Religious Studies

College of Humanities
Dean: Nancy McDermid

Religious Studies Program
HUM 388
415-338-1596
Director: Jacob Needleman

Undergraduate Advisers: Bailis, Epstein, Kidner, Martin, A., Miller, R., Needleman

Program

 Minor in Religious Studies

Program Scope

The Religious Studies Minor offers students the opportunity to consider their own and others' religious heritage from an interdisciplinary perspective. Religion is an individual as well as a social phenomenon and the curriculum takes the students through both realms. Basic value questions are investigated from the viewpoint of religion, of disciplines looking at religion and of the individual in a pluralistic, unsettled world. More than half the minor is individually selected in consultation with an adviser, though the courses must represent the different dimensions of the religious experience as listed below. Students may focus their course combination in the minor on a specific religious tradition such as Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism; on a particular issue common to different religions; or on a particular culture or historical period.

As an interdisciplinary minor, Religious Studies can be taken in conjunction with any major.

Career Outlook

The Religious Studies Minor provides an excellent background for those considering the ministry, social work, counseling, politics, law, or teaching at any level. As a help in shaping a person's own view of the meaning and purpose of life, it can be of lasting value whatever one's career.

MINOR IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Courses for this program are listed in alphabetical sequence (consult Index for page reference).

Units

Introduction to Religious Traditions

PHIL 502	World Religions (3) or a comparable 

course taken at another institution			3

The Nature of Religious Experience

 
PHIL 525/RELS 300 The Nature of Religious 

Experience or

PHIL 500	Philosophy of Religion			3

The Dimensions of Religious Experience

 
Normally one course should be taken from 

each of the following categories and no 

more than two courses from a single 

discipline		12

The Expressive Dimensions of Religious
Experience

 
ART 202	Western Art History II

ART 205	Asian Art History

BLS 610	African Art, Myth, and Religion

ENG 503	Arthurian Romance

ENG 525	Modern American Mystics

ENG 580	William Blake

ENG 589	Milton

ENG 630	Selected Studies: The Bible as 

Literature

ENG 630	Selected Studies: Religious Themes 

in Contemporary Literature

ENG 630	Selected Studies: The Visionary 

Child in Literature

ITAL 581	The Divine Comedy (taught in the 

language)

MUS 505	Music of the World's People

DANC 415	Dance in Religion

DANC 430	Historical Survey of Dance in the 

Western World: 1300-Present

DANC 657	Dance Ethnology

THA 401	Theatre Backgrounds: 

500 B.C.-1642

WCL 260	Myths of the World

The Study of Particular Religious Traditions

 
AIS 310	American Indian Religion and 

Philosophy

AIS 450	American Indian Science

BLS 326	Black Religion

CLAS 330	Myth in Ancient Epic

CLAS 360	Greek and Roman Mythology

ENG 501	Age of Chaucer

ENG 509	Age of Humanism

ENG 630	Selected Studies: Bible and English/

American Literary Tradition

HIST 110	History of Western Civilization I

HIST 111	History of Western Civilization II

HIST 321	Hellenistic Greece

HIST 325	Late Antiquity

HIST 326	The Byzantine Empire

HIST 328	Early Christian Church to 313

HIST 329	Early Christian Church, 313-787

HIST 331	The High Middle Ages

HIST 336	The Reformation

HIST 480	Thought and Culture in America

HIST 600	The Ancient Near East

HIST 635	Recent History of the Jewish 

People

HUM 375	Biography of A City: Rome

HUM 403	The Early Middle Ages

HUM 404	The High Middle Ages

HUM 406	The Creation of the Modern World: 

16th-18th Centuries

MUS 532	Music of Latin America

PHIL 302	Medieval Philosophy

PHIL 504	History of Christian Thought I

PHIL 508	Indian Philosophy and Religion

PHIL 510	Far Eastern Philosophy and 

Religion

PHIL 510	Spiritual Traditions in China

PHIL 515	Semitic Religious Thought

PHIL 520	Modern Religious Thought

PHIL 530	Feminist Religious Thought

PHIL 530	Selected Religious Thinkers

SNSK 350	Sanskrit Language and Literature

WOMS590	Women's Myth and Ritual

WOMS560	Jewish Women

The Study of Religious Phenomena: Disciplinary Perspectives

 
ANTH 570	Anthropology of Religion

HIST 482	Religion in America

HUM 345	Humanism and Mysticism

NEXA 281	Myth and Scientific Thought

NEXA 380	Cosmologies and World Views

NEXA 387	Origins of Modern Science

PHIL 500	Philosophy of Religion

The Senior Experience

 
RELS 696	Directed Reading in Religious 
	Studies		3

Total		21