»Student Research and Publications

The individualized student capstone project is the culmination of the major in Religious Studies.  Students work closely with a faculty advisor and mentor to develop a project tailored to their individual interests and professional goals. Topics are as diverse and creative as the students in our department and include a wide range of religious traditions, methodological approaches and issues. 

Student Capstone Projects have included:

• Religion & Women’s Rights: The Eradication of the Feminine from the Divine in Western Religious Traditions
• Queer Theology: Reclaiming Christianity for the LGBT Community
• Resources for an Environmental Ethic in Buddhism and African Traditional Religions: A Comparative Study
• Atonement Theories and the Promise of a New Christianity: Catholic, Protestant, Gnostic and Process Theology Test Cases
• Philosophical Ways Religions Can Reclaim Animals In their Moral Design
• Megiddo:  An Archaeological Exploration
• From Bondage to Dust She Rises: A Comparative Analysis of Power and Privilege of Biblical Women
• Fundamentalism

Religious studies students at Chapman also have opportunities to work directly with faculty on research.  For example:

• Double major in Religious Studies and Film, Christopher Baier, traveled with Professor Nancy Martin to India to work on a documentary film project entitled “Patterns for Peace:  India as a Model for Peace in a Multi-Religious Society”
  
  
• More than 140 students have had the opportunity to personally interview Holocaust survivors, working as research assistants with Professor Marilyn Harran on the Indestructible Spirit Photography and Biography Project
  
  
• To carry out research for her independent study project “The History and Impact of the Parliament of the World’s Religions,” Shauna Crahan, Peace Studies Major with a Religious Studies emphasis, attended the 4^th Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona, Spain in 2004 with Professor Nancy Martin, meeting religious studies scholars and religious leaders and practitioners from around the world.

For further information about opportunities and support for undergraduate research, visit the Office of Undergraduate Research

Religious Studies students at Chapman even have opportunities to publish their own work.

Reverence for Life

Student essays appear in Prof. Marv Meyer’s volume co-edited with Kurt Bergel: Reverence for Life: The Ethics of Albert Schweitzer for the Twenty-First Century (Syracuse:  Syracuse University Press, 2002):

• Joie Karnes:  “Finding Meaning in Life”
  
• Maria Tafoya:  “Reverence For Life: Making Decisions”
  
• Timothy Johnson:  “Reverence for Life and Eating”
  
• Joie Karnes:  “Applying the Ethic of Reverence for Life 
to the Issue of Abortion in America” 

e-Research:  A Journal of Undergraduate Work

Religious studies students have also had papers selected for publication in Chapman University’s peer-reviewed online undergraduate research journal:

• Kelly Kraus: “Queer Theology: Reclaiming Christianity for the LGBT Community,” e-Research:  A Journal of Undergraduate Work, vol.2, no.3(2011).
• Jessica Browne:   “A Review of Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights,” e-Research:  A Journal of Undergraduate Work, vol.2, no.3(2011)
• Cambria Findley-Grubb: “Harry Potter as a Piece of Apocalyptic Fiction,” e-Research:  A Journal of Undergraduate Work, vol.2, no.1(2011).