Current 2025-2026 Graduate Courses

DSR FALL GRADUATE COURSES BEGIN TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2025

DSR WINTER GRADUATE COURSES BEGIN MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 2026

Please check back regularly for updates. This page last updated on July 2, 2025. 

Graduate students from other departments at U of T are welcome to enroll in DSR courses without completing a course add form. Non-DSR students should check with their home department to confirm if they require the form.

Please contact Director of Graduate Studies at graddir.religion@utoronto.ca, or the Graduate Administrator, Fereshteh Hashemi, at religion.grad@utoronto.ca, with any questions you may have about the Department for the Study of Religion.

DSR Graduate Timetable 

Current: PDF iconDraft DSR Grad Timetable 2025-2026.pdf

On this page:

→ DSR Courses - Year
→ DSR Courses - Fall
→ DSR Courses - Winter
→ U of T Language Courses
→ Other Courses of Interest

DSR Courses - Year

RLG1000Y PhD Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
Simon Coleman (Fall) and Srilata Raman (Winter)
Wednesdays 11 am to 1:30 pm, JHB213

The seminar is the core course of the Department’s doctoral program. It is required of, and limited to, all first year Ph.D. students of the Department. The purpose of the course is to provide doctoral students with a general understanding of the study of religion through constructive engagement with a number of fundamental challenges--theoretical and methodological--that commonly confront researchers in the field. It revisits major interpretive controversies that have shaped the history of "religious studies" as an interdisciplinary field, inviting students to join in this ongoing scholarly conversation.
 

DSR Courses - Fall

RLG1002HF Philosophy of Religion Gateway
James DiCenso
Mondays 3-5pm, JHB213

This gateway course introduces students to the philosophy of religion. It does so by working through some of the foundational elements of modern attempts to understand and assess religious concepts through various combinations of reason and experience. Additionally, we will utilize principal methods of analysis (e.g., hermeneutical, conceptual, phenomenological); and provide examples of central topics in the field. By its conclusion, students should be better able to locate their research within the field and imagine their own ways of teaching it to undergraduates. 

 

RLG1200HF MA Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
Nada Moumtaz
Wednesdays 11am to 1pm, Location OI11200

The M.A. Workshop Group is required of all first year M.A students of the Department. M.A. students will meet every week during the first term in a seminar course designed to provide rigorous training in method and theory in the study of religion. Topics considered include: historical development of religious studies, significance and application of interdisciplinary methodologies, key theorists and theoretical controversies.

 

RLG2014HF Digital Religion: Mediation and Method
Pamela Klassen
Fridays 10am to 12pm, BI305

Digital Religion orients students to two critical issues in the study of religion: 1) how do digital modes and platforms shift how people and communities mediate, experience, and deploy religion, and 2) how do digital tools (including AI) transform research methods and modes of knowledge sharing. Readings will include historical, anthropological, and media studies approaches, as well as addressing issues such as digital ritual, algorithmic self-fashioning, and Indigenous data sovereignty. Assignments will enable students to develop skills with digital humanities tools, as well as abilities to undertake the ethical deliberation required to use them.

 

JPR2051HF/RLG459H1F Fanaticism: A Political History
Ruth Marshall
Wednesdays 3-5pm, Location ES1047

This seminar in theory will explore the modern history of the concept of ‘fanaticism’ and tis role in the development of political modernity. A focus on the concept of the “fanatic” (and its cognates) from the perspective of its various uses in political and religious thought from the Early Modern period through the Enlightenment and up to the present day, provides a fascinating opportunity for a critical review of the secular, rationalist, and scientific assumptions underwriting modern political forms and concepts, especially those of liberal democracy. At the same time, the course will offer critical insight into the ways in which religious and political differences among colonial “others” were, and continue to be, central to the elaboration of Western theoretical discourse on fanaticism and extremism as forms of “political pathology”. (Given by the Departments of Political Science and Religion, hosted by Poli Sci)

 

RLG2081HF/TRP6523HF Trauma, Healing and Transformation
Marsha Hewitt
Tuesdays 1-4pm, JHB213

Study of key theoretical concepts in psychoanlaytic theory, i.e. the unconscious, repression, aggression, sexuality, dreams, unconscious fantasy, transference and projection and their implications for understanding religious experience and belief in the work of Sigmund Freud, D. W. Winnicott, R. D. Laing, and other analytic writers. Freud was consistent in asserting that theory must reflect and elaborate clinical observation. Thus, the course will also include extensive discussions of clinical case material in order to illustrate the ways in which these concepts illuminate and help explain not only internal psychic experience but also the ways in which culture, society and politics structure and shape the human mind. The course will also examine the historical trajectories of psychoanalytic concepts, including some of the main controversies and debates around issues such as repression, dissociation and trauma.

