Illuminating the Great Minds of History.

Religion in 50 Words

with Dr. Andrew Henry

This Guided Reading course is for anyone who wants to take a reading class with Dr. Andrew Henry on their own schedule, learning about concepts like belief, ritual, power, and the sacred. 

 Our textbook chapters are just three pages, summarizing key terms in Religious Studies, making it easy to jump into theoretical issues. 

The Conference
of the Birds

with Dr. Patrick J. D'Silva

The Conference of the Birds, written in Persian by Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur in the 12th century CE as a metaphor for the Sufi path, is the story about a group of souls who go on a journey to find their king.

Along the way, they discover not only that the journey truly is the destination, but also that your higher Self is found within your self. 

A God-Shaped Nation

with Brook Wilensky-Lanford

In A God-Shaped Nation,
Dr. Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election.

This is an expansive but approachable history of extraordinary religious questions, told through the ordinary people who grappled with them.

The Resurrection

with Dr. Travis W. Proctor

The Messiah was dead. His disciples scattered. By all appearances, the movement of Jesus of Nazareth was over.

And then, within a few years, multiple accounts begin to appear: letters, gospels, and later texts...all claiming, in different ways, that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

But they don’t all tell the same story.

Hip Hop and Islam

with Atéha Bailly

Hip hop has long been one of the places where big questions about race, religion, identity, and power get worked out in public.

This guided reading looks at how Islam became part of that story...not just as a passing reference in lyrics, but as a deeper moral, political, and cultural force in Black life and expression.