RSS 1.0Center for Religious Studies (UMKC)
The Center for Religious Studies offers an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and socio-historical approach to the study of religion. The Center is a consortium of several area institutions of higher education that have pooled their resources to participate in the UMKC Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. Students in religious studies are introduced to the many dimensions of religious belief, practice and expression found in human cultures across time and space.
In addition to graduate courses, the Center offers a number of undergraduate courses on topics such as gender and religion, women and religion, the anthropology of religion, religion in America, and immigration and religion. Related courses relevant to the study of religion will be found under the listings of other departments and programs.
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Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Sinned: The Dramatic Potency of Confession on the Early Modern English Shakespearean Stage
(2023)Though forcefully absent in its traditional practice by political and religious reformation, evidence of confession in early modern English drama remained and became representative of an exchange of power between dramatic ... -
Mothers Making Meaning: An Exploration of Contemporary Ritual Practices Surrounding Childbirth
(2023)Many contemporary American women undergo one of the most intense identity shifts of their lives—becoming a mother—without prescribed ritual resources to navigate that transition. Lacking a common cultural script to follow, ... -
How Religious Narratives and Rituals Function in Constructing the Experience of Immigrants Within the Context of a Haitian Baptist Church in South Florida
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)This dissertation examines how religious narratives and rituals function in constructing the experience of immigrants within the context of a Haitian Baptist church in South Florida. The church and its contexts are ... -
The Victorian Preacher’s Malady: The Metaphorical Usage of Gout in the Life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)This dissertation examines the use of the gout metaphor in the life and writings of one of Victorian England’s most eminent preachers and gout sufferers, the Baptist Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892). Careful scrutiny ... -
The Theological Edifice of Modern Experiential Protestantism: Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Palmer’s Reconstruction of nineteenth Century Pietism
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)The aim of this work is to address the development of experiential Protestantism in the nineteenth century, commonly called Pietism, through the theological contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Søren Kierkegaard, ... -
For conscience's sake: the 1839 emigration of the Saxon Lutherans
(2013)This study traces the assimilation process of more than six hundred Saxon Lutherans who migrated to Perry County, Missouri, in 1839. As one of the few groups in the nineteenth century who chose to move to the United ... -
Blasphemous bodies: Transgressive morality as cultural interrogation in romance fiction of the long nineteenth century
(2011)The long nineteenth century was characterized by advances in medical, biological and technological knowledge that often complicated definitions of human life and blurred the lines between life and death. These changes ... -
Penitence, Punishment, and Pain: Negotiating Personal Authority in Francis Lathom's The Midnight Bell
(Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, 2008)Francis Lathom's novel, The Midnight Bell (1798), uses conventional gothic themes of crime, guilt, and punishment to interrogate gender roles and to explore how individuals may conform to, reject, or subvert mechanisms of ... -
Until We See His Blessed Face: Sight as Privileged Insight in the Spirituality of Margery Kempe
(Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, 2009)This paper explores how, despite an inherited Christian tradition that worked to elevate hearing and denigrate sight in an unofficial hierarchy of the senses, the fifteenth-century English mystic Margery Kempe came to ... -
Diverse Struggles to Preserve Tribal Identity on the Plains: Religion as Survival Strategy in the Late Nineteenth Century among the Lakota and Osage
(Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, 2007) -
Quest for the Legitimizing Jesus Deployment of a Contested Symbol by a Non-traditional Religious Movement
(Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, 2007)There have always been alternative interpretations of Jesus throughout Christian history. The meaning of such a symbol is never static. However, a general theological consensus had maintained an essentially hegemonic ...