Learning Goals for Religion Majors

Students who major in Religion will gain an understanding of the breadth and diversity of religious traditions throughout the world, building the capacity to understand the roles religion has played in varied cultural and historical contexts.
Students who major in Religion will gain substantive, in-depth knowledge of at least two different religious traditions in their multiple dimensions through the study of such things as primary texts, theological content, socio-historical development, and that tradition’s manifestations in different cultural locations.
Students who major in Religion will acquire sophistication in the historiographical, methodological, and theoretical challenges of studying particular traditions, and the category of “religion” in general.
Students who major in Religion will be able to carry out independent research. Specifically, they will be able to:
- formulate a sophisticated question
- conduct the appropriate research in order to answer that question
- present their answers to that question in writing that meets the highest standards of conceptual clarity and readable prose
- discuss orally the subject matter of their research in a substantive and precise manner
- locate their own methodological approach to their research question within the broader field and articulate the contributions and limitations of their chosen method.