 

RLG3114HF/RLG453H1F Christianity and Judaism in a Colonial Context
Ronald Charles and John Marshall
Fridays 11am to 1pm, UC248

This seminar sets the study of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism into relation with a movement in critical historiography of the modern world, namely postcolonial theory. Though the term “postcolonial theory” encompasses a panoply of approaches and dispositions, the basic insight that founds the seminar is the non-givenness of colonial domination and the resulting close attention to the endeavour of constructing such domination as “natural” as well as to the subaltern strategies of negotiation to which such situations typically give rise. Ideally, the conversation between contemporary postcolonial theory and research and scholarship on early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism will go two ways. On the one hand, students of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism into awareness of methodological developments in historical research on other periods and settings. On the other hand, postcolonial theorists can benefit from how some of their insights are modified, applied, and developed in the context of the ancient world. This, in turn, expands and strengthens both the scope of the theory and the field of early Christian studies.

 

RLG3144H Isaiah and Post-Exilic Prophecy
Judith Newman
Mondays 1pm to 3pm, JHB213

The course considers the various ways in which the role of Israelite prophecy is reconceived in the post-exilic period, particularly as this relates to the retrieval and extension of Isaianic traditions.  The course will focus on the exilic and post-exilic expansion of the book of Isaiah and the deployment of Isaiah traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and other early Jewish literature. The prerequisite languages for this course are Biblical Hebrew and Koine Geek.

 

RLG3200HF Politics of Bible Translation
Naomi Seidman
Tuesdays 11am to 1pm, JHB213

This course will explore the history of Bible translation from antiquity to our own day, focusing on translation as political and cultural as well as linguistic negotiation. We will ground ourselves in the history of translation theory (and in particular in postcolonial translation theory), recognizing that theoretical approaches to the problem of translation themselves emerge from theologically and politically charged historical conditions. With our philological, cultural, and historical tools in hand, we will explore the history of translations and revisions of the Bible, immerse ourselves in unsual examples of translation (children’s Bibles, the Emoji Bible, R. Crumb’s Genesis, etc.), and try our hand at the craft of Bible translation.

RLG3621HF/RLG434H1F Modern Jewish Thought
Ken Green
Thursdays 11am to 1pm, UC44

The course will consist of a close study of major themes, texts, and thinkers in modern Jewish thought.  Attention will be focused on the historical development of modern Judaism, with special emphasis on the Jewish religious and philosophical responses to the challenges of modernity.  Among the modern Jewish thinkers to be considered will be:  Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Krochmal, Steinheim, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Buber, Scholem, Strauss, and Fackenheim. For 2025-2026: The Thought of Emil Fackenheim

RLG3746HF Women and South Asian Religions
Arti Dhand and Christine Chojnacki
Tuesdays 11am to 1pm, VC304 

In Indian society, the role models of the women can vary greatly today as in the past. To investigate diverse aspects of the roles of women in religion, the course will be organised around three main themes. In the lay life, we will examine the various images of virtue, practices of observance and acts of patronage; in the ascetic life, we will look at the role of saints and nuns and the debates about their access to salvation, which vary from tradition to tradition and from period to period; and in the divine world, we will study the positions of the goddesses and their specific functions.

RLG4003HF Dissertation Writing Seminar
Kyle Smith
Every other week, Mondays, 10am to 12pm, JHB213

This seminar seeks to support students in the dissertation process, from proposal to successful defense by providing a space to discuss research and writing practices. The seminar meets twice per month over the full academic year and focuses on workshopping dissertation chapters. Along the way, it also covers topics ranging from setting a writing schedule and cultivating better writing habits to improving style, strengthening prose, sharpening analyses, and making clearer arguments.  Prerequisite: candidacy achieved.
 

DSR Courses - Winter

RLG1004HS, Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity
Judith Newman
Tuesdays 3-5pm, JHB213

This gateway seminar will introduce students to approaches to the study of religions of Mediterranean antiquity.  The purpose of the course is to provide a broad understanding of the history of the discipline and how methods have evolved in the study of Hebrew Bible, Early Christianity, and Early Judaism in the context of Greco-Roman antiquity.  Topics covered in the course include source and form criticism; archaeology; social sciences; conceptualization of diversity; the material text; and positionality. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to teach a range of methods at the introductory level and equipped to refine an approach to frame their own research projects. 

