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The Plight of the Agunah in America: An Examination of the Institution of Orthodox Jewish Marriage and Its Repercussions

Wolfer, Hannah (2022)

I came to this topic of the agunah ("chained woman") after grappling with my own connection to religion and whether there is only one path to experiencing the divine. I turned to Orthodox Judaism because of my own personal ...

Walking in the Footprints of the Past: Embodied Experience at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Stern, Trevor (2022)

In October 2021, I visited the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) while on a research trip. My experience in the museum's belowground section, in a set of hallways known as "axes," made me feel as if I was adopting the identity ...

"QUEER SOUTHERN BEE-ING": EXPLORING BLACK SOUTHERN SAPPHICS' RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES IN DR. E. PATRICK JOHNSON'S HONEYPOT: BLACK SOUTHERN WOMEN WHO LOVE WOMEN

White, Lauryn (2021)

In this thesis I look at E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women as a primary text that offers a complex, deep understanding of the religious and spiritual lives of Black sapphics in the American ...

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's Defense of Judaism: From the Nineteen Letters to Biblical Commentary

Spar, Daniel (2021)

Hirsch wrote his Nineteen Letters on Judaism as a response to Jewish emancipation in Europe and the start of Reform Judaism. While emancipation of Jews had not reached Germany at the time of writing, other European countries ...

"May God Continue to Bless the United States of America": Christian Logics in Rhetorical Justifications for Humanitarian Military Missions

Schmidt, Sonia E. (2021)

Wars require rhetorical justification, and this justification often comes from the mouths of politicians. Humanitarian military missions– wars conducted with the expressed intentions of helping or saving the people who are ...

Becoming Social Justice Activists in Church: An Account of Resources that Lead to Heightened Mobilization for Progressive Causes Among White Suburban Protestant Congregations

Coen Gilbert, Dexter (2021)

Often unseen, faith-based institutions and organizations in the United States today mobilize for progressive causes in ways that vitally contribute to grassroots democracy. Most scholars approaching the topic of congregational ...

Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself : Tracing the Progress of Friendship in the Catholic-Jewish Interfaith Dialogue

Darrow, Emily M. (2021)

In 1965 the Second Vatican Council produced a document known as Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions also known as Nostra Aetate. This document marked a shift by the Vatican towards tolerance ...

If You Pray Right: A Study of Prosperity Theology's Role in the Shaping of American Christian Faith-Based Social Services Organizations

Hawkins, Molly Marie (2021)

This thesis seeks to explore the role of prosperity theology in the shaping of the landscape of American Christian faith-based social services organizations (FBOs), with specific attention focused on those FBOs that serve ...

Called' to Work; the Religious, Capitalist and Racist Roots of the Criminalization of Idleness in North America

Kegler, Fiona (2021)

Acts of idleness and labor have become moralized within American culture to end that the former is criminalized and the latter is institutionalized. This thesis asks from where does the American prioritization of work and ...

Performative Religion and Hard Labor: How Faith-Based Drug Rehabilitation Programs Operate Within the Ideological Framework of the Prison Industrial Complex

Bass, Nathan (2021)

This thesis takes theoretical framings of the relation between the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and the Global South and extends them to reveal how non-carceral faith-based rehabilitation programs operate under the same ...

YSA, WHY I STAY: AN EXPLORATION OF BELIEF, RITUAL, PRACTICE, and POLICY in the CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Walton, Paige (2020)

In this thesis I provide historical contextualization of contemporary Church doctrine and official statements, as well as explore the transitional moments in the church's history as shown by General Conference talks and ...

Two Cowardly Ruffians Committed the Coldest-Blooded Murder in the History of the World: Constructing Criminality, Sexuality, and Jewish Masculinity in the Leopold and Loeb Case

Wise, Allison Riley (2020)

In the summer of 1924, nineteen-year-olds Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb committed what would come to be called "the crime of the century" when they murdered fourteen-year-old Robert Franks on the outskirts of Chicago. ...

America's Pastor: Billy Graham, The Civil Rights Movement, and Religion in American Politics

Tortolani, Lucy (2020)

Billy Graham is a fixture in American history, as both a religious force and as social figure; to many he is a household name. Graham's tremendous popularity from the 1950s through the early 2000s, as well as his ability ...

Parochially Political: An Examination of The Political Nature of the Eucharist in the Thought of St. Augustine

King, David (2020)

This thesis proposes to re-examine St. Augustine's political thought through an exploration of the political ramifications of the sacrament of the Eucharist, particularly as it is described in Augustine's "Sermon 227." In ...

The Study of Lived Religion Through Different Interpretations: An Ethnography on Perceptions of Singaporean Malay-Muslims' Islamic Prayer Ritual Practice

Gan, Julia (2020)

There are differences between traditional Islamic textual interpretations and modern Singaporean state interpretations of the mandatory Islamic prayer ritual of wudu (ablution in preparation for prayer) and salat (the five ...

“With God’s people”: Individual Paths and Communal Belonging at an LGBTQ+ Church

Weber, Michael (2019)

American religious scholarship in the late 20th century identified a supposed cultural shift away from communal authority and towards individual interpretation when it came to religious identity. This thesis examines the ...

Religion as a Way of Life: Determining conceptions of religion in the Wisconsin v. Yoder opinions

Ryle, Oona (2019)

The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion, but nowhere in the religion clauses or even in the Constitution does a clear definition of ‘religion’ exist. This poses a problem to justices trying to determine ...

A Shul of Their Own: Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and the Struggle to Create Communities for the Marginalized

Silverman, Rachel (2019)

Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) is a non-denominational self-proclaimed synagogue for LGBT people and allies in New York City. It strives to be truly pluralistic and welcome each Jew regardless of their identity, ...

The Future Belongs to the Brave: Some Thoughts on the Fate of Decolonization in Religious Studies

Alejandro, Joseph Mario Burkley (2019)

This senior thesis project contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding decolonization efforts in the field of religious studies. I argue that scholars, having already devoted much focus to understanding the colonial ...

Conceptualizing Ancient and Contemporary Awakenings: An Analysis of Themes of Social Structures and Individualism in Ancient Gnosis, the New Age, and the Modern Day

Emmert, Ethan (2019)

In this thesis, I analyze the claim that April DeConick makes in The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion From Antiquity to Today that the New Age was inspired by ancient Gnosis. ...

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