Academics

Requirements

The program will consist of six courses:

  • Two required foundational courses Theo 107 and SOCL 145
  • Two electives
  • One 300 level integrative course, (IRIF 300) which is new and specific to the program
  • A capstone internship (IRIF 380) experience for IRIF Minors.

List of required IRIF courses and their learning outcomes

The minor is a six-course program that includes the following required courses:

1. THEO107: Introduction to Religious Studies. This course provides students necessary background in different religious traditions, and also in methods for thinking about religion. This course is a required core course that is already taught in multiple sections each semester and is mandated to include a consideration of issues of religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue. 

2. SOCL145: Religion and Society. This course will give students methodological and conceptual tools for thinking about interreligious relations in the contemporary world. This course is a Social Science Tier 2 core course that is already taught in multiple sections each semester.

3. IRIF 300: Religious Diversity and Peacemaking. This course, specific to the IRIF Minor, will explore methods from different disciplines in the study of interreligious and interfaith relations, with a particular emphasis on Comparative Theology, Sociology and Religious Studies.

4. IRIF 380: Internship.  The capstone experience is internship in an interreligious or multireligious setting, following which the student would write an analysis of the ways by which different religious traditions build community together.  This capstone experience is intended to give students an opportunity to experience and reflect on the work of developing interreligious cooperation in the contemporary world.  This internship would be administered through the internship course of the Department of Sociology but could be supervised by a faculty member from any relevant department.

Elective Courses

Include the following:

HIST323: Twentieth-Century Peacemaking

HIST300 Empire of Difference: Muslims, Christians, Jews in the Ottoman Lands

PAX201: Peace Studies Overview

PLSC375: Catholicism, Islam, and Democracy

SOCL280 American Religious Diversity from a Global Perspective (special section)

THEO186  Intro to Religious Ethics: Religion, Violence and Peacemaking (special section)

THEO276 Black World Religion

THEO356 History of Jewish/Catholic Relations 

THEO278 Women and Religion: The Body, East and West (special section)

THEO280 Religion and Film