Course of Study: This multidisciplinary program seeks to prepare students with both knowledge of a religious world and the tools to study that world, including language training where appropriate. The program for each candidate for the Master of Arts degree in religious studies consists of 36 points of course work (nine courses) in addition to either a thesis project or an exam:

1. Required course G90.1001, Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (4 points).
2. Eight courses (32 points) on religious life and practice that combine a disciplinary and a cultural focus.
   
   Courses often speak to both areas of study (e.g., History of 19th-Century American Christianity uses a historical approach to cover religious life in the United States). Therefore, a student’s course trajectory will be worked out with close faculty advice. By graduation, students should have a grasp of the tools of at least one disciplinary focus and a working knowledge of at least one cultural area.
   
   Disciplinary Focus: During the first semester of study, students are introduced to a number of theoretical approaches to religion and the history of the ongoing public and academic conversations about religion. Urged to employ a multidisciplinary approach in the program, students benefit from choosing for themselves the disciplinary approach they find most useful for thinking about religion. Disciplinary foci include history; anthropology and sociology; performance studies and cultural studies; literary, hermeneutic, and philosophical approaches; gender and sexuality studies; and journalism (see Area of Study: Religion and Journalism, below).
   
   Cultural Focus: Instead of focusing on one specific religious tradition, students are encouraged to structure their study around a chosen cultural and geographic area. This allows them to employ the diverse resources of New York University and compels them to engage with religion in its concrete social, economic, political, and historical contexts. When it is grounded in empirical study within a specific context, “religion” serves as a complex heuristic tool in the analysis of other social processes and rhetorical formations in which it is embedded. Cultural foci include ancient Mediterranean; East Asia; Latin America; modern Europe; modern and medieval Middle East; Western Middle Ages; and religious life in the United States.
   
   
3. Where language study is deemed necessary, students may use two courses (8 points) for intermediate or advanced-level language study, reducing the above requirement to six courses (24 points) in addition to Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (4 points). Furthermore, students are encouraged to employ the numerous University and local resources to pursue informal language study.

Concentration: Religion and Journalism

As religion appears with growing force in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of a globalizing world, its representation in various media, electronic and print, likewise grows in importance. The Program in Religious Studies has joined forces with the Department of Journalism to provide an area of study within the graduate program that provides education and training for students seeking careers as professional newspaper, magazine, or broadcast journalists with an expertise on religion. This area of study draws on courses offered by both the Program in Religious Studies and the Department of Journalism. The requirements include a final project in long-form journalism, an article aimed at a sophisticated general readership in expository, explanatory, or investigative form on a subject related to religious life. Admission to this area of study shall be made at the discretion of the admissions committee. The requirements for the area of study in religion and journalism include 36 points of course work (nine courses), distributed as follows:

Required courses in religious studies (16 points total):

1. Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, G90.1001 (4 points).
2. Religion as Media, G90.3397 (4 points).
3. Two elective courses focusing on the study of religion (8 points).

Required courses in journalism (20 points total):

1. Writing, Research, and Reporting Workshop I and II, G90.1021-1022 (8 points).
   
2. Press Ethics, G54.0012 (4 points).
   
3. Two elective courses, one of which should specialize in writing about religion (8 points).

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