The Yale Department of Religious Studies is one of the leading scholarly communities dedicated to the study of religion. Our faculty members research religions from around the world in an effort to understand the role of religion as social movement, textual tradition, sensory culture, and arbiter of value.
Undergraduate Program
Religious Studies explores and critically analyzes religious traditions and systems of value. Diverse courses delve into the history and meaning of rituals, canonical and non-canonical texts, and theological and social categories and how they have been shaped by and construct institutions, habits, hierarchies, and collectives.
Graduate Program
The Department has trained several generations of intellectual leaders working inside and outside the academy. Our vibrant doctoral program includes faculty from the Department of Religious Studies and across Yale University, with special ties to the faculty in Yale Divinity School. We teach across many fields of study, time periods, geographical regions, and sources.
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Laura Nasrallah one of two FAS faculty honored with 2025 ACLS Fellowships
The American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship supports and recognizes excellence in the humanities.
Faculty in the News
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Hwansoo Kim, religious studies professor, named next Morse head
Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis announced that religious studies professor Hwansoo Kim will start as the next head of Morse College on July 1.
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Travis Zadeh wins 2026 Haskins Medal for "Wonders and Rarities"
The Haskins Medal is the most prestigious award granted by the Medieval Academy of America.
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Maria Doerfler Publishes 'Death and The Afterlife in Syriac Christianity: Creating Social Identity and Emotional Communities'
Maria Doerfler here explores this body of largely ignored literature that has been attributed to Ephrem the Syrian.
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Sarit Kattan Gribetz receives mentorship award from the Society of Biblical Literature
The award was bestowed by the Status of Women in the Profession Standing Committee and awarded at the annual SBL conference in Boston.
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The Worlds of Tarot: Students explore the history and meaning of divinatory cards
A new course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of tarot—a divinatory medium practiced by fortune-tellers, artists, and the curious.
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RLST welcomes new faculty member Marta Sanvido
Marta Sanvido describes the impact a trip to Japan had on her studies and the “secret documents” of her most most recent research.
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Riding a ‘Wave’: Yale’s expansion of Korean language and cultural studies
Across the university, rising interest in Korean language and culture has brought new course offerings and faculty who specialize in the region.
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Alum Simcha Gross receives National Jewish Book Award
Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2024) was awarded the Scholarship Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award
