The following are recent Comprehensive Papers:
2023
- Maeve Cassetty, "Anti-Gender Morality: An Analysis of the Catholic Church’s Moral Politics in Croatia, Poland, and Hungary"
- Eric DaCosta, "“Sectarianism Inside and Outside of the Stadium: The Old Firm as a Reflection of Catholic-Protestant Divide in Scottish Society”
- Hannah Plummer, "Feminine Bodies and Consumption: Female Saints and Ascetic Practices in Tiqqun’s Theory of the Young-Girl"
- Sarah Rankin, "'In With the Old, Framed as the New': Militant Atheism, Islamophobia, and Scientific Superiority in the Work of the New Atheists"
2022
- Andrew Foster, "Parallel accessions: Negotiating European Muslim identity through the 2016 Bosnian EU accession bid and European migrant crisis" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Elena Kervitsky, "Reading Gilgamesh’s History: A Comparative Historical Analysis of the Changing Relationship Between Kings and Gods in the Gilgamesh Epic and the Politicization of Mesopotamian Kingship" (graduated December 2021)
- Nicole Matsanov, "The intersection of antisemitism and economics: Usury, finance, and capitalism from the middle ages to the present"
- Sam Monius, "Creating a Sacred Blues: Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou and Boundary Work in Black Christian Musical Genres" (graduated December 2021)
- Alex Smith, "The smell of death and damnation: Sulphur as an apocalyptic element in Christian apocalyptic literature"
- Maggie Saucedo, "The riotous religious reality of the Trump era: Christian nationalism, spiritual warfare, and moral panics in the making of the 2021 Capitol insurrection"
2021
- Isobel Dickson, "The Art of Remembering: Austrian Post-War Reckoning with the Nazi Period and the Reconciliation of Jewish Memory Through Holocaust Memorials" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Jona Yadidi, "How Bread Rises to the Occasion: The Relationships between Christian and Jewish Bread Rituals"
- Past Comprehensive Papers
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2020
- Carol Beckett, "The String of Deep Innen: Rites of Passage Events and Festivals in Marking the Passage of Time and Creating Japanese American Buddhist Community in the Incarceration Camps”
- Rachel Chang, "A Life-Affirming Response to Suffering: Bringing Together Nietzsche's Philosophy and Zen Practice"
- Lewis Dayton, “Defining Institutional Ecological Responsibility at Two American Zen Monasteries”
- Roee Perry, “Politics and Truth: The Influence of Platonism on the Political Theology of Islam and Judaism in the Writings of al-Farabi and Maimonides”
- Stella Ramos, “Why Salmon Matter: Subverting Settler Colonialism in Environmental Justice Scholarship Through a Study of the Seattle Salmon Homecoming Celebration” Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
2019
- Ellie Alberg, “Feeding the Transnational Orishas: Factors in the Resilience and Adaptability of Santería”
- Naomi Brauner, "Community and Difference: The American Moral Experience - How Love and Solidarity Can Guide Us"
- Franny Hutchins, “American Folk Piety in The Exorcist: The Decline of Organized Religion and the Recovery of Catholic Exorcisms in the United States” Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Lucky Looby, “The Untenability of Ideologies of Purity: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses as Critique of Khomeini’s Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran”
- Pai Miller, "Hechicería and Hierarchy: Isabel Duarte de la Cruz and Women’s Subversion of Power Through ‘Witchcraft’" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Ivy Salinas, "Charity Reinvisioned: Creating Artistic Bridges between the Sacred and Secular through the Patronage and Creation of Chapel Environments"
- Olivia Tenney, "The Greater Reason: Emotion in the Cultivation of Wisdom - A Nietzschean Critique of Metaphysics Applied to Contemporary Life Philosophy"
- Sophia Vallas, “The Imitatio Game: An Exploration of the Shift from Imitatio Christi to Imitatio Martyri in Christian Martyrdoms”
- Emily West, "Narrating the Royal Kumari: Debates over Agency and Secularism in the Role of a Living Goddess in Nepal”
2018
