Department of Religious Studies

Religious Studies

The Department of Religious Studies at Brown University provides students with an understanding of a variety of religious traditions, an exposure to the academic approaches employed within the academic study of religion, as well as an opportunity to explore diverse intellectual, social-theoretical, cultural, and ethical issues that arise when one considers the various manifestations of religion in human affairs.

Religious Studies

The Department of Religious Studies at Brown University provides students with an understanding of a variety of religious traditions, an exposure to the academic approaches employed within the academic study of religion, as well as an opportunity to explore diverse intellectual, social-theoretical, cultural, and ethical issues that arise when one considers the various manifestations of religion in human affairs.

The graduate program in Religious Studies, with select areas of concentrated strength, is one of the finest in the world, and the undergraduate program is broad and creative, serving a large number of students both inside and outside the concentration.

Religious Studies strives to be an open, inclusive department. In addition to combatting all forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism, and homophobia, we are committed to fostering an appreciation of diverse perspectives in our curriculum, departmental activities, and faculty and student development. 

Academics

Undergraduate

The academic study of religion cultivates understanding of societies and cultures throughout the world by exploring religious thought and practice in various historical, geographic, and political contexts.

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Large-scale AI analysis to explore how centuries of knowledge passed through Jewish communities

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new National Endowment for the Humanities grant will enable a Brown University professor to lead a large-scale computational analysis of the ways in which knowledge and ideas were shared across Jewish communities from 200 to 2000 C.E.

Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies Michael Satlow and a team of Israel-based scholars plan to develop advanced AI and natural language processing techniques — adapted for historical Hebrew and Aramaic sources — to analyze more than 130,000 texts spanning 18 centuries.
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People

Our staff and faculty support students in fulfilling their research, teaching and learning goals.

Research

Religious Studies faculty and students engage in a wide array of research. View highlights of ongoing projects in the field.

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