DEI Statement

The Department of Religious Studies (RLST) offers courses on Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Indigenous Traditions, and New Religious Movements. Our mission is to uphold the highest standards of scholarship, teaching and public engagement. Crucial to this is the study of a variety of religious traditions, their histories and texts, and their entanglements across the Mediterranean, Middle East, South Asia (including India and Tibet), Africa, Europe, and the Americas. We deal explicitly with one of the most salient social markers in the modern West: religion, which serves as both a framework for inclusion and marginalization.  In addition to offering a comprehensive assessment of the historical development and of the social, cultural, political, ritual, intellectual, philosophical and practical manifestations of a variety of religious traditions, we interrogate widespread misconceptions regarding religion and religious groups as well as the historical biases of our discipline. One result of this has been that scholars who study non-Western philosophical, textual and ritual traditions, whose work straddles traditional disciplinary divisions, and who engage with cutting-edge and revisionist perspectives have found a home in our department.

RLST is home to a group of scholars with diverse interdisciplinary connections and close ties to cognate programs. The CU Mediterranean Studies Group brings together scholars from across the Humanities and Arts at CU Boulder and the Front Range, organizing workshops and public-facing scholarly events, that address the intersections of religion, society, culture and institutions; its sister organization, with a robust programming including international conferences and nearly 2000 collaborators in over 40 countries, the Mediterranean Seminar, is the leading Mediterranean Studies project worldwide. 

The Tibet Himalaya Initiative (THI) at CU Boulder is an interdisciplinary hub for research, teaching, and public engagement on Tibet and the Himalayas, operated under the aegis of the Center for Asian Studies. THI invites guest speakers for lectures on Tibetan and Himalayan culture, religion, and society, and hosts visiting artists (writers, painters, and filmmakers) throughout the year. Through public lectures, graduate colloquia, translation conferences, art exhibits, and film screenings, THI serves two primary constituencies: (1) an interdisciplinary community of CU students and faculty spanning the disciplines of Geography, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Musicology, Sociology, and Linguistics and increasingly drawing heritage students from Tibetan and Himalayan cultures, and (2) the Front Range community in Colorado with a long abiding interest in Tibet and the Himalayas from the perspective of both sport (mountaineering) and spirituality (Tibetan Buddhism). 

The Program in Jewish Studies brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from English, German and Slavic Languages and Literatures, History, Music, Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and other fields to promote the critical examination of Jewish thought, culture, and religion. Through its undergraduate degrees, graduate certificate, student research and internship opportunities, archival collections, public-facing programming, and partnerships with civic organizations across Colorado, the Program seeks to “do Jewish Studies differently” and build bridges between the academy and the broader public.

Through our research and interdisciplinary initiatives, our faculty embody a range of perspectives and seek to cultivate a bold intellectual space where curiosity, openness, and humility are central values. Additionally, we view America-centered and global perspectives as being complementary. This is because new conceptual vocabularies open us up to new ways of seeing the world. When our basic concepts are left uninterrogated, they become sites for the replication of familiar structures. We believe there is inherent value in studying and teaching incommensurable difference because it allows us to see our participation in the reproduction of systems of violence, some of which are perhaps inescapable.

We believe in empathy as a critical tool and are committed to interrogating systemic (often Eurocentric given the history of the discipline of Religious Studies) biases in the study of religion. Our Mediterranean Studies initiatives are grounded in the fact that interactions among Christians, Muslims and Jews from Africa, Europe and West Asia lie at the foundation of modernity and “Western Civilization.” Our Tibetan and Himalayan initiatives address inequities in globalization processes, including ongoing colonialism and interethnic domination, the effects of exile and diaspora, and issues of cultural hybridity, translation, and appropriation, while giving visibility to Tibetan writers, artists, and Buddhist leaders living in China and South Asia on the international stage. The Program in Jewish Studies seeks to explore the voices of diverse groups across the globe through initiatives such as the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, North America’s first chair in Israel/Palestine Studies, and a grant from the Luce Foundation to explore the experiences of Jews of color in the United States.    

We believe in the importance of amplifying marginalized voices, in a way that preserves a genuine and accurate sense of the history of the various religious traditions. For us, this includes individuals and groups marginalized by the cleavages of class and caste, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, but also addressing subversive elements of religious praxis and popular forms of religiosity (in contrast to the canonical and the orthodox). This means examining the history of the discipline, its early ties to orientalism and colonialism, its ongoing textual bias, and the epistemologies foreclosed in the process. At the same time, we recognize that rigorous philological analysis is still an essential dimension of our work. This is crucial if we are to create welcoming spaces where people can feel seen and heard, but it is also true that the amplification of minoritized voices offers a robust capacity to understand culture in a way that benefits everyone (and not just members of underrepresented communities).

RLST welcomes the university-wide initiative to make CU Boulder more inclusive in ways that recognize merit as primary, as these efforts align with the work RLST has done for years in terms of educating CU students about diverse religious traditions based on a broad range of faculty expertise. 

A diverse body of faculty, students, and staff is necessary for CU Boulder to fulfill its goal of serving the people of Colorado, the nation, and the world by bringing together a vibrant array of cultures, experiences, and perspectives. Finally, we view community engagement in public outreach on the richness, complexity and diversity  of religious traditions as an essential part of our work. Today current moral, political, and climatological crises are foregrounding issues that RLST has historically studied. If that trend continues, our commitment and contributions to contributing to the excellence of the study of religion at CU Boulder will be more important than ever.