About

Religious Studies is a humanistic and social-scientific discipline that provides windows onto a wide range of cultural phenomena and contemporary social questions.

Have you ever wondered about the meaning of life? Of death? Love? Compassion? Commitment? Welcome to Religious Studies.  The academic study of religion provides an opportunity to explore how different cultures – throughout history and in the present – grapple with these enduring questions and many others.

Have you ever noticed how often religion appears in the headlines?  How people point to religion to justify their actions and challenge those of others?  How religion seems to motivate both violence and nonviolence, both destruction and protection of life? The academic study of religion provides critical tools for analyzing how powerful ideologies, institutions, and values of the past continue today to animate not only “religious” people and societies but even the most “modern” and “secular” ones, as well.

Have you ever wanted to harness your curiosity about the world to your passion for making a meaningful difference through whatever work you choose to do? The academic study of religion examines how people make meaning.  It also provides language, insights, and conceptual frameworks for understanding and naming your own experience – “religious” or not, “spiritual” or not, atheistic, agnostic, or otherwise – and for communicating and acting on your own deepest sense of meaning and purpose.

And have you ever heard from Bates alums about how, in their careers, they rely a great deal on the critical thinking skills they honed and the broad perspectives they developed in pursuing a liberal arts education?  Religious Studies provides skills for a lifetime.  It is a great place to weave together and integrate a liberal arts education that includes the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and community-engaged learning.  We cross list with a greater variety of departments and programs than any other department – while providing the same powerful opportunities for developing your capacities to analyze, communicate, create, collaborate, and continue to learn everywhere you want to go in life.  In the words of Bates’ mission statement, the Religious Studies curriculum prepares “leaders sustained by a love of learning and a commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world.”

What are you waiting for?

Frances White of ’23 New York City presents her religious studies senior thesis, “Women With Chutzpah.” to members of Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn after a brunch on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. “I just knew I wanted to work on something that was going to be funny and enjoyable and also kind of empowering and important to myself.” — Frances White ’23 of New York City Champagne and Coca-Cola sprayed in unison as a group of White’s friends gathered outside Ladd Library on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, to watch White and her friend, Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., bind White’s thesis in religious studies, titled “Women with Chutzpah.” “Women with Chutzpah” is about “the subversive means of Jewish humor for Jewish women specifically,” says White, who looked at five female Jewish comedians for her research: Sophie Tucker, Toby Fields, Gilda Radner, Ilana Glazer, and Tiffany Haddish. “It was a way for me to just take what I love doing, which is making people laugh and using coping mechanisms of humor, and then seeing how that works in scholarly discourse.” White’s thesis adviser is Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. White is also minoring in Africana, and her studies around the concept of race helped inform the focus of her thesis. “A big part of my thesis was looking at how making fun of identity and humor is different if it's your identity, rather than someone else's.” It’s one thing when Jewish women themselves reclaim their pride in a Jewish body, White said, “but when other people are saying or using these stereotypes, it holds a very different impact.” “How do we as Jewish women talk about ourselves and then use that as empowering, while also acknowledging we know what the anti-Semitic discourses are.”

Frances White of ’23 New York City presents her religious studies senior thesis, “Women With Chutzpah.” to members of Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn after a brunch on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. “I just knew I wanted to work on something that was going to be funny and enjoyable and also kind of empowering and important to myself.” — Frances White ’23 of New York City Champagne and Coca-Cola sprayed in unison as a group of White’s friends gathered outside Ladd Library on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, to watch White and her friend, Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., bind White’s thesis in religious studies, titled “Women with Chutzpah.” “Women with Chutzpah” is about “the subversive means of Jewish humor for Jewish women specifically,” says White, who looked at five female Jewish comedians for her research: Sophie Tucker, Toby Fields, Gilda Radner, Ilana Glazer, and Tiffany Haddish. “It was a way for me to just take what I love doing, which is making people laugh and using coping mechanisms of humor, and then seeing how that works in scholarly discourse.” White’s thesis adviser is Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. White is also minoring in Africana, and her studies around the concept of race helped inform the focus of her thesis. “A big part of my thesis was looking at how making fun of identity and humor is different if it’s your identity, rather than someone else’s.” It’s one thing when Jewish women themselves reclaim their pride in a Jewish body, White said, “but when other people are saying or using these stereotypes, it holds a very different impact.” “How do we as Jewish women talk about ourselves and then use that as empowering, while also acknowledging we know what the anti-Semitic discourses are.”

