Religious Studies alum Amethyst Ganaway has received the 2026 Governor's Award in the Humanities for her work celebrating Black Southern, Gullah Geechee and African diasporic foodways.
Matthew Lai strengthens student learning in Religious Studies through reflective teaching, classroom observation and complex conversations about ethics, religion and public life.
Join the Department of Religious Studies for a lecture by Marko Geslani exploring SMRTI (remembrance) and the challenges of studying religion in contemporary antsecular, neo-Orientalist and Christian triumphalist contexts. April 2, 2026. McCausland College of Arts and Sciences
On November 19, Religious Studies major Kamryn Carter successfully defended her senior Honors Thesis, "An Arendtian Politics of Life," supervised by Professor Marko Geslani. Congratulations to Kamryn on this achievement, and thanks to everyone who participated in the defense.
Join us in congratulating Bernardin Visiting Assistant Professor Matthew Lai for the successful defense of his doctoral dissertation at Drew University entitled "Political Mourning As Resistance: A Christian Social Ethics of Remembrance". To hear more about his research, plan to attend the annual Bernardin lecture this February! Well done Dr. Lai!
Dr Noah Gardiner will deliver the first lecture in the new Religious Studies Practicing Humanism series. In the talk entitled “Mysticism, Magic, and Manuscripts: Challenges in the Study of Sufism and Occult Sciences in Medieval Islam.”
In May-July 2025, the Musée du Louvre in Paris held the first ever major museum exhibition in Europe devoted to the Mamluk Sultanate, the polity that ruled Egypt, Syria, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula from 1250-1517 C.E., a crucial period in Islamic and Middle Eastern history.
Professor Marko Geslani was recently featured in a special interview for the Department of Religious Studies' Lecture Series at the University of Toronto. In the conversation, he discussed his latest research and reflected on the importance of classroom teaching in his scholarly work.
James S. Cutsinger (1953-2020), Distinguished Professor Emeritus and noted professor with the Department of Religious Studies from 1980 to 2018, had a deep and abiding love of teaching and leading eager students on intellectual adventures of the mind.
USC Religious Studies MA graduate currently teaching at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary as a professor in Ancient Christianity and Judaism.
Dr. Carbone, climatology scientist, addresses Pope Francis' statements on ecological responsibility in a talk titled: "Inside 'Laudato Si,' Pope Francis's Encyclical on Care for the Earth."
Religious Studies faculty, staff and their offices are now back in Rutledge College on the Horseshoe.
Two new Religious Studies courses have been approved for the Carolina Core as satisfying the requirements for Values, Ethics, and Social Responsibility (VSR) and Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding (AIU).