Religious Studies

Since its founding in 1964, UCSB’s department has been at the forefront of discussions about the nature of religion and pioneered new theoretical and methodological approaches. Our department has engaged head-on the difficult question of what counts as “religion” and continues to demonstrate that understanding it is vital for our students and the world. We have stood behind the idea that the scholarly investigation of that which we call “religion” — and what is taken to be its opposite, the “secular” — must take place in a university setting where all ideas are subject to the same standards of inquiry. Our present and past faculty includes presidents of the American Academy of Religion, Guggenheim Scholars, and award-winning scholars. Today we are the largest Department of Religious Studies in the entire University of California system, and one of the largest Departments in the US solely dedicated to the secular study of religion. Our 24 full-time ladder faculty and 7 full-time lecturers, together with numerous affiliated faculty from other departments across the humanities and the social sciences, represent an unparalleled depth of expertise in studying the multifarious ways in which humans have conceptualized, interacted with, and contested the sacred.