This course is an introduction to various religious traditions in East Asia. We will discuss major religions as well as new religious movements. Topics include Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Shintô, Japanese New Religions (shinkô shûkyô) such as Mahikari and Soka Gakkai, folk/shamanic beliefs, and Christianity in East Asia.

(IV and VIII)
Same as HISTORY 16B
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

Emphasis/Category: World Religions (Category 1)

This is a documentary history of atheism in that we chronologically trace and read primary sources over the centuries. It’s is an upper-level, once-a-week, three-hour class conducted as a seminar—with weekly conversations arising from our reading of various authors from 500 BCE to modernity. These primary writings represent only a tiny portion of a very large literature of religious skepticism in the West, a literature that (almost) no one gets exposed to in their educational career, from kindergarten through a Ph.D. (Why is that?) There is considerable weekly work to do. Weekly assignments include reading and then writing short summaries of that reading (to prove you read it) and then composing a short ‘thought essay’ about some idea of your choosing from the reading. To pass the class, you must talk in our weekly discussions, and obviously you must show up for that. You are graded weekly on your writing and speaking, with an absence resulting in the loss of speaking points for that week. There will be a cumulative test at the end of the term. The principal required textbook is  “Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre,” edited by J.C.A. Gaskin—available for free as a PDF, for purchase or for renting in the UCI bookstore and other online sites, and for borrowing at UCI’s Langson Library Reserves. There will be a few PDFs of other authors, and possibly a second required book called “The Quotable Atheist” by Jack Huberman. 
Same as HISTORY 114


Days: WE  03:00-05:50 PM

Japanese culture is often portrayed as having a uniquely harmonious relationship to nature. From Shinto to Buddhism, from haiku poetry to the animated films of Miyazaki Hayao, nature has served as a central concern for Japanese thinkers, writers, and artists more broadly. At the same time, Japan has suffered from devastating natural disasters and industrial pollution. This course begins with two questions: 1) How can the human relationship to nature be both harmonious and harmful? and 2) What happens when we stop seeing nature as merely the background for human action, and start considering it as a character in a text? To answer these questions, we will adopt an interdisciplinary approach from the emerging field of environmental humanities. We will focus on examples of modern Japanese literature and film in which landscapes and non-human animals and plants play a central role, as well as religious texts, works of Japanese environmental philosophy, environmental history, and anthropology. We will examine the different ways nature is represented in all of these texts, and what these descriptions might say about the human relationship to nature. All readings will be in English translation; no Japanese language ability is required.

Category 2

Days: TU TH  03:30-04:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: World Religions (Category 1)

This course introduces students to the history of South Asia through the politics of religion. South Asia is the birthplace of major world religions, including Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Sarnaism, and Hinduism, and is also home to some of the world’s oldest and, in some cases, largest, populations of Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians. Why have scholars argued that mutually exclusive religious identities and religious antagonisms primarily emerged after colonial rule in the nineteenth century? The course will refute narratives that portray South Asian history as one indelibly shaped by religion and religious conflicts. We will assess the ways that colonialism remade religious boundaries and contributed to the causes of the Partition of India and Pakistan. In particular, we will ask how inequalities of caste, gender, and class shaped the making of religious “majorities” and “minorities.” Lastly, we will consider how religion has served both as the grounds for nationalist movements and as a terrain of anti-caste struggle in post-colonial South Asia. Course materials include translated poetry and literature, oral histories, and film.

Same as HISTORY 174G

Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

Emphasis/Category: World Religions (Category 1)

This course explores the rich history, literature, and culture of Sephardic Jews from medieval Iberia across the Mediterranean to the Americas, the Ottoman Empire, and beyond. We will begin with medieval Sephardic life in al-Andalus and follow the routes of Sephardic Jews as they settled and created global networks that spanned continents and centuries. We will consider the cultural production that reflected these historical transformations. In examining a wide range of sources, including newspapers and letters, rabbinic responsa and photography, music and memoirs, we will learn to read and think deeply, analyze texts, formulate interpretations, and communicate insights. Throughout, we will attend to questions of language and translation; oral and written genres; culture and power; gender and sexuality; changing conceptualizations of Sephardic identity; and memory and mythology.

(Satisfies Pre-1800 Requirement)

Same as HISTORY 130C


Days: MO WE  10:30-11:50 AM

This class engages in central issues of Indigeneity and explores contemporary film, video games, and literature created by Indigenous people from nations including those currently called Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, and Sweden. Primary questions we will address this include: What does it mean to be Indigenous? How do contemporary Indigenous people represent themselves? What issues are important to specific Indigenous communities? What issues are important across Indigenous communities? We will further pay particular attention to representations of gender and sexuality and human relationships to the other-than-human across these works.

Same as COM LIT 160
Category 2

Days: WE  12:00-01:50 PM

No description is currently available.

No description is currently available.

No description is currently available.
Days: TU TH  01:30-02:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: Thematic Approaches to Religion (Category 2)

In late 2010 and early 2011, a chain of popular uprisings shook North Africa and the Middle East, ousting from power the authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Other countries throughout the Arab world experienced massive protests too, with outcomes ranging from timid reforms to restoration of authoritarian rule to civil wars. This course will start by exploring the cultural, socioeconomic, and geopolitical forces that set the stage for the so-called Arab Spring, the region-wide movement against authoritarianism. It will then examine political mobilization against authoritarian rule in individual Arab countries, explaining specific outcome in each. Next, it will discuss the movement’s second wind nearly a decade later, which affected a new subset of Arab countries including Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Lastly, it will look for answers as to why little progress towards more accountable political governance in the Arab countries has been accomplished despite repeated popular mobilization.

Same as 71060 Soc Sci 188B, Lec A
Days: TU TH  02:00-03:20 PM