Browse through the courses below to explore courses that will fulfill certain degree requirements in the Religious Studies program.
When registering for classes on the Course Timetable website, be sure to carefully read through the "Notes/Additional Fees" section of each course you select.
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Not all of the courses below will necessarily be offered in any given year.
AP/RLST 1710 6.00 Roots of Western Culture
This course investigates the two major branches of Western thought: the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian. The course begins by critically thinking about how history is “made,” reworked and transmitted, about oral culture, and how cultural ...
AP/RLST 1875 9.00 Christianity in Context
This is an introductory course. It offers a general overview of the Christian tradition from its inception to the present day. From its beginnings, Christianity has been inextricably intertwined with the societies and cultures surrounding ...
AP/RLST 1880 6.00 Jewish Experience: Symbiosis and Rejection
An examination of the interaction of Jews and gentiles in selected periods from antiquity through the 20th century. A case study in ethnic adaptation, the course seeks to understand how Jews sometimes adapted their lives ...
GL/RLST 2672 3.00 Religion and Society
This course analyzes the relationship between religion, culture and social class. It observes how religion, as a social structure, organizes communities around beliefs and rituals. It introduces students to classical sociological theories about religion; looking ...
AP/RLST 3325 6.00 Islam Aand Europe: Past and Present
This course explores the social and political history of Muslims in post-war Europe. It emphasizes key debates and controversies, including how Muslim immigrants have focused attention on questions of citizenship and belonging, the division between ...
AP/RLST 3570 6.00 Anthropology, Islam and Muslim Societies
This course examines debates amongst anthropologists about the study of Islam and Muslim societies, and Muslim expressions of Islam according to anthropological themes including the body, space, ritual, knowledge, agency and representation. Students design and ...
AP/RLST 3620 3.00 Japanese Religions in Canada
This course examines not only how Japanese religious/philosophical traditions were utilized for practical concerns by Japanese immigrants, but also how they came to inform the identity of Japanese Canadians in the context of a broader ...
AP/RLST 3800 6.00 God Online: Religion In The Digital Age
An interdisciplinary investigation into the changing nature of traditional religions in the digital age. This course examines ways in which religion is being shaped by digital culture, including the widespread social acceptance of new technologies ...
This course explores the intersections between religion, culture and identity in the Balkans. It offers an interdisciplinary examination of this complex religious and ethnic mosaic through a wide range of sources, including consideration of the ...
AP/RLST 3817 6.00 Memory, Authority & Knowledge: Muslim World
This course focuses on the modes of transmission, acquisition and reproduction of knowledge in a variety of Islamic societies from the ninth century to the present. RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) COVERED: Islam
AP/RLST 3825 6.00 Holocaust in Cross-Cultural Context: Canada, Germany, Poland
This course examines how the Holocaust is represented and taught in Canada, Germany and Poland in the context of racism and multiculturalism in these three countries. It combines aspects of cultural studies, history, religious studies ...
AP/RLST 3829 3.00 A Convenient Hatred: Antisemitism Before, During and After The Holocaust
This course examines the evolution of anti-Jewish thought and behaviour as a response to the crisis of modernity. It examines the role of antisemitism in 19th- and 20th-century European ideological, political and socio-economic developments and ...
AP/RLST 3835 3.00 Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Canada
This course examines contemporary manifestations of antisemitism and islamophobia in Canada. It begins by providing a brief historical review of Christian anti-Jewish thought and theology as put forward by the early Church fathers, Augustine and ...
AP/RLST 3843 3.00 Jerusalem: Sacred City, Contested City
Since antiquity, Jerusalem has been a focal point for both spiritual transcendence and earthly strife. This course explores the history of a city holy to three major Western religions. It focuses on the political and ...
AP/RLST 3850 6.00 The Final Solution: Perspectives of the Holocaust
The attempt of the Nazis to annihilate world Jewry was in many ways unprecedented in human annals. It was a turning-point in history, the way for which was prepared by revolutionary political, social, technological, and ...
AP/RLST 3855 6.00 Responses to the Holocaust
This course explores responses to the Holocaust in imaginative texts - fiction, poetry and film - alongside autobiographical, historical and philosophical accounts. Works by survivors and others enable us to examine forms of Holocaust memory, ...
