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About Us

The Religious Studies Department at Â鶹Æƽâ°æ offers pathways for studying religious traditions, spiritualities, and lived experiences in a variety of historical, cultural, and experiential contexts to enhance our students’ understandings of themselves and our world. Through studying religions, we gain insight into important aspects of social life: gender and sexuality, race, power, art, literature, and media, to name a few. We develop intimate portraits of diverse lives from antiquity into the present. Ours is a uniquely interdisciplinary field, employing theories and methods of disciplines from history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literary studies, and more. Our students have gone on to enjoy success in a wide variety of fields including law, government, business, education, medicine, religious leadership, journalism, and academia. We are committed to providing tools that students need for the careers of the future.

The faculty of the Religious Studies department is committed to inclusive and effective pedagogy and offers small, student-focused classes, creative assignments, and research opportunities. Our pedagogical focus across majors is on developing student capacities for the clear expression of ideas, persuasive argumentation, rigorous analysis, critical evaluation, and self-reflection, giving our students a quintessentially liberal arts education.

We offer three majors: Religious Studies, Contemplative Studies and Judaic Studes. We also offer a minor in Religious Studies.

 

The Wren Building Our department is housed in the Wren Building, the oldest U.S. academic building in continuous use. Completed in 1700, the Wren stands on Kiskiack land of the Powhatan Confederacy. It was built using enslaved labor over the course of five years. The enslaved men, women, and children who constructed the Wren also worked, ate, and slept in the building. For more information about the Wren Building, visit the Spotswood Society. For more information about the history of enslavement at W&M, visit the Lemon Project. For W&M's land acknowledgment, visit the American Indian Resources Center.