In the Classroom
We offer a broad and diverse undergraduate curriculum focusing on the intertwined relationship between religion and politics across U.S. history, from the colonial era to the present. We also support early career scholars with fellowships that offer teaching and research opportunities at the Center.

Courses
Our courses range widely in topics, but all focus on the cultivation of research and interpretive skills necessary for analyzing and responding to issues that shape society and culture in the United States.
Gateway Courses
Gateway courses are required for the minor in religion and politics and serve as an introduction to the field of study.
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L57 RelPol 201
Religion and American Society
This course explores religious life in the United States.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 210
The Good Life between Religion and Politics
This course considers the way religious and political thought has shaped considerations of the classical ethical question of how we should live.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 225
Religion and Politics in American History
This course traces how conceptions of “religion” and “the state” changed in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the dawn of a new millennium.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 320
Religious Freedom in America
This course investigates the intersections of the law and the social history of religious freedom in America. It examines issues such as constitutional principles of religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to dissent, from America’s founding to the present.
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Professor
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Professor
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Courses
Our courses cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the intersection of American religion and politics both historically and in the present. Select a semester to see our most recent course offerings or scroll to the bottom to view past courses.
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L57 RelPol 207c
Modern Political Thought: Text and Traditions
This course pursues two major lines of inquiry in modern Western political thought: the relation between the individual and the state, and the means of holding state power accountable.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 225
Religion and Politics in American History
This course traces how conceptions of “religion” and “the state” changed in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the dawn of a new millennium.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 235
Puritans and Revolutionaries: Religion and the Making of America
This course introduces students to the history of religion and politics in America from the English settlements of Virginia and Massachusetts Bay during the early seventeenth century through the constitutional debates of the 1780s.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 245
Love and Reason
This course offers an introduction to modern Christian thought and Western philosophy through themes of love and reason.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 248
Religion, Health, and Wellness in Modern America
This course considers how ideas about health and politics of the body intersect with religious and consumer practices in the modern wellness industry.
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L57 RelPol 252
Catholicism Confronts Modernity: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis
This course explores the creative tension between Catholicism and “modernity,” in the US and beyond, from the French Revolution to the present.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 285
Islam in America
This course examines the notion of a religiously plural America and analyzes Muslims' place within it.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 290
Islamophobia & U.S. Politics
This course examines the phenomenon of Islamophobia as a form of anti-Muslim racism as it has manifested throughout U.S. history and within contemporary American politics.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 307
Solidarity and Silence: Religious Strategies in the Political Sphere
This course explores the religious and political thought guiding civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 3105
American Holidays: Civic and Religious Celebrations in American Culture
This course explores a variety of topics relating to American religious holidays and civic rituals such as African-American emancipation celebrations, public battles over Christmas, evangelical enactments of Halloween Hell Houses, Roman Catholic street festivals, modern renderings of Hanukkah, as well as the memorialization of the Union and the Confederacy.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 320
Religious Freedom in America
This course investigates the intersections of the law and the social history of religious freedom in America. It examines issues such as constitutional principles of religious freedom and the rights of religious groups to dissent, from America’s founding to the present.
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Professor
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 334
Religion, Race, and Migration: Borders of Difference?
This course examines how particular understandings of religion, race, and migration inform contemporary scholarship and shape national and international legal and governmental practices.
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L57 RelPol 354
Christian Theology and Politics in the Modern West
What does theology have to do with politics? This course attempts to answer that question by reading and discussing important texts from the western Christian tradition and investigating what they have to say about issues such as political revolution, loyalties to the nation, economic policy, gender, and race.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 362
Islam, Gender, Sexuality
Investigates how gender and sexuality inform social, political, and family life in diverse Islamic contexts, spanning from seventh century Arabia to the contemporary U.S.
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Assistant Professor
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L57 RelPol 370
Religion and Capitalism in Modern America
This course explores not only how religious configurations and economic practices co-constitute each other in the field of American religions, but also critiques of capitalism, especially by attending to the notion of gendered racial capitalism.
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Postdoctoral Fellow
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L57 RelPol 395
Topics in Religion and Politics: The Abuse Crisis in Modern Christianity
This course explores the sexual abuse crisis in North American Christianity, both as it has emerged in the media and as church leaders and laypeople have responded to it. We’ll pay particular attention to the power dynamics of abuse, the impact upon the Christian body writ large, and the relation between the crisis and U.S. politics.
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Director
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L57 RelPol 425
Law, Religion, and Politics
This course will explore the role of religious argument in politics and law through the work of legal scholars, theologians, and political theorists.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 430
Spiritual But Not Religious: The Politics of American Spirituality
This seminar focuses on the formation of “spirituality” in American culture from the Transcendentalist world of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman on through more recent expressions of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” sensibility.
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Professor
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L57 RelPol 435
Sabbath Politics: Rest and Refusal in Religion and Politics
What is political about a day of rest? This seminar will explore the practice of the Jewish Sabbath and arguments by Jews and non-Jews for its political potential as a critical break from regular forms of life, “the other six days” in which we work and live.
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Assistant Professor
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