RLG2002HS Material and Sensory Cultures and Religious Practice
Karen Ruffle
Thursdays 10am to 12pm, UTM, MN4207

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar examines the role of material and sensory cultures in lived religious experience in comparative perspective. The goal of the course is to study the complex relationships, hierarchies, and roles of images, objects, the built environment, and ritual performance, and the cultural construction of the human sensorium (including consideration of whether a religious sensorium exists) in its external and internal forms. Using case studies, the tools to analyze and describe materiality and/or sensory experiences in religious practices will be developed through the study of topics such as sacred objects, space and place, ethnography of the object (how to write about things), the idea of a religious sensorium, perception, digital religion, and the non-human.

 

RLG2016HS/RLG417H1S Radical Evil
Marsha Hewitt
Mondays 1-3pm, JHB213 or TC22 (to be confirmed)

Are people innately evil, or do they become evil due to negative life experiences? Can a universal internal moral imperative rooted in an innate good will exist independently of self-interest? Contemporary theorists from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and sciences argue that human beings are motivated by amoral internal forces that are shaped into moral action through diverse cultural learning processes. Notions such as the nature of subjectivity, agency, relationality, and capacities for critical self reflection are brought into question. These and other issues are explored through the lenses of philosophy, social theory, psychoanalysis and religion in dialogue with relevant classical and contemporary thinkers. 

RLG2017HS Religion, Secularism and the Public Sphere
J. Barton Scott
Tuesdays 1-3pm, JHB213

In a secular age, public religion is—to recall Mary Douglas’ definition of dirt—matter out of place. Since the early modern consolidation of the category, “religion” has been understood as fundamentally private, cordoned off from politics, economics, and other social domains both conceptually and (in some cases) legally. But despite the emergence of regulatory structures meant to circumscribe or privatize it, religion has remained a vital component of public life worldwide, thus posing significant problems for secularist modes of thought. To make sense of this predicament, recent work in the emergent field sometimes described as critical secular studies has undertaken a critical reappraisal of secularism and related categories. This seminar introduces students to this ongoing scholarly conversation by asking how a critical genealogy of “the public” can contribute to it. What is a public? What is the genealogy of this term as a category of modern thought, and what is its relationship to political liberalism (or “government by discussion”)? Assigned readings will survey critical approaches to these questions emerging from media studies, postcolonial studies, critical legal studies, queer theory, and affect theory, as well as various fields within religious studies.  The focus for 2025-2026 will be on revisiting the major works that defined the field of critical secular studies over the past 25 years or so, as well as select recent interventions in the field.

 

RLG2023HS/RLG411H1S Mystical Poetics
Alexander Hampton
Thursdays 5-7pm, OI2198

This course will consider some of the consummate poet-mystics of Western Christianity, including Iacopone, Dante, Hadewijch, Silesius, Traherne, and Blake. It will examine how the recording of mystical experience in poetic form allows the mystical writer to achieve a result not otherwise possible in discursive communication. Readings will explore how, through the practice of mystical poetry, language becomes approximate and playful, capable of giving presence to absence, materiality to the immaterial, and lexicon to the non-lexical. It is recommended that graduate students have some facility in at least one language in addition to language of instruction (Italian, Dutch, German). 

 

RLG2040HS Commentary and Practice
Bob Gibbs
Thursdays 10am to 12pm, JHB213

Commentary is a priviledged genre in many religious traditions. It also has a long standing value in contemporary scholarly traditions. The course will explore different kinds of commentary, looking at theories of writing, of studying and of meaning constituted across generations. We will also explore commentaries in different religious traditions. Thus the course will be a crossroads of historical traditions and scholarly approaches to religions. The seminars will be organized around excerpts from specific commentary texts and theoretical reflections on those texts.  

 

RLG3243HS/RLG449H1S Synoptic Gospels (The Sources of the Gospels)
John Kloppenborg
Tuesdays 9am to 12pm, JHB213 or OI11200 (to be confirmed)

This course investigates the literary relationships among the Synoptic gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, and other early gospels. Special attention is paid to the major solutions to the Synoptic Problem current today, the revival of the Griesbach hypothesis and the Farrer hypothesis, and recent advances in the Two-Document hypothesis. A range of issues will be presented, from the assessment of minor agreements to theories of synopsis construction. The currently competing hypotheses will be tested carefully by an examination of Synoptic texts.