AP/RLST 3858 3.00 Cult and Culture in Ancient Canaan
This course surveys the material culture of the land known variously as Canaan, Israel, Judah, Judea, Palestine, and the Holy Land, from the Neolithic or "New Stone" Age (as of ca. 8500 BCE) until the ...
AP/RLST 3917 6.00 Contemporary Jewish Life in North America
This course develops an understanding of contemporary North American Jewry using findings of social science. Social, cultural, political, and religious issues of concern to Jewish communities are analyzed, such as assimilation, intermarriage, Jewish identity, etc. ...
AP/RLST 3918 6.00 Sephardi Jews Of Muslim Lands
The meeting between Jews and Arabs in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict is famous. Less familiar is the encounter between Muslims and Jews in Muslim lands. This course explores Jewish life under Islam from ...
AP/RLST 4178 6.00 Death of God: Atheism in the West
Nietzsche’s famous, prophetic claim that “God is dead” is often taken as describing the declining significance of God within modernity. Adopting neither a pro- nor anti- theistic stance, this course critically examines the relationship between ...
AP/RLST 4190 6.00 Faith, Reason and Modern Self-Consciousness in European Thought
This course examines texts in Ancient Greek philosophy, the Bible, and modern European thought in order to assess the fruitfulness of viewing modern self-consciousness in terms of the relationship of faith and reason. RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) ...
GL/RLST 4210 3.00 Religion and International Society
The course reviews the basic teachings of the major religious traditions, including those of the indigenous people, and analyzes their role in international relations and the globalization process, through time and space, from a comparative ...
GL/RLST 4275 3.00 Beliefs In The Digital Age: Religion, Faith and Spirituality
This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of how religion is mediated in culture through mass media (television, radio, the press) as well as through electronic media (internet, video games) and popular culture (film). To de-construct ...
AP/RLST 4581 6.00 Worry and Wonder: Jewish Politics, Society and Religion in Canada
This public history seminar explores the origins, development and paradoxes of the Canadian Jewish community from its inception in the 18th century to the present. It pays particular attention to the complexities of immigration, relationships ...
AP/RLST 4753 6.00 Christianities and Indigenous Civilizations in Colonial Latin America
This seminar explores the establishment of Christianity among the indigenous peoples of colonial Latin America, with a primary focus on Mexico and Peru. RELIGIOUS TRADITION(S) COVERED: Christianity Cross-listed as AP/HIST 4753 6.00.
AP/RLST 4770 3.00 Buddhism in Modern Southeast Asia: Community, Conflict and Change
Explores Buddhist responses to the changing conditions of modernity in Southeast Asia. Seeking to understand Buddhism as a living religion, it investigates how Buddhists have drawn on religious narratives, symbols and rituals to respond to ...
AP/RLST 4771 3.00 Buddhism as Seen from the West: The Colonial Encounter and the Study of Buddhism
Explores how the colonial encounter shaped the academic study of Buddhism and the image of Buddhism in the West. Reading popular and scholarly accounts of Buddhism written from the early nineteenth century to the present ...
AP/RLST 4775 3.00 South Asian Religions & Popular Culture
How have South Asian religions been represented, practiced, communicated, and transformed through popular culture? How are religious themes, images, and ideas explored in contemporary film, television, print media and music? Focusing on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, ...
AP/RLST 4803 6.00 Church, Mosque & Synagogue: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain
This course examines religious, intellectual, and cultural relations between the three faith communities of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It examines the origins of these religious communities, as expressed through their holy texts, and the ways ...
AP/RLST 4826 3.00 Urban Life and the Islamic City: Religion, Society and the Formation of Space
This course addresses city formation, urban space, and the socio-religious structure in Islamic cities from early Islam to the pre-modern period. The course approaches the Islamic city both as an urban phenomenon and as a ...
AP/RLST 4827 3.00 Ancient Concepts of the Soul
This course explores concepts of soul from early Greek Civilization to the early Christian era. It examines a cluster of related concepts -- soul, spirit, shade, consciousness, will, and mind - that express the self ...