HDS - Registrar - MTS Areas of Focus and Religious Traditions

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MTS Areas of Focus and Religious Traditions

MTS students (those having begun in the fall of 2007 or later) focus their studies around a central area of interest. The program requires six courses within a single area of focus, along with three courses in an area well outside a student's own area. The sixteen established areas of focus from which students may choose are listed below; the Course Listings by MTS Area of Focus page lists the corresponding courses.

Occasionally a student's interests may lie outside the established areas below. In that case, he or she may decide to initiate an individually designed area of focus. This involves a student and his or her faculty advisor outlining a coherent plan of study that is sufficiently supported by the resources of the University. Final approval for individually designed programs belongs to the MTS Curriculum Committee.

Not all courses available and of interest to MTS students belong to an area of focus. The program was designed with sufficient flexibility to allow selection from among all course offerings. MTS students are encouraged to select elective courses when appropriate to their interests or program.

MTS students are also required to take two half courses each in two different religious traditions; see the Course Listings by MTS Religious Tradition Category for designations. Courses in other religious traditions, such as those offered by the Boston Theological Institute or other Harvard Schools, may also be used to satisfy this requirement.

A complete listing of the MTS requirements may be found in the HDS Handbook for Students.

Jump to Area of Focus descriptions:

African and African American Religious Studies
Buddhist Studies
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Hindu and South Asian Religious Traditions
History of Christianity
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
New Testament and Early Christianity

Philosophy of Religion
Religion, Ethics, and Politics
Religion, Literature, and Culture
Religions of the Americas
Religion and the Social Sciences
Religious Studies and Education
Theology
Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion

African and African American Religious Studies

Courses in this area explore various dimensions of the religious experiences and expressions of the African and African American peoples, including the African diaspora. Focusing on interdisciplinary perspectives—historical, sociological, phenomenological, literary, and theological analysis—courses also examine the interplay of the lived religious traditions of black peoples in local and global contexts.

Buddhist Studies

Courses in this area foster the understanding of Buddhists and the life-worlds they have created, historically across Asia as well as in contemporary settings around the globe. This understanding is cultivated through self-reflective interpretations of Buddhist ideas, values, texts, languages, institutions, practices, and experiences, with the expectation that these interpretations will lead to both appreciation and critique of Buddhism, in all its diversity, as a human heritage.

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Courses in this area are designed to introduce students to the writings that constitute the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, with attention to their setting within the ancient Near East, to their literary characteristics, and to their significance for contemporary communities of faith and ethical commitment. The courses are designed to serve both students with no knowledge of biblical languages as well as those who have studied Hebrew, Greek, and/or other ancient languages relating to the Bible and who seek to continue building their linguistic foundation for further study.

Hindu and South Asian Religious Traditions

Courses in this area cover the diversity of South Asian religious traditions—primarily Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim—from a variety of methodological perspectives: historical, philosophical, theological, literary, and anthropological. While many courses focus on a particular religious community and/or tradition, others consider the richly complex interactions among various religious groups in South Asia and the South Asian global diaspora. Students in this area are encouraged to explore the religious cultures of the region broadly, including relevant classical and/or modern languages.

History of Christianity

Courses in this area study Christianity in its evolving institutional, theological, devotional, social, cultural, and intellectual expressions from the first century to the present. In addition, the area offers courses in historical method, historiography, and interpretive issues in secondary literature.

Islamic Studies

Courses in this area study different dimensions of the long and varied history and contemporary reality of the Islamic tradition. Islamic art, law, politics, and theology, Islamic mysticism, Islamic constructions of gender, pre-modern Islamic culture, and other topics are explored within the Arabic-, Persian-, and Turkish-speaking societies of the Muslim-majority world, South, Central, and Southeast Asia, Africa, and/or the modern Western world.

Jewish Studies

Courses in this area explore the Jewish tradition as it has developed over the millennia. In historical terms, it involves five broad periods—biblical, Second Temple, rabbinic, medieval, and modern. Methodologically, it makes use of a number of diverse but interrelated approaches: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and sociological. The language most relevant to Jewish Studies is Hebrew, though for work in some areas, others, such as Aramaic or Yiddish, may also prove essential.

New Testament and Early Christianity

Courses in this area focus on the interdisciplinary study of Christian literature (canonical and extracanonical), history, exegesis, and theology in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world, with special emphasis on hermeneutics, feminist interpretation, and material culture.

Philosophy of Religion

Courses in this area engage in the philosophical interpretation and evaluation of religion, religious belief, and religious practice. Questions studied include the nature of religion, religious experience, and religious language; the status and justification of religious belief; the relationship between religion and ethics, and between religion and aesthetics; and theories of practice relative to the interplay of religious subjectivity and ritual. Work in this area can be pursued in relationship to European and American philosophy, the philosophical traditions of Asia, and/or comparative studies.

Religion, Ethics, and Politics

Courses in this area focus upon a range of normative issues that arise within political cultures. The area is structured to allow students to understand the broad social, cultural, and political contexts within which ethical decision-making and action occur. Special attention is given to the distinctive role that religious beliefs, practices, codes, and mores play in shaping ethical and political convictions and actions. The area is intentionally interdisciplinary and exposes students to normative issues within a variety of the world's religious traditions.

Religion, Literature, and Culture

Courses in this area provide students with the historical and critical methods necessary to analyze literary texts from a variety of genres (poetry, biography), religious traditions (Buddhism, Christianity), and cultural perspectives (Latin America, South Asia). Recognizing the intersectionality of religion, literature, and culture, this area combines literary and cultural criticism with theological and religious analysis. It also recognizes the aesthetic dimension of religion as a basis for understanding such themes as myth, ritual, and transcendence in much of world literature.

Religions of the Americas

Courses in this area take a hemispheric perspective allowing students to explore indigenous, diasporic, and new religions created throughout the Americas. Historical, anthropological, and comparative approaches inform courses addressing such topics as ritual, transculturation, ethnicity, race mixture, migration, and colonial and contemporary encounters.

Religion and the Social Sciences

Courses in this area attempt to explicate and account for connections between religious phenomena and several aspects of society including the organization of cultural, political, economic, and reproductive life. This area approaches forms of religious faith, religious experience, and religious organization from post-enlightenment perspectives associated with the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political and economic science, and sociobiology.

Religious Studies and Education

Courses in this area focus on the public understanding of religion through education with an emphasis on the intersections of religion and issues related to public policy, education studies, and curricular analysis and development. This area of study includes, but is not restricted to, students who are enrolled in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education (PRSE).

Theology

Courses in this area focus on all modes of the Christian tradition's self-understandings of its faith and practice in historical, contemporary, and comparative contexts. The study of theology involves the articulation of diverse understandings of central topics such as God, salvation, and the Church; analyses of the contexts of, constraints on, and methods of theological reflection and reasoning; the relation of Christianity to other religions; and the relation of theology to other pursuits of knowledge and practices of self-understanding.

Women, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion

Courses in this area use gender and/or sexuality as categories of analysis across the disciplines of religious and theological studies. The area engages feminist theory in relation to the experiences, thoughts, texts, and practices of both men and women as well as highlighting previously neglected areas of women's religiosity.

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