Two CLAS academic partners are now one department. As of July 1, Classics and Religious Studies have merged into the Department of Classics and Religious Studies—building on years of shared teaching and research between the two fields.

Homer’s 12,000-line epic poem The Odyssey is back in the spotlight with this summer’s Hollywood release of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s adaptation.

The Department of Religious Studies recognizes our 2026 student award winners.

Kristy Nabhan-Warren discussed how the state of the world is driving an increase in Catholic Church membership with more than a dozen Iowa news outlets over the last week.

The three-year project, titled “AI Models with Reinforcement Learning to Edit Text in Damaged Manuscripts,” will produce software capable of reconstructing missing or illegible sections of historical documents.

Emily Wilson, PhD, a distinguished classicist, professor, and author working as the department Chair of Classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, visited the University of Iowa on March 12 to discuss her approach to retranslating Homeric poems.

Roughly 40 people attended the first event of the Iowa City Downtown District’s First Round Series Wednesday at Prairie Lights Cafe in collaboration with the University of Iowa Office of Innovation.

Through a series of five-minute presentations on cultural foods and their meaning and use in different religions, students and faculty from the department broke bread to support the community.

The DEO of the Department of Classics mourns the loss of his dear friend and colleague, Professor Jay Holstein from the Department of Religious Studies.

"Not only did Professor Holstein teach us how to read books—he changed how we read the world. And that ripple—that widening, widening ripple—is the legacy he leaves in all of us."