RLG3425HS/RLG468H1S Special Topics in Buddhism: Transnational Buddhism
Sinae Kim
Wednesdays 1-3pm, OI11200

How and why do Buddhists move across borders, and what does it take to establish transnational Buddhist networks? Since its emergence in 5th century BCE India, Buddhism has been a highly mobile and adaptable tradition, actively shaping and being shaped by cross-cultural exchanges. From ancient pilgrimage routes and monastic networks to modern diasporic communities and digital Buddhist spaces, the movement of people, texts, objects, languages, and ideas has played a crucial role in Buddhism’s evolution.  This course explores Buddhism’s transnational dimensions from philosophical, anthropological, and historical perspectives, examining how Buddhist traditions have been transmitted, adapted, and redefined across time and space. We will analyze transnational Buddhist movements at both the micro-level (e.g., individual agents, families, sects, linguistic adaptations) and the macro-level (e.g., imperial patronage, trade networks, migration, and globalized Buddhist institutions).  Topics include premodern Buddhist exchanges such as the Silk Road transmission of Buddhist texts, missionary activities of monks like Xuanzang, the role of translation in shaping Buddhist thought, and the movement of Buddhist relics and icons. We will also explore modern and contemporary Buddhist transnationalism, including the spread of engaged Buddhism, transnational Buddhist activism, monastic and lay migration, and the influence of digital media on Buddhist communities worldwide.  Through primary sources, case studies, and critical scholarship, this course will provide a deeper understanding of Buddhism as a dynamic and border-crossing tradition, fostering discussion on the challenges and opportunities of transnational Buddhist networks in a globalized world.

RLG3725HS/RLG463H1S Tibetan Buddhist Canons
Rory Lindsay
Mondays 3-5pm, UC248

This course explores Tibetan Buddhism through careful readings of selected canonical sources. It examines prominent Buddhist stories as preserved in various versions of the canon and more obscure canonical materials not typically referenced in commentarial literature or modern scholarship. Students will learn about traditional printing practices and the material aspects of book making in Tibet. They will also be introduced to the ritual roles of Tibetan canons and ways in which these books have acted as community members. Readings will be conducted in English, though graduate students with a background in Tibetan will be expected to consult Tibetan source texts.

RLG4003HS Dissertation Writing Seminar
Kyle Smith
Every other week, Mondays, 10am to 12pm, JHB213

This seminar seeks to support students in the dissertation process, from proposal to successful defense by providing a space to discuss research and writing practices. The seminar meets twice per month over the full academic year and focuses on workshopping dissertation chapters. Along the way, it also covers topics ranging from setting a writing schedule and cultivating better writing habits to improving style, strengthening prose, sharpening analyses, and making clearer arguments.  Prerequisite: candidacy achieved.

NMC2056HS Readings in Qu’ran and Tafsir
Walid Saleh
Thursdays 5-7pm, Location TBC

This course is an introduction to the rich literature that has grown around the study of the Qur'an in the Arabic tradition. In addition to readings in the Qur'an students will read selections from works in ma'ani, and majaz; we will then move to the major works in tafsir; selections include material from al-Tabari, al-Tha`labi, al-Zamakhshari, al-Qurtubi, al-Razi, Ibn Taymiyah, and al-Suyuti. The course will culminate in the study of al-Itqan of al-Suyuti. The course will also introduce students to the major reference works that are used for research in this field.
Prerequisites: At least two years of Arabic, or advanced reading knowledge, or the permission of the instructor.
 

U of T Language Courses Available to Graduate Students

GER6000HF/S Reading German for Graduate Students

In this course German reading knowledge is taught following the grammar-translation method designed for graduate students from the Humanities. It is an intensive course that covers German grammar with focus on acquiring essential structures of the German language to develop translation skills. The course is conducted in English, and consequently participants do not learn how to speak or write in German, but rather the course focuses exclusively on reading and translating German. Prior knowledge of German not mandatory. By the end of the course, students should be able to handle a broad variety of texts in single modern Standard German. This course is not intended for MA or PhD students in German.

FSL6000HF/S Reading French Course for Graduate Students

This course is designed to develop students' reading skills particularly as they pertain to research interests. Some remedial grammar, but the primary emphasis is on comprehension of a wide variety of texts in French. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT IN ENGLISH.

Latin graduate courses through the Centre for Medieval Studies

Greek and Latin graduate courses through the Department of Classics

Tri-Campus Language Courses at the Undergraduate Level

Other undergraduate language courses such as Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Yiddish, can be found by using the U of T Timetable Builder

Other Courses of Interest

The departments below may also be offering courses of interest to DSR students. Please follow the links for details.