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From Our Chair
Greetings, and welcome to the Department of Classical and Religious Studies! We provide a unique opportunity to study ancient cultures and religions in dialogue rather than in isolation. Whether you are interested in Roman warfare or Buddhist meditation, medieval Islamic literature or contemporary Indian cinema, you will find courses taught by globally recognized faculty doing cutting-edge research. If you want to explore the cultures and ideas that have profoundly shaped our world in depth, then we are your intellectual home.
We are committed to creating and sustaining an intellectual community that speaks across disciplinary, regional, religious, linguistic and temporal divides. Our scholarly community includes anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, historians, philosophers, philologists, and scholars of religion. Students can take part in archaeological excavations, conduct guided research into religious texts and/or contemporary communities, and read world literature in the original Arabic, Greek, Classical Hebrew, Latin, and Persian.
مرحباً. Χαῖρε. בְּרוּכִים הַבָּאִים. Salve. خوش آمدید. Welcome!
Anand Taneja
Interim Department Chair
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Why Classical and Religious Studies?
Students in classical and religious studies explore the cultures, histories, religions, languages, economies, and philosophies of ancient cultures, giving them a deeply unique perspective on the traditions that shape our past, our present, and our future.
Our students gain the following marketable proficiencies:
Cultural and Religious Literacy
Students develop fluency in the beliefs, practices, texts, and material cultures of civilizations and religious traditions, allowing them to recognize the historical forces behind contemporary conflicts, engage across cultural boundaries with genuine understanding, and develop knowledge of the past and critical understanding of the present.
Critical and Humane Thinking
Students learn to build arguments from evidence that is fragmentary, ambiguous, or disputed, developing the discipline to follow the evidence to where it leads and the humility to frame their conclusions with appropriate restraint.
Ethical Reflection
By studying fundamental human questions across a range of cultures, traditions, and religions, students develop the capacity to hold multiple perspectives in view, to recognize the assumptions underpinning their own moral reasoning, and to think more deeply about what human flourishing requires.
Persuasive and Precise Writing
Students craft analytical essays, long-form research papers, and textual commentaries on ancient writings that resist easy summarization, learning to make unfamiliar ideas accessible without distorting them and to persuade readers who hold assumptions very different from their own.
Linguistic and Communication Skills
Studying ancient and classical languages—including Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Persian—requires close attention and linguistic rigor, which sharpens students’ habits of attention and analysis and improves oral and written communication.
Cohen Memorial Building
The department is located on the second and third floors of the Cohen Memorial Building, which faces the Peabody Esplanade from the west.
The construction of Cohen was made possible through a gift to the George Peabody College for Teachers from Mrs. George Etta Brinkley Cohen in 1926. The new building, dedicated to the fine arts, was designed by the renowned New York firm McKim, Mead, and White and erected by Hegeman-Harris Company, Inc. in 1927-1928.
This historic structure, with its refined neoclassical features, has provided a fitting home for our faculty and students since 2009. The main façade on the east recalls an austere Greek temple with its Doric colonnade and frieze in limestone. The atrium recalls an opulent Roman villa with its marble Corinthian columns and its monochrome mosaic in the Italian style. Overlooking this Greek and Roman pastiche, at the landing of the grand stair, is the late Baroque portrait bust of the Grand Dauphin, attributed to Giovacchino Fortini at the beginning of the 18th century. The Cohen Building’s layered display of art and architecture is an apt metaphor for our intellectual community, crossing the centuries to reveal antiquity as much as its medieval and modern legacies, distortions, and renewals.
The department is fortunate to have a seminar room (Cohen 309), which houses a small library and artifact collection for use by faculty and students. The library contains around 3,000 books that have been variously donated over the decades, most recently by David Wasserstein and Barbara Tsakirgis. These include all basic reference works in the field of classics, as well as introductory works on history, philosophy, religion, and art and archaeology; scholarly texts and commentaries; and corpora. The artifact collection was compiled by faculty and alumni chiefly during the 1920s-1960s. The objects, including pottery and lamps, metal, and lithics, some authentic and some replicas, appear to have been collected during travels to Italy, Greece, and the Middle East.
Contact Us
Building Address
304 Cohen Memorial Hall
Telephone: (615) 322-2307
Fax: (615) 343-7261
Mailing Address
Department of Classical and Religious Studies
Vanderbilt University
PMB 0092
230 Appleton Place
Nashville, TN 37203-5721
Parking for visitors is often available in the lot along Cohen’s west side, just off 21st Avenue South, opposite the Medical Arts Building. A larger lot (no. 77) located 5 minutes by foot from Cohen is located immediately east of the Commons, just off 18th Avenue South and Horton Avenue.
To arrange a visit to the department, please call us in advance at (615) 322-2307.