- Joscelyn Guzman, "Female circumcision among the Gikuyu community: Interrogating the colonial roots of dominant abandonment approaches with the help of critical race theory (CRT)" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Max Zimmerman Hornstein, "Contextualizing Christians: Anti-Jewish Rhetoric from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages"
2017
- Reilly Brown, "What Buddhism Can Bring to Restorative Justice"
- Miriam Hamburger, "Art as Power in an Indigenous Context: Examining Indigenous Art Inside and Outside the Art World"
- Brandon Rodrigues, "New Religious Movements and the Anxiety Over Indoctrination: A Study of Heaven's Gate and Brainwashing"
- Griffin Wynne, "None to Nun No Longer: Diversifying Representations of Women in Thai Buddhism"
2016
- Lisa Chang, "Asian American Youths: The New Face of Campus Ministries"
- Aneesah Ettress, "The Production of Marian Doctrine through an Historical Interaction of Spatial Elements: A Lefebvrian analysis of the Dormition of Mary"
- Mark Greenberg, "A 'Cultural' Moral Argument for Effective Healthcare within the United States"
- Alex Wolf, "Putting Irony to Work"
2015
- Mary Belen Atyemizian, "Mestiza Subjectivity Guiding Decolonization in Chicana Artistic Renditions of La Virgen de Guadalupe"
- Afrika Bakenra, "Sustainability and Thrivability"
- Shira Danielle Barlas, "Shining the Light on The Hidden Lamp: A Quest for a Comprehensive Sense of Self"
- Zach Buchanan, "Islamic Feminism"
- Kai Foster, "The Art of Juggling Realities"
- Mia Loucks, "An Examination of Advaita Vedanta Philosophy and its Active Employment in Daily Vedanta Ritual"
- Shalini Pace, "The Past Not Present: Milan Kundera, the Question of Czechoslovakian Identity, and the Fear of Forgetting"
- Carlina Perna, "Teresa of Avila and Santeria: The Function of Marginal Space within Religious and Social Reform"
- Alanna Quan, "Fathering in the Image of God: The Performance and Policing of Masculine Ideals in Focus on the Family" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Katy Waddell, "Unintended Outcomes: How the 1979 Revolution in Iran Empowered Women and Altered Agency through Higher Education"
- Leah Wolf, "An Analysis of Elie Wiesel's Post-Holocaust Theodicy"
2014
- Aralyn Beaumont, "Conditioning Religiosity: How Cookbooks Reflect and Shape Contemporary Mennonite Expressions of Faith"
- Aaron Bernstein, "'She is the Home of Men': Habitation and Woman in Levinas' Ethical Philosophy"
- Faryn Borella, "A Shift in Thinking: Friedrich Nietzsche's Historically Distinct Conceptions of World Structure, Ecstasy, and Music"
- Zabia Colovos, "The Holy Creative: A Study of Empowerment through teh Performance of Interior Scroll"
- Josh Gorlick, "Understanding Julius Goldwater's involvement with the Little Tokyo Community: A Perspective on Japanese-American Buddhist Ethnic, Religious, and National Identity"
- Hannah Hall, "A Feminist Bioethics Look at Latin@ Conceptions of the Self and Health and their Ability to Access Health Care in Southern California"
- Brian Holtvedt, "'Questioning Builds a Way': The Possibility of Freedom in Heidegger's Thought"
- Jordan Jordan, "Shifting Representations: A Close Look at Orientalist and Progressive Scholarship on Pre-Islamic Women"
- Momoko Matsuda, "Turkey's State-Hired Female Preachers: Assertions of Muslim and Feminist Identities in Modern Turkey"
- Grace O'Hara, "Culpable Eve: A Gendered Reading of the Fall and its Portrayals in Early Christian Theology and Medieval Art"
- Zia Rutledge, "Los Hermanos Penitentes: A Study of New Mexican Folks Religion"
- Nick Wright, "Native American Religious Freedom versus Property Rights: A Case Study of the Gabrielino-Tongva and the Sacred Site Puvungna" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
2013
- Marah Bragdon, “Charisma, Religion and Politics: Billy Graham and Imam Khomeini’s Incorporation of Religious Traditions and Political Action"
- David Cole, “A chromatic linguistics, towards a literal philosophy of language (Or, how to have an idea and not just a correct one)" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Brian Cropper, “Narrative strategies shared between Islam and Christianity: Reclaiming a Historical Multi-Religiosity through Textual Interdependence"
- Natalie Malter, “Celebrating 125 years of ‘Earnest Inquiry’: The Legacy of the Gifford Lections on Religion, Science, and Natural Theology"
- Morgan Rutter, “Electronic Evangelicalism: Entertaining or Mere Entertainment?"