Frances White of ’23 New York City presents her religious studies senior thesis, “Women With Chutzpah.” to members of Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn after a brunch on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. “I just knew I wanted to work on something that was going to be funny and enjoyable and also kind of empowering and important to myself.” — Frances White ’23 of New York City Champagne and Coca-Cola sprayed in unison as a group of White’s friends gathered outside Ladd Library on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, to watch White and her friend, Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., bind White’s thesis in religious studies, titled “Women with Chutzpah.” “Women with Chutzpah” is about “the subversive means of Jewish humor for Jewish women specifically,” says White, who looked at five female Jewish comedians for her research: Sophie Tucker, Toby Fields, Gilda Radner, Ilana Glazer, and Tiffany Haddish. “It was a way for me to just take what I love doing, which is making people laugh and using coping mechanisms of humor, and then seeing how that works in scholarly discourse.” White’s thesis adviser is Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. White is also minoring in Africana, and her studies around the concept of race helped inform the focus of her thesis. “A big part of my thesis was looking at how making fun of identity and humor is different if it's your identity, rather than someone else's.” It’s one thing when Jewish women themselves reclaim their pride in a Jewish body, White said, “but when other people are saying or using these stereotypes, it holds a very different impact.” “How do we as Jewish women talk about ourselves and then use that as empowering, while also acknowledging we know what the anti-Semitic discourses are.”

Frances White of ’23 New York City presents her religious studies senior thesis, “Women With Chutzpah.” to members of Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn after a brunch on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. “I just knew I wanted to work on something that was going to be funny and enjoyable and also kind of empowering and important to myself.” — Frances White ’23 of New York City Champagne and Coca-Cola sprayed in unison as a group of White’s friends gathered outside Ladd Library on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, to watch White and her friend, Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., bind White’s thesis in religious studies, titled “Women with Chutzpah.” “Women with Chutzpah” is about “the subversive means of Jewish humor for Jewish women specifically,” says White, who looked at five female Jewish comedians for her research: Sophie Tucker, Toby Fields, Gilda Radner, Ilana Glazer, and Tiffany Haddish. “It was a way for me to just take what I love doing, which is making people laugh and using coping mechanisms of humor, and then seeing how that works in scholarly discourse.” White’s thesis adviser is Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. White is also minoring in Africana, and her studies around the concept of race helped inform the focus of her thesis. “A big part of my thesis was looking at how making fun of identity and humor is different if it’s your identity, rather than someone else’s.” It’s one thing when Jewish women themselves reclaim their pride in a Jewish body, White said, “but when other people are saying or using these stereotypes, it holds a very different impact.” “How do we as Jewish women talk about ourselves and then use that as empowering, while also acknowledging we know what the anti-Semitic discourses are.”

Eroticism and the Divine: a comparative look at the Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda A feminist talk about eroticism and religion titled “Gardens of Oppression: In Search of Her Delight,” to be delivered by Khushi Choudhary, Bates Class of 2023, who is a candidate for a Master of Theological Studies degree at the Harvard Divinity School. Written under the direction of Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker, Choudhary’s 2023 honors thesis explores the place of eroticism in religion. Talk given on April 8, 2024, in her class CMS 235 - Introduction to the Hebrew Bible What is the Hebrew Bible (Christianity's Old Testament and Judaism's Tanakh)? This course centers perspectives of BIPOC biblical scholars who employ a range of scholarly tools and methods for exploring the content and genres of major books of the Hebrew Bible - including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings-with brief forays into selected Prophets and Wisdom literature. Topics include theories about the composition and sociopolitical contexts of the writings, the events and ideas they narrate, and the use of scripture in sustaining and contesting modern social practices, especially those related to colonization, cultural violence, and race/gender disparities. “Eroticism has no place in religion. Or so I’ve heard,” Choudhary wrote in her thesis abstract. Yet, the Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda, among other texts, complicate the separation of eros/kama and God and “invite speculation about the place of desire and passion in human-divine relationships.” “These texts have lured me on with scandalous glimpses of mutuality, equality, even sexuality as defining elements of sacred eros,” she says. “More than that, each features an unapologetically assertive female protagonist in active pursuit of the divine object of her desire. Can God really be sought and enjoyed by women like me? Not without some challenges.” Using

Eroticism and the Divine: a comparative look at the Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda A feminist talk about eroticism and religion titled “Gardens of Oppression: In Search of Her Delight,” to be delivered by Khushi Choudhary, Bates Class of 2023, who is a candidate for a Master of Theological Studies degree at the Harvard Divinity School. Written under the direction of Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker, Choudhary’s 2023 honors thesis explores the place of eroticism in religion. Talk given on April 8, 2024, in her class CMS 235 – Introduction to the Hebrew Bible What is the Hebrew Bible (Christianity’s Old Testament and Judaism’s Tanakh)? This course centers perspectives of BIPOC biblical scholars who employ a range of scholarly tools and methods for exploring the content and genres of major books of the Hebrew Bible – including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings-with brief forays into selected Prophets and Wisdom literature. Topics include theories about the composition and sociopolitical contexts of the writings, the events and ideas they narrate, and the use of scripture in sustaining and contesting modern social practices, especially those related to colonization, cultural violence, and race/gender disparities. “Eroticism has no place in religion. Or so I’ve heard,” Choudhary wrote in her thesis abstract. Yet, the Song of Songs and the Gita Govinda, among other texts, complicate the separation of eros/kama and God and “invite speculation about the place of desire and passion in human-divine relationships.” “These texts have lured me on with scandalous glimpses of mutuality, equality, even sexuality as defining elements of sacred eros,” she says. “More than that, each features an unapologetically assertive female protagonist in active pursuit of the divine object of her desire. Can God really be sought and enjoyed by women like me? Not without some challenges.” Using