Course Offerings

Consult LORIS Browse Classes for this year's course list. A description of courses can be found in the Religion and Culture area of the undergraduate academic calendar.

Special Topics Descriptions

RE249C Digital Lifecycles
Fall 2025, MW 1430-1550

The lifecycle - transformations from birth to death and beyond - has long interested anthropologists. This course asks how algorithms, transnational media and evolving digital technology change our rites of passage. How has the internet reconfigured childbirth; how have videogames changed childhood? How have fandoms, apps and forums impacted parenting and growing old? Do dating apps reinforce or subvert traditional notions of mating? How have movies changed how we marry and bury? Has media and the internet permanently transformed visions of life, death and beyond? Will AI even change the way we die?

RE349P The Sacred and the Sustainable
Winter 2026, TR 1130-1250

Environmentalism can bring together activists, scientists, Indigenous peoples, secular nature enthusiasts, and “tree-hugging” eco-spiritualist. Yet it can also divide them as competitors. This course explores the dynamic relationships intersecting and cross-cutting religion and ecology in contemporary environmental activism, emerging earth-based spiritualities, increasingly “green” conscious mainstream religions, and Indigenous worldviews. It focuses on modern environmental movements and nature spiritualities in North America, with some comparisons to ancient and global traditions. Topics discussed include: eco-theology and eco-spirituality, environmental ethics, animisms, environmental anthropology, environmental science, political ecology, and religious responses to climate change.