2012
- Margot Clifford, “The Irrelevance of Inequality: Reframing Women’s Liberation in Egypt through Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Robert Deans, “Nietzsche, Philosophy & Mythology: The role of myth in Nietzsche’s Brith of Tragedy"
- Elana Freeman, “Emptying the Path of Awakening"
- Kaitlin Kelly, “The Technology of Womanhood: The intersection of Iranian gender reassignment surgery, Heidegger, and Dworkin"
- Max Levine, “Dying in the Open: Love and the Ethical in Judaism and Post-Modernity"
- Andrea Loh, “Jewish Theological Responses to God After the Holocaust: The Evaluation of God’s Nature and God’s Actions"
- Lily Rowen, “The Evolution of Buddhism and ‘Religion’ in Ireland" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Senior Religious Studies Comps
- Lindsey Streeter, “Abd-al-Rahmann III, Francisco Franco, and Alfarabi: An Account of Religion and its Role Within the Spanish Political Arena"
- Krishnaveni Subbiah, “Issues Surrounding Hindu Arranged Marriages in India: Is there a solution?"
2011
- Jeff Eamon, “Antiterrorist Financing Policies’ Impact on Islamic Charitable Giving and the Reshaping of American Muslim Identity" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Agne Jomantaite, “On the Concept of Hospitality: Thinking with Kant, Schmitt, Levinas, and Derrida" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Amelia Frey, “All Hail the King of Pop"
- Kayla Furman, “God and Nature in Kabbalah: Impervious or Vulnerable to Disruption?"
- Emma LaFleur, “The Location of the Land of Topsy-Turvey: the Japanese and theJesuits in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Aaron Landman, “An Exegesis of Sayyid Qutb’s Historical Methodology as Articulated in Milestones"
- Emily Long, “Pure Sex: The sexualization of virgins in Christianity as a means to affirm patriarchy"
- Natalie Monterrosa, “Highlighting Difference and Sustaining Conflict: The Rhetoric of Storytelling in Northern Ireland During ‘The Troubles’"
- Akasham Pace, “The Unfinished Work of Photography"
- Emily Painter, “Obesity: Weight Beyond Body"
- Ian Powell, “Hearts versus Minds: Struggles between Scientific Atheism and Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917-1990"
- Rob Riccardi, Untitled or “The Rise of Western Zen and the Emergence of American Environmental Consciousness in the 1960’s" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Thomas Rodrigues, “‘All Communication Participates in Suicide’: A Bataillean Investigation of Charity" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
2010
- Rachel Deitch, “Behind the Religious: An Examination of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Charismatic Authority in the Islamic Revolution"
- Hannah Dreitcer, “Embracing a New Spirit: Resistance and Gender in the Development of Indigenous South African Christianities"
- Joe Hernandez, “Heidegger and Thinking: Recollecting the Divine"
- Riley Hooper, “In the Native Landscape is the Preservation of the World: A Look at Worldviews of Nature through the lens of the American Lawn"
- Harrison Taylor, “God in a Mall, Eternity in a Bottle: A Study of Consumerism and American Religion"
- Alex Wolf, “On Redemption – A Genealogy in Five Parts"
2009
- Erin Conley, “Battle of the Sexes: Re-evaluating Women’s Leadership Role in Christian History"
- Mallory Nezam, “The Sacred and the Ugly: The limitations and implications of the intersection of secular and sacred perspectives on pollution in the river Ganga"
