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.
Spring 2025 Projects
Religion 402 Senior Capstone
Nara Duffie
The Sangha Behind Barbed Wire: How Japanese Americans Created a Tangible Experience of Faith, Continuity, and Community Inside the WWII Internment Camps
Elijah Frieman
The Afterlife of Nineteenth-Century Metaphysics: Contagion, Secularism, and Today’s Occult Science of Spirit
Stella Gregovich
Tenderloin Faith Practices: How Glide Memorial Church and the Faithful Fools have been Shaped by Their Neighborhood
Annie Kelley
Between Creatures and G-d: Ancient Near Eastern Agriculture, Reverent Co-Creation, and the Interpretation of Pentateuchal Shepherdry
Fall 2024 Projects
Religion 401 Senior Capstone
Sarah Dean
God’s Perfect Design: Spirituality and Physiology in the Christian Natural Birth Community
Nara Duffie
Buddhism and Christianity in the Japanese American Concentration Camps of WWII
Elijah Frieman
A No-man's Land Between the Living and the Non-living: Contagion, Modernity, and Spirit
Stella Gregovich
The Faith and Community Work of Christian Organizations in San Francisco’s Tenderloin Neighborhood
Annie Kelley
Between Creatures and G-d: Shepherdry as Reverent Co-Creation in Jacob’s Flocks
Annika Mahtani
From Sacred to Sold: An Exploration of How Yoga's Westernization has Disconnected it from its Once Religious Roots
Rio Valles
Lady of the Aztecs: Why the Virgin of Guadalupe Became a Revered Figure by the Aztecs and Their Descendants
Spring 2024 Projects
Religion 402 Senior Capstone
Audrey Amstutz
Opulent Nothingness: The Mystical Novels of Clarice Lispector
Sasha Goldman
Reaching the Limit Case: Disassembling Form and Language to Represent Deep Memories of Holocaust Trauma in Works by Gerhard Richter and Zbigniew Libera
Rosalie Kenward
Transcendent Birth: Examining Birth as a Spiritual and Religious Experience
Yana Levy
Orientalism and the Remaking of Moroccan Jewish Identity
Ruby Martinez
Teshuva: Repentance and Return: How Anti-Zionist Jews are Reimagining Holidays and Inhabiting Biblical Narratives to Envision their Olan Ha'Ba
Fall 2023 Projects
Religion 401 Senior Capstone
Audrey Amstutz
Radiant Nothingness
Sash Goldman
Giving Form to the Inconceivable: Holocaust Memory examined in Zbigniew Libera’s Lego Concentration Camp
Michael Hastings
Peripheral Circulation Ideas Transmitted through Blood in Late Medieval Christian Art
Rosalie Kenward
On the Farm: Exploring the Spiritual and Religious Roots of Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery
Grace LeBlanc
“Hear the Trumpets Hear the Pipers”: Apocalypticism in Johnny Cash’s Music
Yana Levy
The Perpetual Remaking of Moroccan Jewish Communities
Ruby Martinez
Explorations of Jewish Identity to Israel/Palestine Through the Lens of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and the Days of Awe
Ella Mattingly
The Multiplicity of Ṣalāt ( صلاة ): Frameworks of Ṣalāt’s Meaning in a Variety of Cultural Contexts
Spring 2023 Projects
Religion 402 Senior Capstone
Nicole Chase
So It Was, So It Will Be: Mirrored Dictatorships and Revolutionary Symbolism in Nicaragua
Elliot Diaz
Philo of Alexandria and Exodus 21:22-23: Ancient Biblical Citations and the Politics of Personhood
Lena Golia
Staging Their Beliefs: Religious Funeral Rites in the Ancient World
Anna Jefferis
Conduit of Sin: From Eve to Temptress
Parker Niles
Buddha in a Box: Exploring Museum and Ritual Meanings of Animate Himalayan Sculpture
Luia Soman
Psalters and Penitence: Forgiveness and Religious Violence in the First Crusade
Fall 2022 Projects
Religion 401 Senior Capstone
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
The Promise of Protection: The Revolutionary Leadership of Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich in Creating A New Jewish Identity
Christian Arnold
Breaking The Shackles of White Christianity
Julia Binder
Hindu Nationalism Versus "the West": A Rhetorical Analysis of Contemporary Hindu Nationalist Political Ideology
Sam Brinkley
Pissing On The Grave: Communal Schadenfreude and Zealous Ritual In The Public Square
Nadine Connamacher
An Instrument of (Un)Righteousness: The Use of Sin Doctrine in American Political Rhetoric
Francesca Kern
A Wesernized Worldview Deconstructed: Understanding Historical Approaches And Challenging the Legacies of Colonialism Through Vision and Memory of the Black Atlantic
Jesse Noily
Eros as Interpretation: The Place of Isaac ibn Sahula's Commentary on the Song of Songs in Classical Kabbalah
Eva Sturm-Gross
"The Book of Food"
Margaret Velto
Hallowed Be Their Name: Suberting the Heteropatriarchal God in the Christian Tradition
Rachel Wolchok
Conflicting Creation: Religious Colonization in the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Tiriti o Waitangi
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
2019-2020 Projects
RELG 401 and 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
Darlene Burker
A Life Worth Living: Sanctity of Life Versus Quality of Life in Catholic Ethics
Rehsan Bux
What Dreams May Come: Ethicality of Palliative Sedation in Catholic and Sunni Ethics
Joy Castro-Wehr
The Radical Activism of Dorothy Day Finding the Common Good in Pacifism and Economic Justice
Hannah Cipinko
Purity, Power, Restriction, and Rebellion: Niddah in the Lives of Jewish Women
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 Gordon-Guterman
God as a Woman: Trauma and Nation Formation in Second-Isaiah
Mae Hardman-Hill
Windows to the Divine: Icons and the Sacred in Greek Orthodoxy
Julian Hirsch
Acquiring and Displaying the Oberlin Near East Study Collection 1931-1965
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 Capstone
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 Projects
RELG 405 Senior Capstone
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