While UC has no Department of Religious Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences includes faculty from a variety of disciplines who study religion. These faculty teach courses in the Religious Studies or Biblical Studies certificate programs but otherwise have few opportunities to engage as scholars on topics of mutual interest.

The Religious Studies Reading Group creates an interdisciplinary forum for conversations and collaborative projects pertinent to all of us working at UC within or even at the margins of the field. Rather than replicating (in an ersatz way) a traditional religious studies program, with its specialists in distinct religious traditions, the Religious Studies Reading Group operates as a kind of lab for the study of significant issues that in one way or another touch upon religious histories, texts, traditions, cultures, and communities. 

If you have any questions about this group or would like to join, please contact Ari Finkelstein at finkelai@ucmail.uc.ed

Knowledge of the pre-modern past offers stimulating ways of understanding how cultural ideas and traditions are constructed by and disseminated among different agents and regions, helping us contextualize contemporary debates about identity, community, politics, culture, and the humanities. The Taft Reading Group Global Pre-modern Studies (ca. 600 –1700) encourages multidisciplinary scholarship that reflects the rich array of areas of study offered at UC, including medieval and early modern religious traditions, cross-cultural trade and exchange, science and technology, literary and cultural studies, gender and race studies, political and legal structures, and material and visual cultures.

This group aims to create a diverse community of colleagues—current and emeritus faculty, graduate students, and staff from various departments and colleges as well as scholars and curators in the greater Cincinnati area—to exchange ideas, share work-in-progress, participate in research roundtables, and foster collaboration in research, teaching, and public engagement.

Joanna Huh, Assistant Professor of English, A&S and Christopher Platts, Assistant Professor of Art History, DAAP serve as co-organizers of this group. 

For more information or to join this reading group, please contact Susan Longfield Karr, at karrsn@ucmail.uc.edu

This group provides a learning community to faculty and graduate students who teach or are interesting in forms of pedagogy, to deconstruct and address issues of power and privilege in pedagogical endeavors and to invite a stronger and more detailed understanding of what it means to invite critical, culturally sustaining – responsive, and inclusive writing practices in all disciplines.

This group is open to graduate students and faculty across disciplines.

For more information on this group, or to join, please contact Alecia Beymer, at  beymeraa@ucmail.uc.edu