The Minor

The religion minor offers students a flexible and broad exposure to the discipline, emphasizing the diversity of religious practices and understandings, both within and among religious traditions, while providing opportunities to master theoretical tools and to apply these in the detailed study of specific themes or traditions.

These skills and perspectives enhance academic work in majors across the college and in numerous career paths after college. Whether entering fields related to public policy, health care, nonprofit advocacy and service, education, law, or more, a religion minor can nurture habits of mind and competencies that enable students to be professionals with a unique understanding of religion as a pervasive, significant, and complex dimension of human life.

36 credits, distributed as follows:

• Introductory Level (courses introducing the diversity within and among religious traditions) 6 credits:
  • RELG 100 (Any of the Religion A&I Seminars)
  • RELG 110 Understanding Religion
  • Any of the department’s regular 100-level courses
• Method and Theory (courses providing theoretical grounding in the study of religion) 6 or 12 credits at the 300-level Religion courses. Either:
  
  • RELG 300 Theories and Methods, or
  • Two 300-level Religion seminar
  • This requirement cannot, however, be fulfilled by RELG 399 (the senior comps seminar) or RELG 359 (an off-campus studies course for Buddhist Studies in Bodh Gaya).

• Electives (courses exploring traditions, interdisciplinary themes, problems, and puzzles in the study of religion). 24 or 18 credits of any combination of 100-, 200-, or 300-level Religion courses.
• A maximum of 6 credits may be taken outside of the Religion Department.