- Jacqueline Herrlin, “Do-it-Yourself Islam: PuNk RocK as a Means of Cultural Adaptation for Muslims in the West"
- Maya Varga, “Feeding the Soul: Reconciling Christian Faith with Overeating"
- Ahuva Zaches, “CONCESSIONS" or “The Relationship Between Sexuality and the Pursuit of Holiness: A Comparative Exploration of Virginity, Marriage, and Contraception in Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism"
2008
- Ryan Bowen, “The Ethics of Santería: Spiritual Resistance to Oppression in the Americas"
- Kevin Chaves, “Through Religion to Being and Time: Uncovering the Religious Foundations of Heidegger’s Authenticity" Awarded the Kairos award for Best Religious Studies Comps
- Nathaniel Crawford, “Jane Leade: Envisioning a Divine Feminine Order"
- Pete Delgado, “The Role of Women in Puritan Society"
- Brooke Holmes, “The First Amendment—A Historical Analysis of the Political, Social, and Judicial Climates that Continue to Shape Religious Freedom"
- Katie Osborne, “Christian Ethics: Woman and Abuse"
- Jeff Pecaro, “A Critique of Politics and Amnesia in Bio-Atheism"
- Jessica Rutiz, “For Jesus? Defining a Jewish Identity in 21st century America"
- Nathan Schradle, “Reclaiming the ‘Mystery’: A New Philosophical Paradigm for Understanding the Mysteries of Mithras"
- Sophia Simonian, “The Impact of Religion during Teenage Development"
- Amanda Tonkovich, “Imagining Jesus: Power of the Icon"
2007
- Sam Betty, “Beyond Life: America’s Infatuation with the Near Death Experience and the Afterlife"
- Leah Concannon, “[Divine] Justice: From the Gallows to the Penitentiary"
- Noah Glusenkamp, “Naturalized Karma and Naturalized Rebirth: Towards an Understanding of Food and Future"
- Eric Haynie, “Developing an Understanding of Love and Compassion in Contemporary Religious Thought"
- Whitney Lewis, “Spiritual Poverty and Righteous Revolution: Liberation Theology an the Process of Critical Reflection"
- Sam Mowe, “Wandering and Pilgrimage in the Buddhist Tradition"
- Ben Swift, “Christianity and the Construction fo Race within the American Identity"
2006
- Simyona Bryant, “Martin Luther King Jr.: A Faithful Advocate of Nonviolent Revolution for the Disinherited"
- Timothy Maes, “A New Piety: Historically Locating the Contemporary Megachurch"
- Rebecca Shellock, “A Reformation of Femininity: Hildegard of Bingen’s Redefinition of the Feminine in her Texts, Art, and Life"
- Sam Sinkin, “Fundamental Change: A Re-Evaluation of Existence, Truth, and the Way Through the Five Mindfulness Trainings"
2005
- Julian Allen, “No Longer a ‘So-Called Negro’: The Creation and Development of the Nation of Islam’s Black Muslim Identity"
- Tycho Bergquist, “Religion and Spirituality: The Natural Tie of Mainstream and Avant-Garde Music Toward Social Progress"
- Erica Booth, “Death and The Afterlife: A Comparative Analysis of Buddhist and Christian Thought"
- Lauren Constancio, “Contemporary Bioethics from a Buddhist Perspective"
- Ana María Garay, “The Sisterhood of Our Lady of Good Death and Glory: Exploring the Dimensions of Death and the Virgin Mary as Symbols of Freedom for an Afro-Brazilian Confraternity"
- Heather Kanny, “Islamism and Social Justice in Egypt: The Rise of Ikhwan and the Simultaneous Creation of an Islamic Transnational Identity"
- Stephanie Langlais, “Compromising through Translation"
- Colin Maloney, “The Emergence of Christianity and the Baha’i Faith"
- Dallin Wilson, “From Qumran to Cumorah: Sources of Latter-Day Saint Attraction to the Dead Sea Scrolls"