Religious Studies

Africa is religiously pluralistic, having three major religious traditions. These are African indigenous religions, Christianity, and Islam. Each of these is internally diverse and multifaceted, creating a mosaic of religious cultures, rituals, communities, ethics and worldviews. This course investigates the histories, rituals, and discourses of the traditions where they interact, differ, and display common elements. As an introductory course to Religious Studies, content engages the diversity of students' lifeworld's and is cognizant of our African location. The use of innovative teaching and delivery methods, including multilingual pedagogies and digital literacy, that allow more time for active engagement and the development of critical reading, writing, and analytical skills in the Humanities is used. DP requirements: Mandatory attendance of lectures and participation in tutorials. Submission of all work by due dates. Assessment: Continuous assessment (essays, projects, tests, etc.) counts 100%.

This advanced course investigates the Christian claim that Jesus’ crucifixion brings salvation. Although this claim is central to the Christian faith, it has been understood in surprisingly diverse ways over the centuries. These diverse interpretations of the cross often reveal divergent understandings of other key theological topics, such as: the nature of sin; the relationship between Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension; the relationship between Christ’s saving work and the work of the Holy Spirit; what it means to say that Jesus is both divine and human; and even the nature of God as Trinity. Moreover, feminist theologians and others have offered important critiques of some interpretations of Christ’s crucifixion. This theme is also the subject of one of the most well-known contributions to systematic theology by a Japanese theologian, Kazoh Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God. As a result, investigating Christian understandings of Christ’s crucifixion provides a focal point for navigating Christian systematic theology as a whole.

Using an economic lens, this course draws especially on The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People (supported by additional cases and readings). Through a mix of close readings, brief lectures and student presentations, structured discussions, and applied project work, students will develop practical frameworks for understanding how religious organizations create value, differentiate themselves, build loyalty, and attempt to maintain legitimacy. The course covers key themes such as religious supply and demand; the platform model of religion, mechanisms of commitment (ritual and social bonding); the role of belief, and the power of narrative in shaping meaning, identity, and decision-making.

The course introduces the most important teachings (doctrines) that make Christianity distinctive: the Doctrine of God, the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Doctrine of the Incarnation, and the Doctrine of Atonement. It also discusses and analyzes several of the most influential and universally read scholars from across the history of Christianity.

This course explores the intellectual, religious, and political transformations that reshaped England during the Reformation and laid the foundations of the modern Church of England. It examines how theological debates, assertions of royal authority, popular belief, and international pressures converged to sever England’s ties with Rome and redefine the relationship between church, state, and society. In addition, the course situates these developments within the broader evolution of knowledge, tracing how the upheavals of the Reformation intersected with the emerging currents of the Scientific Revolution. It analyzes how shifting methods of inquiry, changing attitudes toward authority and evidence, and new conceptions of truth transformed both religious and scientific thought. By integrating the study of religious reform with the history of knowledge and scientific advancement, the course highlights how early modern England became a critical site for rethinking the nature of belief, authority, and the production of knowledge in the modern world.

This course introduces students to the study of the relationship between religion and politics. The course is structured around key research areas in the field such as the conditions under which societies or the institutions that govern them become secularized, the emergence and persistence of the religious-secular divide as a salient political cleavage, the formation and electoral performance of religious parties, the relationship between religion and regime type, the potential implications of religious doctrines for public policy and economic outcomes, the causes of religious violence, as well as the historical and contemporary role of religion in the international sphere.

The Jewish eastern European encounter was among the most significant in the history of the European diasporic encounter. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the political, legal, religious, cultural, and social ramifications of this encounter. It offers in-depth analysis of the emergence of Jewish autonomy and of the variegated cultural life of Jewish communities. It reflects on religious diversification including heretic and dissenting challenges to communal hierarchies and on the scope and limits of social, cultural and legal integration, as well as on the dramatic consequences of the partitions of Poland. It offers insights into the trajectories of formerly Polish-Jewish communities in Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and Prussia, as well as the impact of mass emigration. The emergence of very large Jewish communities and the impact of emigration from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century includes a reflection on the echoes of Eastern European Jewish culture in the Americas and in Palestine/Israel. Jewish political mobilization in the 20th c., the impact of antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence, and the catastrophe of the German occupation and the Holocaust are discussed as well as the attempts to rebuild Jewish life after the war and under communism. 

This course offers a global introduction to comparative politics, focusing on case studies of politics and religion around the world. The course introduces students to approaches to analyzing and critiquing the way in which secular and religious issues are negotiated in institutions such as government, religious hierarchies, and civil society. Moreover, the course develops students' broader understandings of how power, conflict, and identities are conceived in the modern, globalized world. Topics can include religion-state relations, identity politics, religion and violence, and various international case studies of political participation and mobilization.