This area focuses on intersections between modern and contemporary western philosophy and the histories of religious thought and life. Students working in the area are expected to achieve competence both in a major religious tradition (usually the history of Christian thought and spirituality, but often also Islam in the Arab world, the history of American religions, or Asian religions) and in philosophical and theoretical trajectories central to modern and contemporary western thought, from late-medieval nominalism and early-modern rationalism through German Idealism to phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, deconstruction, and related theoretical movements, such as structuralism and post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, bio-political theory, posthumanist thought, and environmental ethics.
Faculty in the concentration: Professors Carlson
