Religion

Religion: Student Projects

Senior Capstone courses are designed to provide a culminating experience to the religion major. 

There are two paths to completing the capstone experience. One option is the RELG 401-402 sequence that is taken during the fall and spring semesters, respectively. This two-course sequence is designed for those who choose to research and write an extended research paper as a capstone experience.

The second option is RELG 405, Senior Readings Colloquium, which is only offered in the spring semester. This course is designed for students to have shared reflection about their academic work in the major through reading and writing reflections on common themes within the field of religion.


2022-23 Projects
Religion Senior Capstones

Emory Bradley     
Intertwined: Christianity and Politics in Rural North Carolina

Chloe Cattaneo    
When Jews cry out to God, and Buddha Answers: Jewish Suffering in the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, and Norman Fischer

Sophia Cotraccia  
The Steelband and African Religion in Trinidad and Tobago

Alex Davisson      
One Hundred Years of Constraining Catholic Women: Female Identity in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien Años de Soledad

Elliot Diaz             
Philo of Alexandria and Exodus 21:22-3: Legitimizing the Particular into the Universal

Jenna Frizzell       
Early Religious History of Epidemiology in Japan: The Gods that Caused the First Epidemics

Lena Golia            
Staging Their Beliefs: Religious Funeral Rites in the Ancient World

Isaiah Hammer    
Prophet of Doom: Bob Dylan and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Catherine Horowitz  
Nice Jewish Golems: Performed Jewish Masculinity in the Work of Julie Weitz

Anna Jefferis        
Biblical Femininity: Eve in Genesis and Its Retellings

Signe Meyer        
The Seduction of Western Secularism: Saudi Religious Reform under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Parker Niles         
Buddas Behind Glass: Exploring Museum Meanings of Animate Tibetan Bronzes

Marshall Palacios
Our Lady of Liberation and Subjugation as Depicted in La Rosa de Guadalupe

Lucy Soman         
“Forgive us our Trespasses”: Weaponizing Forgiveness through the Christian Apocalyptic in the First Crusade


Spring 2022 Projects
RELG 402 Senior Capstone

Charlotte Apter
Will You Swear by the Old Jewish Oath? The Revolutionary Leadership of Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman in the Jewish Labor Movement

Julia Binder
I am a Hindu; I am an Indian and I am a Man: A Rhetorical Analysis of Contemporary Hindu Nationalist Political Ideology

Nadine Connamacher
An Instrument of (Un)Righteousness: The Use of Divine Morality in American Political Rhetoric

Jesse Noily
Eros as Interpretation: Isaac ibn Sahula's Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Invention of a Kabbalistic Hermeneutics


Spring 2021 Projects
RELG 402 Senior Capstone

Alex Khater
The Roots of Division Bewteen the Mondern-Day Evangelical Christian and American Muslim Communities

Margo McLean
Is Astrology a Religion?  Symbolism of Zodiac in Art and Popular Culture

Gianna Volonte
Interpersonal Forgiveness: An Approach of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Rachel Wolchok
Conflicting Creation: Religious Colonization in the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Tiriti o Waitingi


Spring 2020 Projects
RELG 402 Senior Capstone

Nalin Beckman
Contemporary Issues in Mithila Art

Mathew Bickett
Eschatology, Liturgy, and Ethics in David Lang’s the little match girl passion

Sophia Brewer-Thompson   
Diverging Values: An Argument for Comprehensive Sex Education in Modern Day Catholicism

Lucy Brown           
Finding the Bible in Contemporary Literature: Pullman’s Critical Rewrite of Genesis 3

William Cramer     
The Rise and Fall of Qigong

Johan Gelfand       
The Guru and the Rebbe: Relationality in the Devotional Practices of Neem Karoli Baba Maharaj-ji and Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Noa Lewis             
Catholic Ethical Analysis of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Cloning, and the Family

Hayley Segall         
1984: Trauma and the Evolution of the Punjabi Skih Identity

Olivia Summers     
Incarceration and Christianity: Prison Fellowship in the United States


Spring 2019 Projects
RELG 402 Senior Capstones

Katie Ryan-O'Flaherty
The Rural Urban Divide in Moroccan Walis

Shannon Silberhorn  
Mary Church Terrell: Public and Private Motherhood

Bryton Smith 
Nature of the Crescent: Humans and the Natural World in Genesis 1-11 and Mesopotamian Mythology

Sarah Williams         
Body and Blood: Divine Violence in the Mystical Writings of Medieval Women

Jackson Zinn-Rowthorn        
Authority, Abuse, and the Construction of Meaning in American Renzai Zen Communities         


Fall 2018 Projects
RELG 405 Senior Capstone

Sam Bailey    
Out of the Ground: An Ecofeminist Response to Lynn White Jr.'s The Histroical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis

Alex Broekhuijse       
Medea’s Madness: An Analysis of the Role of Religious Delusions in the Case of Andrea Yates

Evan Corey    
The Market as God: Market Fundamentalist Rhetoric in a Christian Deist Framework

Linnea Halsten          
The NoDAPL Resistance as a Practice of Sioux Religion

Emily Kelkar  
Feminism through Temporary Marriage in Shi'I Iran

Megan Kenney          
Becoming Change: Octavia Butler’s Earthseed and Green Religious Revitalization

Keifer Ludwig
Not Just Cunning: The Existential Importance of the Kitsune Within a Mytho-Religious Framework


Spring 2018 Projects
RELG 402 Senior Capstone

Ethan Aronson       
A Covenantal Theology of Protest: The Jewish Tradition of Moral Confrontation with God

Owen Ellerkamp      
Purifying the Sacred: How Hindu Nationalism Reshapes Environmentalism in Contemporary India

Claire Kotarski        
Gay Shamans and Gatekeepers: Radical Faeries and the Implications of “Playing Indian” in the New Age   

Rebecca Primoff       
“Muscle Judaism:” The German Origins of Modern Israeli Masculinity

Frances Purcell         
Rethinking the Purpose of Religion Education: Toward the Sociological Study of Religion in Public Schools

Daniel Thin   
Pluralism in Contemporary Burmese Buddhism


Fall 2017 Presentations
RELG 405 Senior Capstone Seminar in Religious Studies

Eitan Barkow
Marketing Mindfulness: Issues of Race and Religious Identity in American Convert Buddhism

Ryanne Berry
Reclaiming the Body: The Corporeal Spirituality, Physical Love, and Social Gain of Women Medieval Mystics

James Flemming
Islam on the Internet: The Great ‘Original’ Rebranding

Emily Isaacson
Faith-Based Community Organizations and their Contribution to Social Justice Movements: Building Diversity and Practicing Allyship and Solidarity in United States Cities

Abbie McCrea
Religion as a Positive Influence on Public Health: Faith Based Organizations Working to Eradicate Malarie

Lucas Nikkanen
Faith, Becoming and Doubt: Two Conversations with Paul Tillich

Jones Pitsker
Speeding Toward the End Eco-Apocalypse in Earth First! and MaddAddam

Noah Schiller
Gandhi’s Non-Violence as Spiritual Grounds for an Alternative Vision of Revolution

Michal Schorsch
Candomblé within Capoeira Religious Elements of the Afro-Brazilian Dance-Fight Form

Oliver Smith
Sounds of the Living Light: Understanding Hildegard of Bingen’s Mystical Impulse through Artistic Expression and Musical Composition

Olivia Tsang
A Sacred Biography Retold: Including Manga in Buddhist Scripture

Riley Walters
Does Virtue Take Two? Filling in St. Augustine’s conception of Christian Marriage with Mengzi’s Confucian Virtue Ethics