Wolf Seminars in Religion, Science, and Technology

Instructors: James T. Robinson, Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies and Dean of the Divinity School, and Russell Johnson

Autumn 2025

This seminar serves as the anchor for a yearlong exploration of the intersections among religion, science, and science fiction. The class will examine the boundaries between belief and reason, myth and materialism, and the ways in which these fields shape and challenge one another. Topics include new religious movements in Judaism and Islam, artificial intelligence and the concept of the golem, and the cultural and theological implications of angels, UFOs, and other extraordinary phenomena. Through critical discussion and interdisciplinary inquiry, the course will ask: Are these conversations truly impossible—or essential for understanding the world to come?

Instructor: Marshall Cunningham

Spring 2026

This course will investigate the relationship between religion and video games, looking at how religious narratives, symbolism, and ritual practice have influenced the worlds created by designers and developers. Students will explore the communities and artistic expressions produced through the shared experience of gaming, including how the study of religion can help us understand their defining rules and boundaries. Finally, students will think about how traditional religious communities have responded to video games, embracing their potential for new forms of imagination or rejecting them as dangerous or heretical.

Instructors: Prof. Alireza Doostdar and Hoda El Shakry

Fall 2025

This seminar explores the diverse spiritual and sentient lifeforms within Islamic cosmology that exist beyond the human—from jinn, angels, and ghosts to demons and devils. Students will focus on theological, scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and historical accounts of these creatures across a variety of texts, as well as their literary and filmic afterlives in contemporary cultural representations. And in so doing, consider the various religious, social, and cultural inflections that shape local cosmological imaginaries.

Instructor: Prof. Yousef Casewit

Winter 2026

An exploration of primary texts and secondary scholarship on dreams, visions, and mystical experiences. The course examines the subjective qualities of paranormal experiences, their meanings within specific religious and philosophical traditions, and their interpretations across diverse explanatory models. How are such encounters described and classified? What theological or spiritual frameworks do traditions like Islam and Christianity offer for understanding them? Drawing on thinkers such as William James, Carl Jung, and Rudolph Otto, the course explores how religious and secular perspectives illuminate—or challenge—the meaning of mystical phenomena.

Instructor: Daniel Arnold, John Henry Barrows Professor of the Philosophy of Religions

Winter 2026

The idea that “religion” and “science” are basically at odds with one another—that they involve essentially different kinds of rationality—is surely foremost among the ideas that arguably distinguish modernity. This class will consider some of the various ways in which that conclusion has been resisted by some twentieth- and twenty-first-century thinkers, drawing on a range of philosophical and religious perspectives. Particular attention will be given to early writings from American pragmatist philosopher-scientists, who argued that it is a mistake in the first place to think religion necessarily concerns anything “supernatural”; religion, for these thinkers, can therefore be understood as wholly consistent with naturalism.

Instructor: Russell Johnson

Winter 2026

“You don't really understand an antagonist," screenwriter John Rogers writes, "until you understand why he's a protagonist in his own version of the world." This principle holds true of movie villains, but also raises important questions about disagreement, dehumanization, and the diabolical in the real world. Are our enemies truly malicious, or just misunderstood? This course combines readings from philosophical classics and religious traditions with comparative analyses of villains in films from 101 Dalmatians (1956) and Jaws (1975) to The Dark Knight (2008) and Black Panther (2018). Students will discuss antagonists' motivations, evaluate the visions of morality filmmakers are presupposing, and develop more nuanced understandings of ethics and moral psychology.