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Academics

A flexible program

Because the study of religion supports many different career paths, there is no single prescribed track for studying religion at Miami.

As a Comparative Religion major or minor, you have flexibility to choose courses that will support your career objectives. Only one course is required of all religion majors: an introduction to theory and methods. At every other stage of the major, you choose what courses you take. The same is true of the minor.

Furthermore, the major requires you to take 15 hours of electives outside the Comparative Religion department. You choose these courses from fields including languages, political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, geography, history, media studies, American studies, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. This "related hours" requirement makes it easier to double-major in religion and a related field. Most importantly, the requirement lets you customize your program of study to your professional interests.

Comparative Religion Major

The Comparative Religion major is a flexible, interdisciplinary program of study, designed to work well as a second major. The major builds your cross-cultural skills; it also prepares you to address, professionally, the religious dimension of people's identities and social issues involving religion. Such issues intersect with a wide range of fields, including law, government, education, health services, business, and nonprofit work.

Most of our department's graduates are double-majors who decide to pursue a second major in religion because they recognize its relevance to their first major. Because our department is relatively small, our double-majors often find they can receive more individualized attention from faculty in Comparative Religion than they can from faculty in their other major.

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What does the religion major give you for the job market?

  • Exposes you to a diversity of religious traditions that may inform the identities of your future colleagues or clients.
  • Introduces you more deeply to your choice of two religious traditions, or religions from two regions of the world.
  • Teaches you theories and methods that you can apply to addressing issues, challenges, or opportunities in your field of work that arise from religion.
  • Prepares you for work and leadership in a diverse world by giving you practice at engaging empathetically with beliefs, values, and cultural practices different from your own.
  • Provides you 27 credit hours of coursework designed to develop your skills in writing, critical reading, critical thinking, inquiry & analysis, and intercultural competence. (You will complete additional courses, beyond those 27 hours, which may be designed to help you develop different skills.)
  • Expands your intellectual toolkit across disciplines, by having you take courses in multiple fields.
  • Offers you a mentored senior research experience, in which you produce a paper suitable for presentation in a professional setting.
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Religion Minor

Comparative Religion dancersWhat does the religion minor give you for the job market?

  • Exposes you to a diversity of religious traditions that may inform the identities of your future colleagues or clients.
  • Introduces you more deeply to your choice of two religious traditions, or religions from two regions of the world.
  • Teaches you theories and methods that you can apply to addressing issues, challenges, or opportunities in your field of work that arise from religion.
  • Prepares you for work and leadership in a diverse world by giving you practice at engaging empathetically with beliefs, values, and cultural practices different from your own.
  • Provides you with 18 credit hours of coursework designed to develop your skills in writing, critical reading, critical thinking, inquiry & analysis, and intercultural competence.

From a graduate:

"Minoring in religion gave me a unique perspective as a doctor.  Interacting with patients is very much focused on the patient as a whole—including their religion, culture, what they think is important, and how they view the world and their own health."

Laura Barczewski
Family medicine

Learning Outcomes

At graduation, we expect that our majors can

Critical Thinking which is a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion;

Written Communication which is the development and expression of ideas in writing, including working in multiple genres and styles and using different writing technologies, and mixing text, data, and images;

Reading which is “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language” [Snow, et al., 2002]);

Intercultural Knowledge and Competence which is ‘a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts,’” (Bennett, J. M. 2008);

Effectively communicate scientific information to both non-specialist (popular) and specialist (technical)

All 黑料社区s in the Farmer School of Business must complete a Diversity Requirement as part of the required .

Your options

Any one of the following courses in the study of religion will satisfy the FSB diversity requirement. If you take one of these courses, it will also count for the Intercultural Perspectives requirement in the Global Miami Plan.

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Department of Comparative Religion

200 Upham Hall
Oxford, OH 45056
513-529-4300
Undergraduate Admission