the ethnographic and anthropological turn in the field of theological studies. During the first part of the course, we will trace debates about the interdisciplinary relationship between theology, ethics, cultural anthropology, and the social sciences, noting how the ethnographic turn in theology has coincided with a concomitant ethical and normative turn in anthropology. The simultaneity of these “mutual turns” will be the focus of our exploration during our initial three weeks. During the second part of the course, we will practice methods and dispositions in ethnographic fieldwork, with an emphasis on the work of participant-observation. We will focus on developing a discerning and curious eye for detail, writing vividly and evocatively, cultivating relational presence, and navigating our own positionality. We will also wrestle with, and work to embrace, the unique interpretive opportunities and challenges afforded by religious insiderhood. During the third part of the course, we will attend to examples of rich ethnographic writing, some explicitly theological and others “theologically adjacent.” As we read, we will bear in mind the ways these diverse, sometimes experimental works might shape the development and refinement of our own authorial voices.

RLR 701 -  The Purāṇas
Thursday, 11:00-1:00
Ellen Gough

This course will examine the histories and present-day uses of perhaps the most important texts for the study of South Asian religions: the Purāṇas. Because there are so many Purāṇas and an overwhelming amount of scholarship on these texts, the goal of the course is not to provide a comprehensive study of the texts, objects, and practices associated with the Purāṇas. Instead, we will look to understand trends in scholarship on these texts so that we can develop new ways into them. Amongst the Brahminical Purāṇas, we will focus on the Skandapurāņa, Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and Bhaviṣyapurāṇa. We will also look at regional Purāṇas and Ādivāsī, Christian, and Jain engagement with Purāṇas to see how non-Brahminical traditions are responding to and creating this important genre. We will read sections of these texts in translation along with scholarship that uses text-historical, art-historical, and ethnographic methods.

Selected Readings:

Elizabeth A. Cecil, Mapping the Pāśupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Śaiva Imaginary in Early Medieval India (Brill, 2020)

Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process. The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Roma Chatterji, Speaking with Pictures Folk Art and the Narrative Tradition in India (Routledge, 2012)

Thomas B. Coburn, Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Devi-Mahatmya and a Study of Its Interpretation (SUNY, 1991)

Wendy Doniger, ed. Purāṇa Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts (SUNY, 1993)

Nelson Falcao, Kristapurāṇa, a Christian-Hindu encounter: a study of inculturation in the Kristapurāṇa of

Thomas Stephens, S.J. (1549-1619) (Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 2003)

McComas Taylor, Seven days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Adheesh A. Sathaye, Crossing the Lines of Caste: Viśvāmitra and the Construction of Brahmin Power in Hindu Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process. The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2001)